DISQUS

Abiola Lapite · 4 years ago

It may be that Rand has all the virtues you list, but she is such an atrocious stylist that the need to actually read her writings is an almost impossible obstacle to surmount; leaden, didactic prose, straw-men and cardboard-cutout characterizations are not the stuff of which intellectually challenging fiction is made, in my opinion, and had Ayn Rand's books been my first exposure to libertarianish thinking, it's highly unlikely I'd be a follower of that political philosophy today.

Will Wilkinson · 4 years ago

I still think she is a great writer and stylist.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Abiola Lapite · 4 years ago

De gustibus non est disputandum.

In that phrase lies certain aesthetic claims with which I thoroughly disagree. Though I'd rather not expand on the issue at length at this time, let it suffice to say that we have plenty of empirical evidence to indicate that beauty is not in fact entirely in the eyes of the beholder, and there is a meaningful sense in which we can say that Hermann Melville and Tom Clancy are not literary equals, despite the far greater popularity of the latter. Subtlety of psychological characterization, sentential variety and prose flow are just a few aspects in which Rand falls woefully short of genuinely good writers - Howard Roark and Ellsworth Toohey are cartoon characters, not human beings, and the notion that the world will come to a stop because a few geniuses choose to withdraw from it is so silly that even pulp science-fiction writers would hesitate to resort to such a plot device.

Tim · 4 years ago

I agree with Will: her writing and stylistic talents far outstripped her abilities as a philosopher.

Nicholas Weininger · 4 years ago

Her short essays are much better than her fiction, and among the fiction the early stuff is best. I too think of Rand as a good writer and stylist, but for _The Virtue of Selfishness_ and _We the Living_, not for the famous twin doorstops.

Luka Yovetich · 4 years ago

Abiola,

I think the idea is that if *all* the geniuses went away, the country (or world) would be in trouble. That doesn't sound far-fetched to me. I bet it would take awhile but very bad things would probably happen.

Thank God for the geniuses! And Happy 100th to Ayn!

GilM · 4 years ago

I also agree that she was a great writer.

I think the issue is muddled because different people are using different criteria.

She wasn't trying to write realistic stories with complex characterizations. She was trying to present important philosophical ideas; and the novels were a way to do that in a dramatic context.

I think she succeeded brilliantly.

Will Wilkinson · 4 years ago

As I've said before, the difficuly in judging Rand's literary comes from the fact that she is working within strange hybrid genre of her own invention. If she is judged according the standard of the Russian-Golden Age Hollywood-Monumental Philosophical Novel, it is possible to see the immensity of her achievement.

Tom · 4 years ago

Will, right on. Agree 100 pct with your analysis. My main debt to the lady is that she flagged up vital issues for the defence of liberty and put philosophy up front. We could pick holes in her metaphysics but in fairness I think her views hold up remarkably well.

I have problems with her writing style - she had a tin ear for dialogue - but she was a page-turner. I mean, I read Atlas Shrugged at the age of about 27 and was hooked for a week. My way of looking at the world has never been the same since and she played quite a part in getting me into the libertarian scene in Britain. Thanks Ayn.

Jason Kuznicki · 4 years ago

She reminds me most of the philosophical novels of the high enlightenment, which no one really reads anymore--except for Candide. But once there was an entire genre like this, from Rousseau's Emile, to Mercier's The Year 2440, to Diderot's La Religieuse. More even than the 19th-century novelists, Rand's novelistic style comes from the 18th, as it virtually had to do: No other style would have allowed her to make complex, conceptual arguments in philosophy--as opposed to vague allegories.

Kenny Easwaran · 4 years ago

Ayn Rand may well have been one of the factors that got me interested in philosophy, though I think I had some of that interest already (and it was really philosophy of science with Peter Godfrey-Smith that actually hooked me). There's definitely a lot to appreciate in her ideas, but the over-simplicity of a lot of it seems to be what leads to Randroidism. I'm glad that after reading all her novels and a couple essays I started reading the Romantic Manifesto - and then realized that her aesthetic philosophy really made little to no sense, so I started questioning the rest of her program.

Gabriel Mihalache · 4 years ago

Excellent post! My thoughts exactly! It seems that people who are not at home with the "practices" of ARI come up with their own equilibrium with Ayn Rand's powerful impact, and that's a good thing™

Libertarian blogs rule! ;-)

Bill · 2 years ago

Spammers suck a lot