Why People Like Ayn Rand
This excellent Jonathan Chait-penned essay on Ayn Rand has generated a lot of praise and criticism, in addition to some well placed barbs, including this particularly funny one:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
I was one of the many, many college students who read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and came away dazzled by Ayn Rand's prose and ideas. I still cringe at the memory of discussing my admiration for Rand with my horrified relatives at family gatherings.
Now that I think about it though, what I liked about both books were the narratives rather than the philosophy. Rand's acolytes and defenders-and the author herself- say that the narrative exists merely as a vehicle for her philosophical ideas, which to them represents the real value in her work.
My take is the opposite. I remember zipping through the first 900 pages of Atlas Shrugged until the protagonist John Galt delivers his famous speech, a 60-odd page philosophical manifesto that is essentially a summation of Rand's own philosophy, titled objectivism. I suspect Rand intended her speech to be a thrilling revelation for her readers, and I suppose for her defenders it was. To me, though, her speech was a naive and silly philosophical argument that distracted me from my interest in the story.
In his post concerning this subject, Richard writes that Rand's characters are "embarrassingly one-dimensional, right out of a comic book". I don't disagree, but this to me accounts for the enduring popularity of Rand's work. Her ideas gained popularity because of her characters, not in spite of them.
Is Rand a particularly gifted writer? Yes and no. I'm no literary critic, but her writing style- even in a second language- isn't scintillating. But the very Manichean nature of her characters appeal to something deep in the reader's psyche, much in the same way that adult men and women can sit and watch 5 James Bond films in succession.
In fact, I think James Bond offers an interesting comparison to Rand's characters. In a Bond film, the ludicrous plots are secondary to the status of Bond as an ubermenschen; that is, he is perfectly hip, always says the right things, always kills the bad guys, always gets the girl. Bond is popular because he allows us to escape into a fantasy world, not because the stories in and of themselves are that interesting.
Rand's characters- Dagny Taggart, Hank Reardon, Howard Roark, and of course Mr John Galt- are presented as idealized humans. Rand herself admitted this. To reference the quote above, her work is every bit a fantasy as Lord of the Rings. Or Goldfinger, I suppose.
September 20th, 2009 - 21:42
Matt,
“… writes that Rand’s characters are “embarrassingly one-dimensional, …”
Even if that were true, it would not be nearly as embarrassing as this zero-dimensional post of yours is. Where is the useful content in the wholly unsubstantiated assertion that the speech was “a naive and silly philosophical argument.” Must we readers just take your word for it? Are you slyly asserting your own omniscience here? Your entry could have been actually valuable to your readers if you had taken just one single sentence or paragraph or any small speech from any of her books and explained the fallacy you found in her thinking.
But, of course, you can’t do that, because you haven’t a clue what she was thinking. You took her arguments and applied all the assumptions gleaned via hearsay from the culture that raised you and that you took for granted, and now your are spitting the same back out to us expecting that we are just another you. If you were not operating on superficial assumptions, you would have not missed this opportunity to include some well thought through ideas to support your assertions.
If you had even lightly scanned the mountain of information about her philosophy in books, forums, and blogs, you would never have fallen for the ubiquitous adjectival ad hominem, “acolyte”. It is only used by writers desperate to smear the religious fallacy of blind devotion to dogma all over Rand and those who live by her philosophy. You would have known that adherence to that philosophy precludes one from being a philosophical acolyte to any one or any dogma ever. It is not possible to be such and still claim to be an Objectivist.
You need to precede any future attempts to pass a basic test like this again with a little homework. If your interest does lean more to literature than philosophy itself, you might start with Rand’s book of essays on art, “The Romantic Manifesto”. Afterwards, you will be quite surprised at your vastly improved grasp of the role of idealized characters in fiction and fantasy as well as the other art forms.
At the very least you can browse the Ayn Rand Lexicon: http://aynrandlexicon.com
September 21st, 2009 - 02:54
Excellent post. I totally but the James Bond analogy. The problem is, people take Rnd seriously, see her books as a blueprint for life, and base their political beliefs on them It affects their actions and their choices, even how they think. We all watch James Bond for the fireballs and the comic-book stories punctuated with plenty of action/suspense. But most of use then leave that comic-book world in the theater with the empty popcorn box. The Rand-bots carry Atlas Shrugged with them like a bible and confuse its nonsense with the real world. Comic books are great – but let’s all remember that they’re comic books.
September 21st, 2009 - 11:14
MichaelM,
I think my favorite part of your intemperate screed was the paragraph in which you attempt to prove, unconvincingly, that it’s impossible to be an ‘acolyte’ of Rand’s because Objectivism forbids it. I suppose Nathanial Branden then didn’t get the memo when he referred to Rand as the ‘greatest human who ever lived’.
Or maybe it’s your accusation that I don’t have the slightest idea of what Rand’s talking about as well as your insinuation that I didn’t actually read Rand but rather relied on vague ‘cultural assumptions’ in assessing her ideas….despite my post explicitly being about my thoughts from reading her book.
In any case, your needlessly rude and vitriolic comment only proves the point you were trying to disprove; namely that Rand’s admirers somehow regard her work as beyond reproach rather than what it truly is- a mediocre attempt to establish a moral justification for market economics.
If you want to read an essay criticizing Rand on her merits, then there’s a perfectly good one linked to in my very first sentence. So good, in fact, that I never intended to duplicate it, merely to express a few personal opinions.
If that wasn’t what you wanted, well tough shit.
September 21st, 2009 - 11:19
Richard,
Good point- nobody has established an institute to study James Bond’s ideas, so the analogy isn’t perfect.
I’d say Rand tapped into the culture of individuality that is so central to Western thought- her characters are highly individualistic loners who don’t seem to care what others think, something that our society always deems admirable no matter what the consequences.
But I think without the vehicle of her fiction she’d have a substantially smaller influence on modern political thought. Even within the anarcho-capitalist/libertarian persuasion there are far better thinkers than Rand, yet none have as outsize an influence.
September 22nd, 2009 - 05:59
The funniest post I’ve read yet. I think we should listen to one of America’s greatest literary critics on this one:
“Rand could not write her way out of a paper bag.”
-Harold Bloom, Yale Professor of Humanities
Enough said.
September 22nd, 2009 - 14:17
Matt,
…If you had even lightly scanned the mountain of information about his philosophy in books, forums, and blogs, you would never have fallen for the ubiquitous adjectival ad hominem, “acolyte”. It is only used by writers desperate to smear the religious fallacy of blind devotion to dogma all over Bond and those who live by his philosophy. You would have known that adherence to that philosophy precludes one from being a philosophical acolyte to any one or any dogma ever. It is not possible to be such and still claim to be an international man of mystery…
September 23rd, 2009 - 06:25
Matt,
Maybe if you just read more Ayn Rand you would finally “get it.” Take for instance the Ayn Rand lexicon’s “Christmas” entry: The street decorations put up by department stores and other institutions€”the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors€”provide the city with a spectacular display, which only “commercial greed” could afford to give us.
AMEN!
October 16th, 2009 - 12:22
You fool! Posting on a public website? For free? Clearly you are a slavering socialist who has never read Ayn Rand’s brilliant attempts to justify all that is venal in the human soul. I’ve written a long post about Rand’s visionary works, but am withholding it until Obama kills public health care and privatizes my granny.
October 16th, 2009 - 12:23
(Um. Forgot to close an <em> tag there. My bad.)
November 2nd, 2009 - 16:27
You touched a nerve!
But thanks for the link to the Jonathan Chait article, and your thoughts – both good reading.
April 15th, 2011 - 03:25
Oh MattM, you sound like every other Randroid out there, with the haughty tone and the confrontational stance. You’re not being unique: just about every other Rand-fan sounds the same way. What was that about being an individual? Aren’t you supposed to be lively and special, not droning on like every other herd animal out there?
And we *do* know exactly what Rand was thinking. She spent the last half of her life telling us precisely what she thought and how we should read her trite little books. You’re aware that she did a number of interviews, yeah? And that she wrote a ton of essays, letters, notes, and journals — much to her dismay? (To her dismay because, once we read them, we realize how transparent and juvenile her philosophy is.)
July 6th, 2011 - 08:14
No evidence anywhere of critics of Rand having read her work. Can we get 1 example of any of the above assertions?
November 12th, 2011 - 19:51
No evidence? So someone can’t call a book that is well-established as a poorly-written, ill-conceived piece of trash a poorly-written, ill-conceived piece of trash without first citing specific passages? Let’s take, say, the Twilight Series. You’d need a page-by-page breakdown explaining the specific failings of the books in order to believe that anyone disparaging them had in fact actually read them?
Pseudo-intellectuals are always good for a laugh. A little off-topic, but has anyone ever noticed that those who espouse Rand will invariably claim an affiliation with Mensa at some point (haughtily, of course), blithely unaware that membership in the fucking TGIF of thinking men’s organizations is not exactly a selling point…
November 13th, 2011 - 22:43
Apparently there’s a movie version of Atlas Shrugged. I had no idea. And the movie producers have issued a total recall of the DVD because some (possibly anti-Rand?) copywriter for the distribution company wrote the following for the first line of the film description on the back of the DVD case:
“Ayn Rand’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”
How hilarious is that?
Here’s a link to the article: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/atlas-shrugged-film-producers-replacing-100-000-dvd-213051848.html