Kevin's Watch

I'm nearly done rereading it and thought it'd make for good discussion. Do you like objectivism? Loathe it?


Fisty, where are you?

Many, many years ago, I tried, oh I tried so hard to get into this book and just never could do it!

Hope you enjoyed anyway!

...On the back,,I think,,of the wildly popular " America...The Book" are fake reviews( in keeping with whole snarky satire of the book). One of the quotes compares " America...The Book" to any thing written by Ayn Rand in this way...anybody who reads, " America ...The Book" will be like anybody who has read AynRand,,in that they'll be a a** hole for at least a month afterward.
...Now..don't get me wrong. i've read Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged and afew of her short and very short stories. And...I was agog with her "objectivism',,the complete worship of the " I". Yet,,apon reflection,,her characters are cardboard thin,lacking any real humanity,almost comic book heros..and her plots and subplots become again,,almost soap operaish,with out any real humanity to them,,all for the sake of propogating the importance of the " I"...
...So, I have to side with the critics who pegged her as a Hack for the Ruling Class....She puts forth as art and real what is actually just myth and fantasy. She put forth the concept,,like todays Lumbaughs and syncophants,,the false claim of Individuals being victimized by the needs of a whiney society. It is an intentional mis definition of the situation inorder to propogate the allowance of misdeeds by the greedy as an acceptable price for preserving the all important sanctity of the"I"...
...She was the Darling of the Rich and THE RICH. She socialized and hung out with the Rich and THE RICH. And as long as she produced massive tome's exhorting the Virtues of the " I"..without any of the sins btw..they loved her and fostered the belief that she created Art.
....I do not believe her work will survive very long into the future. Despite all the words..her work is thin...........MEL

How amazing that you started this thread only several days before Jem and I started talking about Rand in the Morality thread in the Close! I was looking for a quote, hoping I'd already posted it so I could just copy & paste, and found this thread while doing a search! I'll post some of my favorite Fountainhead quotes here very soon.

Is there a summary (long or short) about the philosophical principles of objectivism anywhere?
To be honest, my interest will have to be sparked pretty good to read this author, because (unfortunately) i've been spoiled by other peoples opinions.

This might do, though I only skimmed it. www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagenam ... ivism_pobs If not I'm sure there's lots of other stuff on that site.

I was quite gah-gah for Ayn Rand when I was in my teens, but that was mostly because of Anthem which was something I needed at the time. Personally, I think she tended to double-guess herself as a writer far too much. The very finest, most moving passage in The Fountainhead (at the start of Part Four if memory serves) was one she often said was a weakness to include, save it was her favorite. Likewise, years later I read a section of The Fountainhead that never made it in the final novel, and it was rivetting.

The characters and story are good, but this is a book with a very specific Message and at times it gets very ham-fisted in delivering same. Yet the raw passion and complexity of those passions are extraordinary.

If there was ever a book that I could describe as 'life-changing', I do believe the Fountainhead could be it...

I read it upon Claire's reccomendation, as well, she has good taste in things, and well, I adore it. As an artist myself, I can totally understand many aspects of Roark's character, and just, well, I found Toohey to be a character that is, in many ways, more sinister and evil than say, Darth Vader, ever thought of being.

Perhaps, aside from the very powerful message that the best thing you can do for the world, for everything, is to do the best you can for yourself, living life like you mean it; that the only standards that need to be upheld are ones own, I believe that the most gripping thing about the book was simply the way she writes. I adore her syntax. It's just... a textual orgasm, really. It makes me resent going back to reading other, more modern books by newer authors that write in far more conversational manners.

In any case, I've had views very similar to hers for a very long time, but seeing them expressed in such an eloquent and powerful fashion really brings it to the forefront of my mind in a way I'd never considered. It makes me want to try harder and to be the best person I can be; not insomuch as changing who I am into someone better, but being better, more attentive at being myself.

OK! GAH! I'll read it. But she'll have to get through a whole lot of bad press I have built up in my head.

GAH!!!

I think she can do it. Mind you, I think Atlas Shrugged is a better book in nearly every way, but go ahead and start with The Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand is one of those writers whose reputation precedes her. Oh boy does it precede her. It's hard not to form an opinion about her before going anywhere near her books.

I said this elsewhere, but...I never really cared nor understood much about Ayn Rand until I saw the feature documentary Ayn Rand: A Sense Of Life several years ago. That was enough for me really. I felt no urge to run out to the bookstore immediately afterward to buy her books. I got the gist of her philosophy, and it did appeal to me, as it seemed to connect nicely with my own views about the world. But then I became aware of the personality cult that surrounded Rand, and visions of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology sprang into my head. I adopted a much more skeptical stance on Ayn Rand then.

What I question is the fanatical zeal she seems to inspire in some of her followers. In some other context, that might be called fascism. I guess Objectivism isn't the same as objectivity, eh?

Thanks for the link, TLF. I'll try and read through all of it, though I'm leery of such self-promotional sites (though I guess that is in keeping with the Objectivist manifesto).

Amusingly, I knew so little about Rand before reading Atlas Shrugged four years ago that I thought she was in the Danielle Steele genre.

Danielle Steele?? ROTFLMAO!!

I never bothered even reading the back covers of her books, assuming it would say something like, "Lance Steele was richer than many nations. But something was missing in his life..."

I guess I was lucky when I found out she was in an entirely different genre, because I didn't have the negative impressions to fight when I read her stuff. A "cleaner" read, perhaps.

However, I'm sure Danielle Steele's romances are, at the very least, as good as most of the romantic elements in Rand's books. Particularly The Fountainhead. Madre de Dios, what stupidity!

Care to elaborate?

Absolutely not!! I'm trying to block it from my memory. Honestly, it is, imo, too idiotic to understand. I couldn't explain, or even describe, it. Perhaps Rand had difficulty with personal relationships. The love angle is better in Atlas Shrugged, although strange at first. Maybe she learned between the two books, which were published 14 years apart.

How 'bout you, Claire? Were you able to figure it out? You read it at least twice now, the last time just recently. Maybe you have a better handle on Dominique.

(And when are you going to read Atlas Shrugged?!?)

Erm... the "love sceen"... er.... yeah... What can you say about that? It's fricken weird. I really have no idea what Rand was trying to get at.

In class we all wrote down 3 questions we had about the book. I think about half of them were about that part. We traded with someone else and they tried to explain it. None of the answers quite satisfied me though, and my teacher had no idea either. *Trying to be ambiguous without being too ambiguous* I guess the closest explanation is exactly what the book says that Dominique feels. But WHY must she feel that way? Who knows.

This is what I have to say to Dominique:
Wynand on the other hand, I love him. I know you're not "supposed" to. But I do. He's great... erm, in the conventional sense. I have to be so careful when I talk about The Fountainhead

As for Atlas Shrugged, I'm going to read that soon. I'm really excited about it! If only you could see the pile of books I have to read Atlas Shrugged is right up at the top though. I haven't been able to read a lot lately... stupid SAT II tests to prepare for (Reading Lord of the Flies in French, aughhh)

The Leper Fairy wrote:stupid SAT II tests to prepare for (Reading Lord of the Flies in French, aughhh)

I don't remember any French on the SAT's. But I didn't take SAT II. Never heard of it, actually.

Wynand is certainly an interesting character. I'm not sure such a person could exist, being so despicable on the one hand, and awesome on the other.

Fist and Faith wrote:

The Leper Fairy wrote:stupid SAT II tests to prepare for (Reading Lord of the Flies in French, aughhh)

I don't remember any French on the SAT's. But I didn't take SAT II. Never heard of it, actually.

There isn't any French on the Reasoning test (the normal SAT) but I have to take 3 subject tests... because I'm not good at any of the sciences I decided on Writing, Math II and French... Aughhh.

Hopefully the SAT II is better than the SAT I... all they did was take out analogies and quantitative comparisons though, I think. And now it's got 3 sections instead of 2 so it will now be out of 2400 points. Huzzah

Alright, please, help me here... I'm not going to read the Fountainhead, so the love scene is never going to directly come up for me. But all of this vague back and forth about it is really getting my curiosity all fired up. Is it some kind of ...spoiler perhaps? That you're avoiding? Why is this all so vague?

I'm such a paranoid, btw