August Spies

Rand is to be commended as a great author worth reading.



Id be tempted to say rands philosophy is more worth thinking about than her books. I see very little worth to them. Implausible plots. super super super flat characters. No character development. Autherial intrustion (that is not good). she repeats herself a thousand times.

etc...

Kantian

Feather, am i to take your opinions about Rand's writing as the objective truth, irrespective of your subjective beliefs?

Or do you propose a standard of eloquence for writers to follow?

~Transcendentalist~

Kantian

Would you recommend her non-fiction over her fiction works, then? Her non-fiction books was precisely what drove me away from the fold of a �card-carrying objectivist zombie.�

Many books are implausible- so what? that does not count against the work itself. The implausible is the cornerstone of fiction, to give us another way to look at things. I would never rule out a book because it is implausible. So, your criteria fails to be objective and remains nothing more than a creature of your own bias of subjective preferences.

The characters are flat, i agree, and highly idealized to portray man as he "ought" to be in Rand's views. That the people are not realistic in the book is a non-starter.

Howard Roark laughed in the very first first line, and did not change one iota through out 700 pages. Character development is non-existent, true, but why limit fiction to the necessity of character development?

What is "Autherial intrustion"? i cannot decipher this.

I agree with you on the repetitive nature of the book. That has to go, though, but Rand could never stomach editing in any form. How could she imagine that her writing required such invasive measures? Such effrontery could not be tolerated!

~transcendentalist~
__________________
Reason has often led us into transcendent metaphysics that "overstep the limits of all experience, [and] no object adequate to the transcendental ideal can ever be found within experience."

August Spies

what is the point you are trying to make here? are you claiming there is objective measures of a books literary value?

we both agree her book fails on many basic literary levels (I recant the implausability one, what I meant was its just a stupid plot), waht are you looking for?

Kantian

Nah, just trying to point out that what one considers junk is another man's art. By their very provocative nature, Rand's books demand attention, whether they appeal to our subjective beliefs or not. That is why i said she was a great author. Even if we disagreed on the finer points of aesthetics in the book, it is worth talking about.

I'm looking for a possible defense from a non-sympathetic position to the philosophy of Randianism. That said, her books are good for reading, at least, given the alternate portrayals of man. There aren't many books that champions individualism, after all. One would need to read them in order to form beliefs about them - or would you rather disassuade others from reading them and take your word (i.e. subjective evaluations) for it?

~transcendentalist~
__________________
Reason has often led us into transcendent metaphysics that "overstep the limits of all experience, [and] no object adequate to the transcendental ideal can ever be found within experience."

August Spies

Nah, id just hope there were shorter books. I wouldnt' wish 1000 poorly written pages one anyone.

well, how about everyone goes and reads Anthem.

RED DAVE

If anyone wants to read Anthem, here it is, in its excruciating entirety, for free.

Anthem

RED DAVE

Feather

Being a rational animal, I've obviously used my reasoning capabilities to deduce the objective truth which I have stated. If you don't agree, you must be an intellectual copout.

mecca777

Wow! It's almost like a v-e-r-y l-o-n-g novelisation of 2112, isn't it?

RED DAVE

Actually, a good deal of Anthem comes from a Russian dystopian novel of the 1920s called We. Zamyatin, the author, also influenced Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. However, We has a self-congratulatory flavor all its own.

RED DAVE

Review of Zamyatin's "We"