/lit/ - Literature

>>17192386
It's associated with a meme ideology. Haven't read it but apparently it isn't well written either, and I guess that's going to frustrate anyone who goes through the trouble of reading the whole thing

>John Galt's monologue takes up half the book

>>17192386
Progressive drones are told by progressive university queens that Rand is a no-no

Have yet to read it, but I am very excited to. I just finished reading this masterpiece. I've been trying and failing to get back into reading for years now, but couldn't find a book that drew me in. I picked up a copy of Ayn Rand's 'Anthem' just off a whim a short while back, as I remember her name used in a video about Bioshock I had seen years back (lol). I loved it to bits and this version of the novella happened to have a ton of bonus content detailing Ayn Rand and Objectivism and I found it very interesting. Immediately picked up the rest of her collection and started on 'We The Living', and I could hardly put it down. I had to limit my reading to 20ish pages a day because I feared I would finish it too fast, but in the end I finished the last 100 pages in a single stint, it was too gripping to put down. Such a beautifully tragic tale that reinvigorated my love for reading and simultaneously my intense hatred for Communism and Socialism. Can't wait to get started on 'The Fountainhead' and then 'Atlas Shrugged', but I may read an unrelated novel first just to space it out.

>>17192386
Why is his head so small?

>manual for sociopathic autism
>implementing it would result in a banana republic and ultimately the collapse of society

>>17192443
What a moron statement, if you criticize a book atleast read it before.

>>17192443
>Haven't read it but apparently
lmao

Because it's both mediocre and has a loud diehard fanbase

>>17192386
It says that NEETs are scum, and that titans of industry are the true heroes of our society. Those who spend their life reading rather than doing anything will automatically hate that.

>>17192830
Ah yes, the gamer to Ayn Rand/anti communist pipeline, wonderful to behold such based retards in the open

>>17193460
Not a 'gamer', just a Ukrainian.

>>17192488
It’s always seems to be people living off the public dime that have a loud opinions about Rand’s books. Funny how that works

It's overwrought and the philosophy is shallow individualism and veneration of capitalists rooted in Rand's personal experience leading to resentment of the USSR/all things "collectivist".

The book is often cited as a favorite by certain unpopular politicians who advocate for austerity policy like Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Koch Brothers, etc. so people also hate it for that.

>>17192386
Horrible ideology, reprehensible and egoistic author, and a terribly written book. Ayn Rand has zero (0) redeemable qualities. Above all else it's a long book that will do nothing but waste your time

>>17194587
t. never read it

Because it’s shit

"I had to flog myself to get through Atlas Shrugged." - William F. Buckley

>>17192866
Libertarians don't need big heads, as they have small brains>>17192866

>bro it was so badly written
>invariably hasn't actually read it

neither have I but it's pretty cringe

>>17192386
>>17192866
Its not, his shoulders are really wide which also happens to be one of the masculine features women find the most attractive.

Have you ever looked at a basedboy liberal? Their head is gigantic compared to their frame

The only Ayn Rand book I've read is Anthem and that was in highschool. I actually thought it was a pretty decent scifi story but I'm told its also probably her best book from a narrative perspective and its also not 500 pages long

>>17192386
Clumsily written, moronically plotted, philosophically retarded, and yet still somehow correct.

If you've ever had the unpleasant experience of spending more than five minutes talking to a college aged Randian you would understand.

>>17192386
pretty much this
>>17192443
>Haven't read it but apparently

>>17192386
Unironically a Pavlovian reflex.
I've read it and unironically enjoyed it (although Fountainhead is way better IMO) despite almost totally disagreeing with her ideology.
Having read it (and being able to approach it from a neutral point of view) however, it's immediately obvious just how many retards out there clearly haven't yet insist on having strong opinions about it. You know that "why?! Because it...it just is, okay!" meme? Ask someone loudly declaring it to be bad and you'll get a response like that, or some vague "th-the writing is bad" criticism from the same faggot who unironically owns two full sets of Harry Potter, in fact, a lot of braindead rose Twitter shitlibs seem to think it's almost the right-wing Das Kapital or something, really hilarious stuff.

Because it’s overrated

Nearly everyone who criticises this book hasn’t actually read it. Bizarre really

Because the ideology Rand proposes makes liberals seethe. Agree with it or not, that's the truth.

>>17195680
>>17195701
These.
>she beats you over the head with her ideology!
Yeah, no shit? It's philosophical fiction, that's its job, and yet I never see this criticism levelled at, I dunno, Thus Spoke Zarathustra or 1984 even though they're about as subtle as a trainwreck.
I assume it's legitimately these people's first and only experience with these types of books, if they've even bothered to read it and form their own opinions at all.

>>17195799
Because it's juuust accessible enough for the average liberal midwit to have an opinion on it. Embarrassingly, for most of them, it's the hardest book they've ever read. They're vaguely aware of it through pop culture in a way they aren't aware of Zarathustra and know they, a liberal, need to hate it.
1984 (for example, it's another book they seem to love) on the other hand is extremely easy to follow and the ideology is agreeable and "safe", everyone reads it in school but that doesn't stop them from considering it their big boy book to bring up if they ever want to show off their pseudo-intellectualism while day to day they unironically reference absolute mainstream dogshit like the Handmaid's Tale and think it's "subversive" and "brave" to do so.
t. right-leaning socialist

>>17195799
Because it's juuust accessible enough for the average liberal midwit to have an opinion on it. Embarrassingly, for most of them, it's the hardest book they've ever read. They're vaguely aware of it through pop culture in a way they aren't aware of Zarathustra and know they, a liberal, need to hate it.
1984 on the other hand is extremely easy to follow and the ideology is agreeable and "safe", everyone reads it in school but that doesn't stop them from considering it their big boy book to bring up if they ever want to show off their pseudo-intellectualism while day to day they unironically reference absolute mainstream dogshit like the Handmaid's Tale and think it's "subversive" and "brave" to do so.
t. right-leaning socialist

>>17193189
>It says that NEETs are scum, and that titans of industry are the true heroes of our society.
So... Should I thank Globohomo in fact?

>>17195701
>Nearly everyone who criticises this book hasn’t actually read it. Bizarre really
So it's Die Kapital.

I guess people dislike it based upon political leanings. It is just a fictional story, but it seems disagreements are seen as mortal threats which require fervent rejection.

>>17195970
>I guess people dislike it based upon political leanings. It is just a fictional story, but it seems disagreements are seen as mortal threats which require fervent rejection.
Don't be disingenuous. This is nothing but a long-winded political pamphlet.
Ayn Rayd is not Nabokov and there's more beautiful and more INSIGHTFUL stuff to read.

>>17192386
it scares the neet

>>17192830
bait

Randians are cultists who were drawn into the false personality trap of Ayn Rands borderline insane philosophy and misuse of Aristotelian precepts. Read rands attempt at a legitimate non fiction work, the virtue of selfishness, and then you’ll see how foolish and shallow the whole of objectivism is. Ayn Rand refers to atlas shrugged something to the tune of five times within the first few chapters as “proof” for concepts in VOS.

>>17195893

Straw man of a post

>>17197183

It shouldn’t. NEET sorts are attracted to the pompous posturing of Rand - who was a poorly read person to boot, according to Murray Rothbard.

>>17197299
Not to mention she establishes the basic principles of a banana republic in Chapter 15

>>17192452
I had to stop reading it three times and take a break for that.

>>17195939
Kapital is denser and dumber. The world would have been much better off if Marx had been able to write decent fiction.

>>17192386
Because it's the neocon bible.

Ayn Rand extolled the virtues of Aristotle while advancing a philosophy which was inimical to Aristotelian ethics - one can easily assume Rand was like a child, who wanted to believe in the most superficial falsehoods regarding philosophy

>>17197320

Is that so? Not shocking, considering rands total and conplete ignorance on economic matters.

>>17192386
Shrugging is a beta move

>>17192386
incel racist bootlicker maga chud niggers hate women

Criticizing Atlas Shrugged must come part and parcel with criticism of Ayn Rand the person, because Atlas Shrugged is the bible of objectivists. Read Murray ROthbard's essay on the 'sociology of the ayn rand cult' for some excellent firsthand accounts of the fervent zealotry of the Randians.

Rand's entire corpus of work is a pompous intellectualizing of a childhood grievance against communists. A full blown, opposite-direction reaction to all things collective in any sense, to the point of seeming satirical. An unrealistic child's crack at establishing a philosophical foundation. The ideology of someone who had never, ever, managed any significant group of people, or done anything requiring cooperation with anybody beyond delivering speeches to a room of cultists.

Objectivism is the ideology of someone who could never even hack it in team sports, let alone the market economy. Nonetheless, bits and pieces of it are attractive to people working in fields like finance - persons who don't reproduce the entire ideology, but reproduce elements of it to assuage their own feelings of being an unproductive parasite on the nation. Ultimately objectivism when taken in toto is an ideology for cowards in need of a closed-system in a complex world, while 'randianism' as espoused by a Paul Ryan is a superficial justifying-philosophy for austerity.

>>17197384
Yep, it’s in the Chapter on government financing. Ayn Rand only wanted a court, a police force and an army, proposed that financing all of these should be voluntary, and that, in order for contracts to be enforced by the justice system, you had to pay a premium. She basically made justice itself pay-to-play.

That’s almost verbatim how countries like Brazil function. All you have to do in Rand’s system is make the protection of theft worth $10.000 a year, and you have a scenario where the rich can legally steal from you if you’re poor enough. Stuff like that shows that you have to be an absolute imbecile or a complete psychopath to take anything this woman wrote seriously

>>17197422
Monumental irony, pompous reddit tier spaced post full of big bog pseud words comprising nothing but a strawman and ad hominem attack. Have you actually read the book? t. tankie

>>17197425

That's predictable, since Ayn Rand also didn't understand how money works, and refers to money as if it is some kind of natural resource mined from the Earth, even wearing a Dollar symbol pin 24/7. Evidently the irony of wearing a symbol of a nation built on a mixture of effort involving collective effort was lost on Alisa Rosenbaum.

>>17197440

Which part of the post do you disagree with? I am indeed pompous, because I look down on superficial midwits like Ayn Rand and anyone stupid enough to integrate Randianism into their concept of themselves. If you believe that any word I used indicates 'pseudness', it's probably because you don't actually read and thus have a wimpy vocabulary.

>>17192866
It's stylized.

>>17197450
You're a little bitch I will now squeeze your big toe until you squirm like one.

>>17194587
this. as a philosophical work it beyond horrendous and as prose it's just shit-tier, about same level as twilight and 50 shades in mary sueness.

Ayn Rand is exceedingly fun to make fun of, because doing so seems to invariably root out 'objectivists' and 'randians' who take a personal offense to any criticism of their jewish cult leader.

All her great capitalists heroes seem to have been born that way, she doesn’t explain why they are great or why did they become so, they are all also extremely handsome for some reason while her enemies look like ww2 propaganda tier caricatures.

My favourite is a small, old and frail socialist intelectual. Was actually rooting for the guy the whole book. Not sure if he is in Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, since all her characters have the depth of a kiddie pool.

>>17192386
Because it promotes libertarianism which is scary to some people.
For me, I really enjoyed it up until the point that the ‘Who is John Galt?’ mystery was solved, but then I found all the long lectures to be very boring and felt that everything interesting about the story had wrapped up so very I gave up reading it.

>>17197339
I wish.

>>17197307
Maybe it's changed since I quit them but I saw this shit play out over and over on Retarddit and Twitter.

>>17197523
Not really. You people will say “the philosophy’s applicability to the real world doesn’t follow from this random toy story line with made up heros and love intrigue” then gush all over Dostoyevsky. The style is completely in line with the romantic tradition, even if executed in a so-so way. That’s the point: make a fairytale for adults with some philosophical message behind it. Is Dosto shallow for making the Idiot’s message “be like Mishkin, bottom text” and for making caricatures of the atheist characters?
People who use this criticism are derivative. The execution is something else, but I don’t think you can fault Rand for this stuff: its style, and the idea, like in fountainhead, is to paint a picture of an “overman” for you to consider, admire, but not idolize. I also think this is a moral project. There are worse things to teach your kids than “work hard and sacrifice, love requires respect”. You can caricature the moral fable all you want into some libertarian dystopia, but you’re the guy going “muhum look at Mishkin, that is absurd! He’s uneducated and poor! What a horrible message!”.
I’m not a libertarian.

>>17198184
based

i've read tumblr "and they all clapped" posts that were better.

>>17194729
t. headlet

>>17198184
hahaha, that's because dosto has his prose in order. the execution is the message, if the message is "work hard and sacrifice, love requires respect" then ayn rand does nothing to exert these values and instead writes lazy fanfiction.

>>17196006
I am not disingenuous. Anyone who takes the book seriously to manifest a politcal leaning is a fool, just as the people who must rally agaisnt it. It is young adult fiction with magic explained as futuristic science. The book attracts hyperpartisans because it tickles or stings them in just the right place.

>>17198545
Eh 50/50, Rand's prose still clearly has that message though. I'm pretty sure she says that stuff, like, explicitly.

>>17198559
she says that stuff, but she doesn't practice what she preaches, instead we get lazily written drivel...

>>17198617
Point me to an example

>>17198633
“She knows she can pull us through. . . . Of course, it's bad. We're having many more accidents than you hear about. We lost two Diesels again, last week. One—just from old age, the other—in a head-on collision. . . . Yes, we have Diesels on order, at the United Locomotive Works, but we've waited for them for two years. I don't know whether we'll ever get them or not. . . . God, do we need them! Motive power —you can't imagine how important that is. That's the heart of everything. . . . What are you smiling at? . . . Well, as I was saying, it's bad. But at least the Rio Norte Line is set. The first shipment of rail will get to the site in a few weeks. In a year, we'll run the first train on the new track. Nothing's going to stop us, this time. . . . Sure, I know who's going to lay the rail. McNamara, of Cleveland. He's the contractor who finished the San Sebastian Line for us. There, at least, is one man who knows his job. So we're safe. We can count on him. There aren't many good contractors left. . . . We're rushed as hell, but I like it. I've been coming[…]”

it's a book about fucking trains, that is written as a one-sided political manifest, there is no depth to the characters, they are literally depictured as comic-book villains on the one side of evil "progressives" and heroic mastermind capitalists on the other.

>>17198698
Ok so that says nothing of her being hypocritical with the message, ala:
>but she doesn't practice what she preaches
The comic book villain thing is the point, like I mentioned earlier. So are Dosto's "atheists".

>>17198783
of course it does, she doesn't work hard when writing books, while her message is work hard. her work doesn't demand respect, because so little effort is put into it..

>>17198830
First of all the message of her books isn’t “work hard” lmao

Secondly
>her work doesn't demand respect, because so little effort is put into it..

Actually her work does demand respect based on its status alone. Atlus shrugged is one of the most influential books written in the 20th century and any rand has a legacy most authors will only dream of. That’s why there’s still lively discussion about her work today you moron.

>>17193049
>>17195500
>>17193028
for apparently read supposedly

>>17192386
shut the fuck up
you make this thread every fucking week
nobody cares anymore. read some good literature instead for fucks sake

>>17192386

Ok, picture this.

Picture your average sexually deprived chump with few social skills if any, coming from a low class family, sporting some sub par jaw and shoulder width genetics, who has grown up hating the rich and the chads for stealing his high school crush. A mouth breather.
Got the mental image? Good
Now imagine telling him that the most prized men by society, and by women are Alpha chads that fuck a lot, have massive social skills, have amazing jaw and shoulder width genetics on top of being fucking rich as fuck. To add salt to the wound, add the fact the person saying this is a woman.


What'd you expect the reaction to be like?

>>17194587
>my college professor told me Ayn Rand is egotistical and that's BAD because you should be nice to people. all of my classmates agreed with my professor's opinion and so now I'm going online to repeat that opinion in an Eritrean fly fishing board
faggot

>>17199108
I really fucking hate academia