/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18112806]

Somebody told me this book sucks because the people who are the antagonists have views that Ayn opposed. What fucking author doesn't do this? I do not remember Voldemort caring about gay rights like Rowling does.

[Anonymous No.18112814]

>>18112806
>What fucking author doesn't do this?
Any worthwhile author focuses more on the human aspect of the characters rather than on his own perspective or at the very least they try to be subtle about it.

[Anonymous No.18112853]

>>18112814
No, any decent author gives their reader credit and poses questions instead of answering them.

[Anonymous No.18112881]

>>18112853

[Anonymous No.18112887]

>>18112853

[Anonymous No.18112915]

>>18112806
>Somebody told me this book sucks because the people who are the protagonists get on their soap boxes and drone on for marathon speeches in peculiar moments during the weak plot, and they do it repeatedly.
Rand doesn’t understand anyone that doesn’t have her opinion and can’t write the villains in her own work. So it comes off heavy handed and dull, DULL
D U L L.

The arguments were already done superbly by Max Stirner. I wish someone would make a parody of Atlas Shrug and have the workers flip the script on these idiots

[Anonymous No.18112939]

The problem is:
>they're all strawmen
>they all repeat the same points over and over
If a character has an opposing point of view, there's a reason for it. And for a character to have dimension and believably you owe it to yourself and the reader to illustrate that perspective. Ayn Rand is like "this character thinks this because he's dumb" "oh look, here he is being dumb again," "and here is again, still being dumb."
The argument could be made that businesses should be cost effective and do some amount of research and compromise, because you can't just have your business plans be hail marys over and over. But in Rand's world: no! You can't stifle my genius! I'm reinventing the wheel! Again! And it's going to work because I'm a genius! Geniuses don't have failures in Rand's world.

[Anonymous No.18112949]

Ayn Rand isn't a terribly good philosopher. It's actually disgusting that she uses Aristotle, because Aristotle was an excellent logician, who never needed to justify the proposition that A=A.

[Anonymous No.18113001]

I like how I feel when I read it. I feel powerful. It's just another business book to me, like Think And Grow Rich as a soap opera

[Anonymous No.18113021]

>>18112853
Not really desu

[Anonymous No.18113024]

>>18112806
Is it worth checking out if I'm going into it with the understanding that it sucks ass?

[Anonymous No.18113025]

>>18112915
>The arguments were already done superbly by Max Stirner
Dont even compare them. Stirner is nothing like Rand

[Anonymous No.18113035]

>>18113025
Of course they aren’t. The “egoist” philosophy is bungled in her hands. I just wish someone would make a better novel that recognizes this now.

[Anonymous No.18113073]

>>18112806
She’s just so damn obvious about it.
I really think Atlas Shrugged would have been a fascinating (if not great) allegory, if she allowed the story to speak for itself...but she turned every character into a preacher for her moral lesson.

[Anonymous No.18113074]

>>18113035
I did in my diary

[Anonymous No.18113081]

>>18112887
>>18113021
You guys are right, all the greats treat their readers like morons and preach at them for hundreds of pages like Rand does.

[Anonymous No.18113095]

>>18112915
Based. An artistic narrative which is driven by a political agenda always suffers, but when the author legitimately can't comprehend an opposing position, the work becomes a train wreck

[Anonymous No.18113109]

>>18112806
>Strikes are good
>But only if it's the owners, not the workers
Is there any other person with a more perverse and self absorbed philosophy than Rand?

[Anonymous No.18113206]

> Something of this implication is fixed in the book's dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber — go!' The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture-that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

[Anonymous No.18113405]

>>18113081
Seems to work for you

[Anonymous No.18113452]

most people dont like it because its a celebration of selfishness witch obviously rubs plenty of different people the wrong way

[Anonymous No.18113558]

>>18113452
It's hard to look in the .mirror when you dont what to recognize what's there?

[Anonymous No.18113821]

>>18112806
I liked fountainhead desu, the characters are very strawman but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't motivated to get shit done, I've begun to realize how dangerous it is to derive most of your happines and satisfaction from others. People tend to misinterpret Rand's idea of selfishness, although to be fair it is very idealistic and unachievable for most, the end goal is to derive happiness from yourself, most "selfish" deeds that people think of (shitty business tycoon, dictator) ultimately still are dependant on others for achieving their happiness, the Selfishness she is tauting is the selfishness required to create for the sake and joy of creating, not for the money or fame that comes from it, I haven't read atlas shrugged but fountainhead seems far more "balanced" with the characters, Wynand in specific was a kino character I geniunly enjoyed reading about.

[Anonymous No.18114245]

>Rand bad
>Rowling bad

Please give me a non-bad female author pleasee

[Anonymous No.18114859]

>>18114245
Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Piranesi)

[Anonymous No.18114884]

>>18112806
The characters are very dull in the book. They're all two-dimensional hyper exaggerations to get her naive philosophy across. The entire point of the book is to lead to the chapter "This is John Galt Speaking".

If a person has never read the book, unless they want to rake their eyes over burning coals, skip the first 1000 pages and just read that chapter. It was great when I was 18, it's absolutely terrible as an adult. You will get the gist of Atlad Shrugged from reading The Fountainhead, which is much shorter and to the point but also suffers from Ayn Rands bizarre form of autism.