Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged

[Anonymous No.3620385]

hi, gerfag here.
first time posting on /lit/.

My question is following:
I read the first 300 pages of the book "Atlas Shrugged" (in german) and I wanted to ask if I should bother reading further ?
The story until page 300 was not amazing as everbody preaches it.

I came in touch with it by Bioshock. And because i love Bioshock so much I thought i could give it a try.

plox no spoiler.

[Anonymous No.3620405]

>>3620385
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Anonymous No.3620399]

>>3620385
Was the game based on this book or something?

[Anonymous No.3620416]

no, OP, I don't know who told you it was good but you did something very bad and they're trying to get back at you
also bioshock was a satire

[Anonymous No.3620439]

>>3620399
bioshock is satirical of a libertarian utopia

[Anonymous No.3620574]

>>3620385
>The story until page 300 was not amazing as everbody preaches it.

Who the fuck told you it was any good? I have heard of no one that thought it was good reading. Even the most hardcore insane libertarians grudgingly admit that as literature Rand is garbage.

>I came in touch with it by Bioshock. And because i love Bioshock so much I thought i could give it a try.

Bioshock was a ten hour thesis on why Rand was full of shit in game form. Your failure to immediately notice this kind of marks you as dumb in the brain-meats.

[Anonymous No.3620600]

>>3620574
Anyone who dismisses Rand based on the experience of playing Bioshock is dumb in the brain-meats. Props to OP for pursuing something that interests him.

[Anonymous No.3620605]

>>3620600
but he was dismissing it based on the vast majority of qualified opinions

[Anonymous No.3620623]

>>3620574
>Bioshock was a ten hour thesis on why Rand was full of shit in game form.

That was damn near poetic.

[Anonymous No.3620631]

>>3620600
>Anyone who dismisses Rand based on the experience of playing Bioshock is dumb in the brain-meats.

Yeah, you should instead dismiss Rand because she was an insane Russian bag lady who thought the ideal society was one that was composed entirely of psychopaths with delusions of grandeur.

[Anonymous No.3620733]

>>3620574
I never said that I think that Rands philosophy is good. In fact I am on the other end of the political spectrum.

I just played bioshock, thought it was very good, researched about it online, and came across rand. Luckily a new translation of the book was published in Germany so I thought I might just give it a try.

I read a bit about the book online and some said it was just awful and others said that it's their personal bible.

I didn't start reading the book because I was convinced about her idea of a pure liberal society. I just wanted to know what the fuss it's about her

[Anonymous No.3621492]

>>3620733
Read the english version, things get lost in translation.

[Anonymous No.3621689]

>>3620733
OP, the book just goes on and on and on.

The story is pretty lame and predictable.

If you want the message, just read the wikipedia article or something.

There's no good reason to put yourself through reading 1000 pages or whatever it is again of bad writing, reiterating the same fucking point over and over and over and over and over again.

I doubt the German translation will do it any wonders.

If the actual philosophy interests you, just read Rand's other work (or the wiki article).

[Anonymous No.3622365]

>>3621689
i followed your tip and read the wiki article:
is she serious ? is she fuckin' serious ?

I thought that in the 1400 pages there would be good story or at least a twist or something.

It was just obvious that the three people the prof mentioned were responsible for the resignition of the industrialists...does she really talk another 1000 pages over and over how bad and ugly socialists are ? damn. i hoped to read a good book.

however: the wiki article doesnt clarify the question who john galt is. let me guess he is the head of the group ? or the third person the prof mentions. but even that doesnt makes any difference.

[Anonymous No.3622381]

>>3620385
I can hear your German accent through your English word-choices. Why is this? Also, John Galt gets tortured and Jim Taggart's wife suicides herself.

[Anonymous No.3622383]

>>3620631
>implying delusions

[Anonymous No.3622386]

Dident we have a rule about Ayn Rand? Or have i been dreaming?

[Anonymous No.3622392]

>>3622386
It was just fanta sea. :)

[Anonymous No.3622397]

>>3620605
>majority of qualified opinions

Sorry, son.

[Anonymous No.3622410]

I've read it, and even though I'm pretty libertarian, Atlas Shrugged is terrible literature. If I were you, I'd read Francisco D'anconia's speech about money and Galt's speech about his ideas.

The rest of the book is shitty repetition of one-sided characters, her writing is a clunky mess but don't let that get to you. Read the things I mentioned and forget about the rest, save your time. If you like both speeches, you can use your time reading serious books on libertarianism, or even Rand's shorter novels.

[Anonymous No.3623313]

>>3622365
he's not really anyone

[Anonymous No.3623409]

>>3622365
yeah he's both

[Anonymous No.3623416]

>>3622410
Galt's fucking radio monologue is horrible, took me three days to get through that shit. Kept putting me to sleep.

[Anonymous No.3623435]

I'm about half way through it (I put it down months ago though, not impressed at all) and after reading this thread, I sure as hell am not picking it up again. In fact, I'm attending a book burning next week, and I might through it on there. Thank you, /lit/, once again you save me time and effort. Oh so valuable time. I can work for money, but my time is ever running less.

[Anonymous No.3623456]

>>3623435
>Burning books.
Never burn a good doorstop.

[Anonymous No.3623462]

>>3623456

Sadly my copy is paperback. And it's one of those mass market Signet ballwanks, so it's already falling apart and probably wouldn't have lasted a full reading anyway.

[Anonymous No.3623556]

Ayn Rand is probably my least favorite person ever.

[Anonymous No.3623578]

>>3623556
I rate her as one of my most admired people for her intransigence. The shit that she spoke about all the time was all shit though. I don't respect her for the actual thoughts she had.

[Anonymous No.3623762]

My friend is a libertarian and loves atlas shrugged. What should I tell him to convince him that he's a complete pleb and make him as mad as possible? I've never read the book.

[Anonymous No.3624073]

>>3623762
If you really want to understand Rand you should read the book. But that takes a little while and is a pain in the ass.

Tell him that she's too idealistic; Objectivism, while a nice ideal, is ultimately impractical. One can't expect humans to discard emotion, and I would argue that our capacity for strong emotions such as love and compassion is a large part of what makes us human.

Oh and tell him that he can't accept her views on government unless he accepts her entire philosophy, and be sure to remind him that she's fiercely atheist.

[Anonymous No.3624095]

>>3623462
>wasting good toilet paper

[Anonymous No.3624102]

>not doing 400 pages a day of Atlas Shrugged

I truly pity the plebs who can't enjoy the literary genius of Rand

[Anonymous No.3624110]

>>3624073
>If you really want to understand Rand you should read the book
Nope. You can summarize Rand with her past.
>Jewish merchant family escape from Soviet Union
And bam. That explains everything about Rand. She's biased as fuck, given her childhood experiences.

[Anonymous No.3624109]

>>3623762
Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, criticizes the concept of a completely free market as damaging to competition and says that what is good for the individual is not always what is good for the populace as a whole.

Granted, if he's a paulbot he's probably never touched Wealth of Nations or economics in general

[Anonymous No.3624114]

>>3623762

This cartoon is better written than Atlas Shrugged.

[Anonymous No.3624125]

>>3624110
Yes but her history hardly explains her position, which is fairly difficult to describe in its entirety. Atlas Shrugged (although shit) is very thorough.

[Anonymous No.3624162]

>>3624125

It does, actually.

Her perceived ethnic origins would have left her the object of discrimination by the anti-Semitic, Orthodox Tzarist radicals; the main-stream backdrop of the despicable bands of Black Hundreds murderers. Period Russia was thick with the ilk of their supporters, hence the existence of such brigand-armies. The Tzar himself was a famous supporter of such vestigial nationalist racism.

On the other time of things, she came from a bourgeois background in a time and place where the bourgeois was feeble; caught between the conservative monarchists and the revolutionary left. Added to this innate feeble state of the infantile Russian bourgeoisie was the internal divide of the liberal Kadets, Narodniks, and Mensheviks and the conservative bourgeois parties.

On all sides surrounded by political enemies; the Orthodox monarchist traditionalists, the revolutionary anti-capitalists, and the desperate cronyism that was the rule of survival for the malformed capitalist class endemic to Russia of the time.

What was Rand? An anti-religious libertine capitalist with strong meritocratic notions and a hatred for any sort of boot-licking.

[Anonymous No.3624479]

>>3624162
...still doesn't get at the roots of Objectivism.

She would argue that her issue positions were not independently conceived, but rise logically from the base axioms of Objectivism. Her ethnic origins might predict rebellion against perceived oppressors, but they don't explain the logical structure of her philosophy -- there were undoubtedly many Jewish families to escape from the USSR, and most probably thought unkindly of the policies from which they were fleeing, but only Rand constructed an entire philosophy, supposedly grounded in logic, to support their world view.

Objectivism is much more than radical, atheist, meritocratic capitalism. It's grounded in logical premises that link each part together; in order to understand those, it's best to read the book.

[Anonymous No.3624567]

>>3624479

Her national and ethnic origins and their correlation with the society of place and period have all the necessary elements. They link together with nicely. I fail to see how her ideas are any more radical than their apparent roots.

Take any individual, give them access to literature and a liberal education; it's a near guarantee that they will develop strong ideological position. She read philosophy, favored certain Greek noteworthies, and she chose a career as a writer.

Taking into account the crystal-clear vision of hindsight, it seems almost inevitable.

[Anonymous No.3625904]

>>3623435
>In fact, I'm attending a book burning next week
The fuck? Why not give the books you want to burn away? There's bound to be someone interested.

Where I live there's this thing called "Bücherschrank" (bookcase), a (you guessed it) bookcase with sliding glass doors on a public place where you can leave books you no longer want as well as take books that seem interesting. Works great. It's taken care of by a citizen's organization.

[Anonymous No.3625979]

I read Atlas Shrugged a while ago (also in german) and have to admit that I skipped a lot of pages.
Just jumped through the speeches, since it was clear what's the point...

[Anonymous No.3626025]

>>3625979
I only read the review of one of her books in the third volume of The Illuminatus Trilogy.

[Anonymous No.3626073]

>>3625904
Raggedy paperbacks with shit spines deserve no such lofty fate as being gifted to a public bookcase. There comes a point when one must turn to the final solution and if one has a fondness for barbecues (as I do) they can be rather useful in starting off.