/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5604349]

ITT: present your criticisms of Ayn Rand as a novelist. I'll rebut them.

Not an objectivist or even particularly right-wing.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.5604353]

Excessively long ideological speech jammed in.

[Anonymous No.5604377]

>>5604353
Having ideological speeches isn't necessarily a literary wrong and the way the speeches were interwoven in the story made them feel like natural climaxes to everything that was being built up.

Take Atlas Shrugged. Galt's speech was a thorough explicitation of everything behind (Rand argues) the characters's actions, and it was placed at about the time the reader begins to systematize everything they have seen so far in the novel.

The length of the speeches also points out that in the context of a philosophical novel they are the equivalent of final battles or final fights in adventures (since in Rand's novels the struggles really are between opposing philosophies/worldviews as contrasted to opposing individuals). They are the climax of the novels, and they even feel climatic.

In this respect, this stylistic choice of hers is absolutely flawless and serves perfectly their purpose.

[Anonymous No.5604419]

Her complete devotion to the most vulgar interpretation of materialist-rationalist doctrines turns her novels into the literary equivalent of Rube-Goldberg machines. There is no meaningful internality to her characters, as she has no regard for the actual experience of human life, and only appears to be interested in justifying her myopic vision of "progress".

[Anonymous No.5604442]

>>5604419
It is impossible to answer this without a better description of what you mean by "meaningful internality" or "actual experience of human life." Are you just using an unnecessarily long way of saying that her characters are "flat" and "have no conflicts"?

[Anonymous No.5604443]

>>5604349
She was a hypocrite.
She was a racist.
She was a plagiarist.

[Anonymous No.5604446]

It's goal oriented toward relaying/defending a certain ideology, thus lack a Dionysian element.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.5604456]

>>5604377
>Take Atlas Shrugged. Galt's speech was a thorough explicitation of everything behind the characters's actions
Which makes the work terrible.

>The length of the speeches also points out that in the context of a philosophical novel they are the equivalent of final battles or final fights in adventures (since in Rand's novels the struggles really are between opposing philosophies/worldviews as contrasted to opposing individuals). They are the climax of the novels, and they even feel climatic.
They don't, they feel like ideological expositions.

[Anonymous No.5604460]

>>5604446
A work being a defense for a certain ideology or worldview doesn't deprive it of "Dionysian" or emotional/visceral elements. In fact, Rand's greatest success in terms of acquiring followers was that she managed to present a defense of her politics in a way that enticed the idealism and romanticism of her readers.

[Anonymous No.5604464]

Her climactic speeches spell out everything to the reader instead of letting the reader arrive to the point she was trying to make through the advancement of the plot. (though to be fair i've only read atlas shrugged)

[Anonymous No.5604466]

>>5604456
>Which makes the work terrible.

Why?

>They don't, they feel like ideological expositions.

So why do they feel so out of place, structurally, for you?

[Anonymous No.5604476]

>>5604443
>She was a hypocrite.
How?
>She was a racist.
So what?
>She was a plagiarist.
How?

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.5604477]

>>5604466
Explaining all the actions of all the characters at the end is movie-tier shit. Having the characters actions explicitly explained reduces the complexity of the characters. Good characters are extremely complex with motivations, personality and psychology it takes close reading, probably multiple readings, to fully understand, sometimes even the characters themselves don't understand it.

>So why do they feel so out of place, structurally, for you?
The length

[Anonymous No.5604479]

she's shit

rebuke that

[Anonymous No.5604481]

>>5604464
>Her climactic speeches spell out everything to the reader instead of letting the reader arrive to the point she was trying to make through the advancement of the plot.

"Spelling out things for the reader" in itself is not a good or a bad thing. In Atlas Shrugged in particular, it is about integrating the different impressions the characters have gathered through the novel into a coherent (Rand believes) whole. The speech is an essential part of the novel because it is what puts everything together and without this integrated aspect Atlas would be a bunch of displaced opinions without rhyme or reason.

[Anonymous No.5604485]

>>5604479
Biologically, she was a human being, not excrement (though in all likelihood she produced excrement).

[Anonymous No.5604487]

>>5604479
/thread

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.5604490]

>>5604481
>"Spelling out things for the reader" in itself is not a good or a bad thing.
It's a very bad thing.

[Anonymous No.5604498]

>>5604481
It's actually a bad thing. See, I could just skip the entirety of the novel and just read Galt's speech and I won't miss much of what Rand was trying to say. What happens is that everything besides the speech is just filler, and that's a bad thing.

[Anonymous No.5604500]

>>5604490
>It's a very bad thing.
Why is that?

[Anonymous No.5604502]

>>5604500
cause u got dubs

[Anonymous No.5604507]

>>5604477
>Explaining all the actions of all the characters at the end is movie-tier shit. Having the characters actions explicitly explained reduces the complexity of the characters. Good characters are extremely complex with motivations, personality and psychology it takes close reading, probably multiple readings, to fully understand, sometimes even the characters themselves don't understand it.

No, good characters are MEMORABLE, which can include "extreme complexity and psychology" but doesn't need to.

There is also no inherently good or bad thing about explaining things to the reader.

>The length

Huh? She was always adept of a long-wrought, melodramatic style and the speeches are just that taken to an extreme.

[Anonymous No.5604513]

>>5604498
No, you would miss much of the effect of the novel. Atlas Shrugged didn't get the following it did because of Galt's speech alone, but because of all the things that happened before to which the speech provided what Rand believed was the ultimate cause for them.

[Anonymous No.5604521]

>>5604513
To add, you only will "not miss what Rand wanted to say" if you believe the only thing you get from a novel is the literality of the words in there.

[Anonymous No.5604529]

>>5604442

I think you know very well what I meant, as you had no objections to the first sentence. I'm saying that with Rand it's all about feigning causality where there is none.

Of course her characters are flat, but the fault runs so much deeper. She's completely unable of taking a first-person perspective - that is, she sees everything from the outside, even the characters that clearly represent herself. She leaves no room for interpretation. In her universe, morality is essentially reducible to strength of will. And, correspondingly, her villains are all a bunch of pathetic weaklings, who should just man up and use their "reason" to see what is right.

She has no sense of how people derive meaning from life or reason about their experiences. She is, essentially, a behaviorist. Which makes for some supremely awful writing.

[Anonymous No.5604536]

>>5604443
>She was a hypocrite.
>She was a racist.
>She was a plagiarist.
and atheist.
and pro-choice

[Anonymous No.5604538]

>>5604476
Criticised the state while taking money from it.

Racism is immoral.

Objectivism is plagiarised from Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.5604539]

>>5604513
Novel-wise, yes, I would miss much of the plot (obviously), but the speech itself could stand alone and represents Rand's views, thus making the rest of the novel redundant. Should've written an essay instead, really.

[Anonymous No.5604544]

>>5604538
>while taking money from it.
Her money. She paid taxes so she may as well use the system.
>Racism is immoral.
morality doesn't real.
>Objectivism is plagiarised from Nietzsche.
How so?

[Anonymous No.5604566]

>>5604544
concepts are not real, they are made up usually by consensus social.
but the consequence of that is real.
good or bad is subjective.

[Anonymous No.5604567]

>>5604349
Why the fuck hasn't Eva green played her in a biopic yet.

[Anonymous No.5604570]

>>5604566

[Anonymous No.5604591]

>>5604529
>Of course her characters are flat, but the fault runs so much deeper. She's completely unable of taking a first-person perspective - that is, she sees everything from the outside, even the characters that clearly represent herself.

What would she need to do to "take a first-person perspective"? Make, say, Howard Roark have a neurotic fit over the difficulty facing him in the future?

>And, correspondingly, her villains are all a bunch of pathetic weaklings, who should just man up and use their "reason" to see what is right.

The main antagonist from The Fountainhead and the villains from We the Living are not pathetic weaklings by any means. They even leave their respective books relatively unscathed. I take it you have only read (or skimmed over) Atlas Shrugged?

>She has no sense of how people derive meaning from life or reason about their experiences. She is, essentially, a behaviorist. Which makes for some supremely awful writing.

Rand can't be described as a behavorist by any means whatsoever. All of her novels are about what she calls the "philosophical premises" that drive human beings, behavior being not an irreducible primary but directly caused by the "psycho-epistemology" of the characters, i.e., by their internal world.

(your criticism of her is actually very Randian, as you are arguing that her way of seeing humanity -- in her terms, one of her "premises" -- drives her beliefs and actions in other fields, such as literature.)

[Anonymous No.5604596]

>>5604539
The speech only works because it serves as a sorta catharsis for all the disasters that went on before. If you read the speech alone, it will have nowhere near the same effect.

(in fact, Rand actually tried to write something like Galt's speech as an independent text before realizing it simply isn't the same thing without the emotional backing of a novel.)

[anonimuse No.5604707]

>>5604443
She fervently opposed racism, as any collectivist idea.

[Anonymous No.5604717]

>>5604591
So I take it that we are in agreement about the feigning of causality, as well as her vision of morality being reducible to strength of will?

>What would she need to do to "take a first-person perspective"? Make, say, Howard Roark have a neurotic fit over the difficulty facing him in the future?

Yeah, for example - or if that's too out of character for him, then at least some semblance of reflection. That's what make people real living beings. Her insistence on physical action is naive in the extreme, in that it assumes that emotions are something that can be filtered out from human existence. She like a less coherent version of Daniel Dennett's retarded epiphenomenalism.

>The main antagonist from The Fountainhead and the villains from We the Living are not pathetic weaklings by any means. They even leave their respective books relatively unscathed. I take it you have only read (or skimmed over) Atlas Shrugged?

I will readily admit that I've only read Atlas Shrugged. I assume that it's at least somewhat representative of her writing,as it is usually considered her primary work. I've watched the movie-version of The Fountainhead, and I don't think that I'll be wasting any more time on her, as her appeal mainly seems to be the utopian individualism, which frankly is even less appealing than its leftist equivalent.

>Rand can't be described as a behavorist by any means whatsoever. All of her novels are about what she calls the "philosophical premises" that drive human beings, behavior being not an irreducible primary but directly caused by the "psycho-epistemology" of the characters, i.e., by their internal world.

The assumption of "philosophical premises" is exactly the problem. If she is not a behaviorist, then she is, in the very least, a cognitivist - she assumes that these "premises" run like software on a computer. Which is counter to any real-life experience of any person anywhere. There's quite an extensive literature on why this view is false in every sense of the word.

>(your criticism of her is actually very Randian, as you are arguing that her way of seeing humanity -- in her terms, one of her "premises" -- drives her beliefs and actions in other fields, such as literature.)

I believe that she is a shameless ideologue with an incredibly inflated ego, and who has a reader-base of people who want the illusion of an objective and controllable social world - people like herself, who have a hard time connecting with other people, and who therefore retreat to detached pseudo-analysis of the world.

[Anonymous No.5604802]

She sucks and your stupid for liking her

[Anonymous No.5604813]

>>5604707
Read her opinions on Native Americans. You're wrong.

[ΟΥΤΙΣ No.5604819]

>>5604507
>No, good characters are MEMORABLE, which can include "extreme complexity and psychology" but doesn't need to.
Pleb alert, all hands to battle stations.

[Anonymous No.5604826]

>>5604813
She said that they had no claim on the land the colonists took, not that they were irredeemably inferior and deserved to be exterminated because of that.

She's actually right, because when she said that she was facing people who said the Indians had their lands "stolen" from them. Lands that weren't being used but that shouldn't have been taken because good savage.

[Anonymous No.5604832]

>>5604826
And that's absolutely a racist, Eurocentric view of what happened.

[Anonymous No.5604837]

>>5604832
Go back to tumblr.

[Anonymous No.5604841]

>>5604826
>you aren't using your land so I can take it
By that logic, workers can take the factories from the owners.

[Anonymous No.5604851]

>>5604837
Lel

[Anonymous No.5604874]

>>5604507
>good characters are memorable
no they arent. creating a character with the intent of it being memorable is pandering.

[Anonymous No.5604880]

ITT Op wants to play rebate club.

Why not just spend some time forming your own original thoughts rather than just playing with the size and shape of what others say to you? Do you consider that a talent?

[Anonymous No.5604901]

>>5604841
Of course they can, but they're too stupid to run a business. Might makes right.

[Anonymous No.5604907]

>>5604901
Lel oh my god
This keeps getting more hilarious

[Anonymous No.5604918]

>>5604349
she is stilted and preachy as a writer. characters are one-dimensional vehicles for ideology. even gorky is a better writer fachissake.

[Anonymous No.5604938]

>>5604907
Just go back to tumblr, pinko. Why do you even care about the working class?

[Anonymous No.5605000]

>>5604826
everytime i feel bad for judging ayn rand without reading her something like this comes along and i feel alright again

[Anonymous No.5607119]

>>5604476
>>She was a racist.
>So what?

Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.5607122]

>>5607119
>tfw blacks pretend to be people

[Anonymous No.5607144]

>>5604349
>OP getting supremely outclassed

Thanks /lit/, it was a great read.

[Anonymous No.5607157]

>>5604901
>implying being unable to run a business is the primary problem

I have a feeling it's more of the cops that will beat you in. Meaning only your last statement is applicable. The only ideological framework upholding capitalism is strength-enforced private-property, making it little better than feudalism (although you do get paid in paper instead of wheat, which is way more useful).

[Anonymous No.5607178]

>>5605000

trips decides it

[Bro-322259709121 No.5607383]

>>5604544
So you're saying judging somebody based on the color of their skin or ancestry is completely acceptable?

Actually, no we're not going to play that game. The realness of morality isn't relevant to the fact that Rand's beliefs and racism don't make sense together. You could excuse certain beliefs for having lapses of character and judgement, but objectivism is based on achievement and concrete reality, judging people based on the color of their skin is wrong under that concept.

[Anonymous No.5607819]

>>5607119
>implying you wouldn't piss your pants if you actually had to deal with a white nationalist

[Anonymous No.5608132]

>>5607819
>nuh-uh, we have videos of us beating YOUR people up

Nationalists, the true manchildren.