Ayn Rand, Archetypal Capitalist Wizard
"It was a sunburst of sound..." An excerpt from page 12 of Atlas Shrugged.
January 31, 2013 - 2:00 pm
I finally started Atlas Shrugged this morning. Many thanks to my Objectivist friends for inspiring me to read it. I’ll plan to share visual excerpts and blog on its themes Thursdays.
Highly Recommended: see Stephen W. Browne’s essays “Why I’m Not an Objectivist” Part 1 and 2 with which I tend to mostly agree. I already like most of Rand’s writing and ideas quite a bit. But to me she’s just one more intellectual crayon in the box. Never the less, I do look forward to learning how to color in the shade of Queen Ayn…
****
image courtesy shutterstock / Lawrence Wee
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Hint: It’s okay to skip “This is John Galt Speaking” on the first read.
That “symphony of triumph” seems to describe an orgasm very, very well. Terrific, very terse word-craft.
I consider Ayn Rand to be a Saint for the Objectivist Church, along with RAH.
I also wrote a short story where someone read that fifty three page speech as a means to drive back a vampire.
Personally, I think Ayn Rand was rebellious, crazy, and yet quite useful.
Actually, I may be in for a little trouble when I write this, but I think Ayn Rand could have just left John Galt out “Atlas Shrugged” entirely. I don’t want to give away much of the book for Dave’s sake, but let’s just say when he makes his entrance it is lackluster and underwhelming. The mystique of John Galt served Ayn Rand’s purpose; putting a man to that mystique left me disappointed.
Ayn Rand is truly brilliant. The ideas(the destruction of the indivdual,the dangers of collectivism–to name only a few) she presented in her fiction and non-fiction are completely relevant now. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone more PRO-freedom and PRO-individual. It’s always humorous to hear or read criticism of her works from “the pretentious ones”. You know–the nobodies who sit on self-made perches and throw meager spitballs.