Re: Atlas shrugged

Guru George (gurugeorge@sugarland.idiscover.co.uk)
Tue, 24 Jun 1997 20:15:34 +0100


On Mon, 23 Jun 1997 20:26:50 -0700 (PDT)
"Tony B. Csoka" <csoka@itsa.ucsf.edu> wrote:

>
>I started reading "Atlas Shrugged" a few weeks ago, and just couldn't
>bring myself to finish it. It is so badly written that I am not going to waste
> any more time on.

I'm reading it at the moment, for the 3rd time. The problem with Rand
is that she thinks art is propaganda (see "The Romantic Manifesto").
But when she's just writing 'realistically', to convey her philosophical
ideas by observation of 'the minute particularity of things' by giving a
sense of time and place, rather than using her characters as ventriloquist's
dummies, she's actually quite good, and the bits of plain description in
her writing are the best bits of her writing qua writing.

>The concepts that Rand tries so heroically to convey in her novel should
>have been left to her mentor, Nietzsche.

Rand is a million miles away from Nietzsche. She has very little sense
of irony, whereas that's one of Nietzsche's major features. I believe
that she thought he was an irrationalist. There are only superficial
similarities.
>
>

Guru George