Who Wrote It?

But if Tolstoy had written Atlas Shrugged, the style would have been far less purple, preachy, and wooden.

I'd also recommend Anna Karenina.

RSVP'd for the Szasz event. Will see you there.

Oh please. Ayn Rand was a second rate melodramatic novelist. They're almost unreadable.

Granted Rand is not in the same league as Tolstoy. Fortunately, Brian teaches economics and not literature.

Does anyone here know why Atlas Shrugged is/was on the reading list for high school students? I don't know if this is the case anymore, but I remember going into bookstores and seeing it on the same rack of inexpensive student editions as Moby Dick and 1984 and The Scarlet Letter and so on.

Seems a bit of an outlier to me but there must have been a reason?

Here's my read on the interest in Ayn Rand. Through analogy. I had a friend who was totally into Tom Robbins. Gave me a copy to read. I was probably 30 at the time. I couldn't finish it. I found it juvenile and boring. Then I came across someone who wrote that Tom Robbins is one of those writers who is only of interest if you happened to be reading him when you were a young pot smoking college kid. His writing style then takes, and you never lose interest in it. Otherwise, if you pick him up later, you find it appalling. I think the same goes for Ayn Rand. If you are first exposed to her as a young confused kid who is just starting to think about ideas like property, human rights, political economy, etc, then Ayn's melodramatic style and flat characterization seems to take. She should have just written an essay and spared us the pain. But then again, many people like her. Go figure.

I finished Fountainhead when I read it but only through brute force. It was that bad. And I'm sorry, but the basic idea of Atlas Shrugged is just so outlandish. All the poor intellectuals--the Atlases of the world--going on strike because they can't have it their way. It's such a juvenile simplistic view of the world. Of course, Tolstoy also had some simplistic views as well. But at least he could write fiction. Ayn Rand couldn't--in my opinion.

If I had to depend on Rand I would never have learned market economics. Her books were unreadable in college, they're unreadable now. You want pulp? Best to read Superman and Amazing Stories.

To hear Rand and Tolstoy mentioned in the same paragraph saddens me, because it lowers my view of any non-technical opinions in this blog. And it troubles me that so many people I like are weirdly impressed by her writing.

And didn't Von Mises call Rand a "stupid little girl?"

The quote rings so true. Of course it could be said about a rich Republican (or libertarian) who says they need a tax-cut because it will make a more efficient free-market for everyone.

And didn't you just recently get all up in Krugman's face because he cares more about the motivations of evil companies than the actual results that would affect the rest of the world?

Please stop trying to have your libertarianism both ways, as moral desert and as consequentialist ideal.