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Old 12-28-2012, 12:10 PM   #1
GlenBarrington
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Ayn Rand's "Anthem"

Not her greatest work. But I think an excellent book to give to an adolescent who is curious. It illustrates quite well how her primary concerns are really about freedom and the avoidance of rigid strata in society. That you should be free to rise or fall based on the quality of your intellect, character, and hard work.

It is a dystopian novel set rather far into the future after some cataclysmic event. collectivism is taken to the ultimate conclusion, even to the point that the use of the word "I" is a crime punishable by death. Where all "FACTS" are only those facts that everyone agrees upon and the freedom of expression is acceptable only if all agree that what you say is aceptable. (with the obvious end results!)

http://www.amazon.com/Anthem-ebook/d...yn+rand+anthem
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Old 12-29-2012, 01:24 PM   #2
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Hmm! no replies, no commentary. No discussions of the book as a book. I wonder if we are so afraid of controversial authors that we can't bring ourselves to discuss them for fear of running into "politics".

Ideas aren't politics. If they are, we have become what Rand warned us against.
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Old 12-29-2012, 02:50 PM   #3
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That you should be free to rise or fall based on the quality of your intellect, character, and hard work.
http://www.amazon.com/Anthem-ebook/d...yn+rand+anthem
I'll bite.

What a concept. How far we've gotten from that ideal.....I enjoyed reading her as a young adult........will have to re-read and see to it that my granddaughter reads her as well........
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Old 12-29-2012, 03:36 PM   #4
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I generally avoid modern "philosophiers" so I never read any of her books.

But I recently ran into the BD release of ATLAS SHRUGGED, pt1 (cheap!) and took a flier on it out of curiosity: professional critics savaged the movie yet audiences that actually saw it loved it (86% rated it highly).

I was... impressed... by the movie. (Looking forward to the sequel.)
A very nicely done SF dystopia.
As a movie it is extremely well made; good casting, acting, and pacing. I can see why the Hollywood establishment *needs* to see this movie project destroyed.
Very dangerous ideas clearly and entertainly presented.
"Mediocrity despises excellence." "Takers vs makers".
Can't let the serfs realize they are property and all that.

Based on that, I read ATLAS SHRUGGED, the book.
Yes, it is preachy and strident. Overlong.
But there is a good SF dystopia in there; there is a coherent storyline and memorable characters. It has something to say and its ideas are relevant to the present world. Taken as an alternate universe story it holds up better than mst 50's SF.
It can be argued that, to a large extent, we are living in the world she postulated: A lot of the attitudes she decried can be seen daily in the traditionalists' war against ebooks and against Amazon. (And before, against Microsoft.)

Mediocrity despises excellence and hates success. This we are living.

I intend to give Anthem a look one of these days but I do have a few other (gift) books ahead in the TBR list. I do hope it is a bit less strident but if the writing is comparable to ATLAS... It'll be worth my time.

For 50's era SF, there's a lot to be said for Rand *as a writer*.

Now, this isn't to say I actually buy into her philosophy.
I'm not all that comfortable with her prescription but I do agree with her diagnosis and prognosis. We are all of us fighting Salamis all over again, every single day; some on the "Athenian" side, some on the "persian" side.
And the "persians" are winning.
If Rand were alive I suspect "strident" wouldn't even begin to describe her attitude.
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Old 12-29-2012, 04:24 PM   #5
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Quote:
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Hmm! no replies, no commentary. No discussions of the book as a book. I wonder if we are so afraid of controversial authors that we can't bring ourselves to discuss them for fear of running into "politics".

Ideas aren't politics. If they are, we have become what Rand warned us against.
I just don't remember any of Ayn Rand's books clearly enough to get into a discussion; I read them in college and found them quite appealing then, but I recall only the broad strokes and not the details.
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Old 12-29-2012, 05:08 PM   #6
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I remember enjoying The Fountainhead and being warned against Atlas Shrugged (although I don't remember why) in highschool. That is the extent of my experience.
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Old 12-29-2012, 07:21 PM   #7
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I intend to give Anthem a look one of these days but I do have a few other (gift) books ahead in the TBR list. I do hope it is a bit less strident but if the writing is comparable to ATLAS... It'll be worth my time.
I don't believe you'll find Anthem at all preachy or strident. This is her second book and it shows. The writing doesn't have nearly the power of her later work. But to the good, she tried harder to illustrate what she meant in this book rather than the lengthy stream of consciousness monologues the characters or narrator subject the reader to in her later work.

In a way, there is more optimism on her part in this book than in her later books. I suspect she began to suspect her warning was coming too late to do any good by the later books. Man, I hope she was wrong about THAT, but I fear she was not.
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Old 12-29-2012, 07:29 PM   #8
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Anthem is a good read....but Ayn Rand maniacs are wayyyyy too cultish for me. Met one who only read Ayn Rand over and over again. I read a biography of her last year and the irony for me is her authoritative personality reminded me of Lenin...

Not a huge fan of hers, but i tell people if they are interested in Rand to start with "Anthem"...as is it not as looooooooong and some of her other works.
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Old 12-29-2012, 10:12 PM   #9
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No discussions of the book as a book.
My reading log shows that I finished it on October 21, 2006. I recall reading it because one of my children was assigned it in high school, but I can't recall anything else about it. It just wasn't that memorable. Maybe that's because of the short length, but I think it's more because her characters didn't seem real to me.

Years earlier (not sure quite when, as it was before I started my book log) I read Nathaniel Branden's My Years with Ayn Rand. The real Ayn Rand is, for me, more interesting than her characters.

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Ideas aren't politics. If they are, we have become what Rand warned us against.
She warned us against lots of things. She warned us against the Bolsheviks. She warned us against Nathaniel Branden. She warned us against unemployment insurance. She warned us against The Best Years of Our Lives. Some of her warnings, like the first one, I actually agree with. What I don't agree with is setting up someone as an intellectual hero whose warnings are to be taken as a standard of what's right and wrong.
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Old 12-31-2012, 02:31 AM   #10
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The only Rand book I ever read was Atlas Shrugged, which I finished mainly out of spite, hurling it into corners and stalking out of the room every few chapters. Wow, she sure liked her ideas. Like, a lot. And she was not so fond of people.

The slogan "Mediocrity despises excellence and hates success" is ironic given that Rand was a relatively mediocre 20th century sociopath with lots of unpleasant things to say about more successful sociopaths like Lenin.
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Old 12-31-2012, 07:00 AM   #11
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The slogan "Mediocrity despises excellence and hates success" is ironic given that Rand was a relatively mediocre 20th century sociopath with lots of unpleasant things to say about more successful sociopaths like Lenin.
Ironic if you factor in her own life choices and personality for sure.
But the flawed messenger still can deliver a valid message, no?

One thing books are good at is delivering mesages that can stand by themselves, independent of the originator, outlasting their origins. She would hardly be the first person to create a work that transcends their own limits and weaknesses.

Rand directed her fury at communists but her message applies even more so to modern populists than the bolsheviks. That right there puts her work on a different plane from other screeds that fall by the wayside when their targets vanish. Whether by insight or sheer dumb luck, she directed her ample spleen at the root cause--the very real human weaknesses that allow people to enable their own victimization. And that means that strident tone or not, her screed wil remain relevant until human nature changes.

People may despise her and decry her but her points stand just fine on their own, warts and all. They do stimulate consideration and evaluation of the world about us and remain at least as relevant today (witness the Depardieu affair in France) as they were 50 years ago. Debatable but relevant.
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Old 12-31-2012, 11:44 AM   #12
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Well Said!

With a little luck, maybe we all could transcend our weaknesses, shortcomings, and character flaws!

Netflix has an interesting Documentary on Ayn Rand called, "Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged". It is less about "Atlas Shrugged" than it is about what motivated her, and how frustrated she was about how people seemed to misunderstand what she was saying. I think freedom is a hard concept to truly understand and even harder to balance fairly with the demands of our modern world.

Last edited by GlenBarrington; 12-31-2012 at 11:53 AM.
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Old 12-31-2012, 12:37 PM   #13
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With a little luck, maybe we all could transcend our weaknesses, shortcomings, and character flaws!

Netflix has an interesting Documentary on Ayn Rand called, "Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged". It is less about "Atlas Shrugged" than it is about what motivated her, and how frustrated she was about how people seemed to misunderstand what she was saying. I think freedom is a hard concept to truly understand and even harder to balance fairly with the demands of our modern world.
Many (most?) creative types are far from exemplary human beings.

Asimov pointed out that arrogance is pretty much a requirement to be a commercial writer since who else would even dream that people would want to *pay* for their ideas?

So if you start there and work your way from there there's bound to be a lot of trampled sensibilites on the road to any meaningful creative work. In the best of all worlds, books would be allowed to sink or swim on their own merits regardless of the author's own traits but we definitely don't live in that world or any even vaguely ressembling it.

(Netflix, huh? I'll look into it after the holidays. Thanks.)
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Old 12-31-2012, 02:15 PM   #14
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(Netflix, huh? I'll look into it after the holidays. Thanks.)
Yeah! They may not have the latest blockbuster movies , but their portfolio is full of all sorts of great documentaries on Art, literature, society, culture, architecture, and MY favorite topic, Photography.
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Old 12-31-2012, 05:09 PM   #15
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I am a big fan of her philosophy, Objectivism. Her writing is long-winded and presents the extreme view of that philosophy. Lots of people make fun of it but every philosophy, distilled to its essence, can be made fun of. Reading Atlas Shrugged at an early age made a big impression on me. To a lesser extreme, we are surrounded by people who take more than they create or give.
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