Quote:
Originally Posted by jmorton
I will say this for Atlas Shrugged, it was the book that finally turned me off to Ayn Rand.  |
I can deal with Objectivist philosophy, but Rand demonstrated the problems of being too academic. Her primary interest was ideas, and everything had to be somehow made to fit in her theories, regardless of the size of mallet needed to pound particular square pegs into round holes.
Among other things, she seemed to believe that a woman could only have sex with a man if she was raped, because no proper Randite woman could possibly bring herself to
submit voluntarily, even if she wanted it. If the guy simply took her, she could do it and enjoy it without guilt, because it wasn't her fault, and she hadn't willingly submitted.
And the prose. Oh, dear goodness, the prose, with dialog that read like it was graven in stone tablets, brought down off a mountain by a prophet, and intended to be spoken IN ALL CAPS.
If you want to push theories using fiction as a medium, it helps if you can write good fiction. From where I sit, Rand couldn't.
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Dennis