Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, pen name Ayn Rand, was a Russian born American author. She's been quite influential in the american lolbertarian movement and is kind of a Patron Saint for many rightoids. And is not only limited to the US, I've seen many Ayn Rand books in sale in Brazilian Bookstores, they have translations of all of her works from Atlas Shrugged to her essays like “The Virtue of Selfishness”.
Rand was never considered a good writer, dramacels, what do you guys think of this lady?
Also
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Her writing is absolutely TERRIBLE but I'm super libertarian/capitalist so I stan anyway.
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Same, love the part in Atlas Sneeded where even in a pseudo intellectual foid's wet dream political fantasy, men still somehow invented everything extraordinary
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She was never really a feminist, being a successful woman didn't necessitate membership in that club then like today.
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Yup. At the time it was published I think women weren't even able to really get published outside of certain exceptions so it stands out for that in it's own right. I'm too lazy to look anything up but I do know my favorite book by Audre Norton was published like 5 years before that and her real name was "Alice Norton" and she penned under Andre because no one would publish/buy a sci-fi book from a woman.
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90% of people critiquing her writing haven't actually read her books. The amount of people who will gleen opinions from the internet about books and parrot them as if they actually determined it themselves is rampant. 1000 page controversial books 10x more so.
Atlas Shrugged can have some cartoony characters and the John Galt speech is awful and overly long. But it's not as bad as people say. The Fountainhead is more consise and readable... And less self indulgent.
Her philosophy writing is mostly garbage, but it's from her later full wingcuck Objectivist stage. She was far more interesting when she was out of Soviet Russia and starting to write in NYC.
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People literally don't understand her philosophy and think it's just rich people should do what they want
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There's a ton of nuance, most importantly she wrote her books before corporatist gov-adjacent thieving billionaires was in vouge and it was primarily authoritarian socialism she was critiquing. If she wrote it today she would have likely communicated it better that she wasn't just billionaire-adjacent
If anything she was obsessed with the working class guys who were entrepreneurial and the self starying inventor types. It wasn't a pro-robber baron screed at all
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Her ideology has objective in the name the point is there is a morality all a should follow that doesn't have wiggle room so stay stealing is wrong if it's communism or a hold up (well I guess commies could say the labor theory of value means all work is theft). The main villain of atlas shrugged is a rich guy who lobby's to the us gov lol.
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Right now anyone who isn't a net drain on their country's exchequer is subsidising the people that are. You can believe it's right but that should be done through charity, not using taxation to compel those who don't agree. But of course no one actually believes it's right to do enough to voluntarily pay.
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I have read her books, I even have an atlas shrugged clutch
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Thoughts on Dagny Taggart?
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Queen
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Whittaker Chambers' 1957 review of "Atlas Shrugged" in the conservative National Review is still a classic of literary dismemberment. I read she wouldn't talk to National Review staff for years afterwards (I'm probably messing that up, maybe it was just Buckley.)
https://whittakerchambers.org/articles/nr/bigsister/
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Rand is queen and we stan
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Your vote count absolutely should be your 1RM bench in pounds
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I loved simping for her on reddit because it made people mad, but in reality I have no idea what her ideology is and never read her books. I think it is libertarian-adjacent or something like that? The books have very pretty covers though
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The Fountainhead is about a stubborn architect in the 1920s who wants to design modern art deco buildings. The firm makes him design a classical façade (which he hates) and he blows up the building, at least that's what I remember.
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Ted K but if he was an architect in the 1920s
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The architect in The Fountainhead is the modernist, tho.
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He's made to do it because the the client (you know, the guy who's paying for and will own the building) wants it that way. This makes him a reactionary chud who the vanguard of good taste, our hero roark, is free to ignore somehow.
And people call this c*nt an arch capitalist lmao. She's a typical Russian member of the intelligentsia who thinks they know best and the nekulturny clods need to just shut up and consoom kulture.
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Which is why I always thought Roark was an unlikable protagonist. He's a stubborn loser and a domestic terrorist. He later claims the building was his by right because he designed it lmao. I still don't understand what Rand wanted to convey, plus that r*pey scene with Dominique.
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It's been a while but I think Roark was fired and they attached an ugly facade to his building after he had left the project.
His argument & justification for blowing it up makes no sense legally because the building never belonged to him according to conventional property law, but Rand's point was, apparently, that the building did belong to him and always would, because he created it? I guess?
Which is interesting, because everyone acts like Rand is a reactionary who's just defending the status quo, but really she's calling for the creation of a whole new layer of morality on top of conventional morality. That's a radical idea, but of course, "radicals" want nothing to do with her.
The book is basically fine. I like it. The movie is a painful watch because the "brave modern architecture" that Roark creates is incredibly ugly looking. In real life, I don't think that style of architecture was ever popular before 1950 or after 1970, and meanwhile, the "classical" look with columns and shit still looks acceptable today.
I mean I'd rather live in a house that looks like the Supreme Court than some brutalist cuboid. Sorry, Ayn. Stick to jilling off over nazi supermen and cheating on your husband.
In conclusion, I think Reddit should be destroyed.
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That's also the point of Atlas Shrugged, isn't it? Society is trying to interfere in the enjoyable activity of creative production, so we must buck society.
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Your pulitzer's in the mail
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My main critique is modernism is overrated and he's like ISIS for modernist architecture.
I like some gaudy old buildings which aren't perfectly minimalist
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He designs a regular tower for the successful friend who isn't actually skilled on the condition it's built exactly like his design, the committee changes it and his friend can't stop it so he blows up the place. His speech in court was amazing.
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Sooooo basically the opposite of modern rightoids
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I read Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged when I was 17 and it was a big moment for me. I never went hardcore libertarian but just the idea of someone saying industrious/strong/smart males should be respected and held to esteem had a big effect on me. My teacher in my Canadian school was making us watch fricking Michael Moore movies to educate us on how we should all feel guilty 24/7 at the time. And he was this failed fat ex IBM middle manager who washed up teaching school.
It really opened my eyes that there was in fact a divide socially/politically on having your shit together and being capable. Rather than obsessing about being weak and using bureaucracy to silence and control others.
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Her work is best understood as an extreme reaction against the cancer of communism. A bit like tearing your lungs out to treat fatal lung cancer
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never have read her my understanding is she basically said it's okay to be selfish after living in a society that forced you to give everything to the government who, surprising, lived lavishly at the expense of their citizens, whom lived in abject poverty and squalor
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Love how much seeth she generate, hate having to slog through an 8-page author soliloquy.
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if you leave the kindle settings on default its like 80 pages though lol
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Rand was polyamorous and having way more s*x than the average dramatard
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Rand[insert nearly anyone] waspolyamorous andhaving way more s*x than the average dramatardJump in the discussion.
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Are you ready for back rub no.2?
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The fountainhead is BOOOORRRRIINNNGGGG
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Roark was a modernist though. And I still don't know whether he was super neurodivergent, or just a psychopath.
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Is he? I thought he loved Greco-Roman stuff but im probably misremembering it
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He admired roman buildings like The pantheon. But his style was modernist, and he sperged out every time the clients required a neoclassical façade.
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A bunch of leftoids I know who claimed to love her in their teenage years
swung the other way 
I've never actually read her but based on the reviews I've gotten from folks who have it just sounds like
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What, you don't like literal 70 page monologues?
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Never read her books but I love her for making leftoids seethe
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The moral panic around ayn rand is something else. Remeber when people convinced themselves that man of steel was objectivist propaganda and that zack synder was a nazi over that. Yeah man the movie about a man sacrificing everything for humanities interest is objectivist
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Actual quote by Martha Kent. In that movie Superman saves humanity not because he owes them anything, but because he choses to do so, which kind of fits her “magnanimous” ubermensch archetypes
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But he rejects that in the end lol. The whole movie is him reconnecting with the world and becoming a savior of humanity. It's not like Superman sits and twiddles his thumb while zod kills everyone lol. People just aren't used to the Kent's being wrong esp pa Kent who deliberately gives advice the movie would say is bad. To many confuse Superman being morally conflicted with that meaning Superman shouldn't help others when he always resolves to help humanity at his own expense.
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Like a million other people, she was my favorite author when I was 15-16.
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ayn rand was reacting to commies stealing her family fortune. She was promiscuous after marriage, took government money, and reading about her life reminded me of the villain from fountainhead lmao. awful writer btw
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Never read any of her books, never will. But what I will do is use it to sneedfarm
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!bookworms
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ugly jewish chad with horrendous accent, but also kinda based ngl
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Atlas Shrugged is literally just a dystopian novel where the State decides to nationalize anything that makes money because they are inept. The few industries that aren't nationalized are ran by people adjacent to the state or have relatives within the state.
The state is effectively just mediocrity incarnate and a stand-in for r-slur socialists. John Galt and others are basically ambitious people who keep getting fricked over by the state every time they try to create anything.
It's not great, but it's a neat dystopia because the state is obviously dying, but they still have enough of a monopoly on force and control of the financial system to keep that status quo going.
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Spider man creator Steve Ditko was an objectivist but he was more into Aristotle and the objective morality rather then the selfishness side
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For the longest time i thought Ayn Rand was a man
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Would make sense, it's written like terrible moidbrained smut tbh
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this b-word is an vicious, r-slurred c*nt and anyone who thinks she's a good writer should try mentally aging past the age of 15
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Shitty author people only like to generate seethe and re-enforce their most anti-social behaviors
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All dramatards should love her as she creates massive seethe
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Her actual "prose" isn't that great, but considering she is ESL It's ok.
I Like the fountainhead
my favorite part about reading her is being able easily spot the people who hate her just because it's popular to hate on her.
I also think it's weird because I think a lot of LGBT people would actually like the fountainhead's message of "frick every other person and be yourself no matter what (also do what you want)"
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I've never read Atlas Shrugged. Should I bother?
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It's one of those books that can be really influential in your formative years but if you already have core ideals you think she's either evil, r-slurred, or just a mediocre writer. If for nothing else it's worth a read just to be able to spot the people she was calling out by their seethe.
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I liked the fall of the 20th century motor car corporation.
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I've read some of her essays and change tried to read atlas and anthem. Her prose is so bad and I find her essay logic middling. Especially her utter misunderstanding of other philosophers. That's not to say every individual essay is bad but the misses might as well be aiming off planet.
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I enjoy the fact that she died penniless and on welfare.
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She did not die penniless. She had money from the royalties of her books and owned an apartment. She cashed her Social Security checks because she was very jewish.
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An even better reason to hate her.
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I'm ashamed to admit I fell for the NPC "Ayn Rand bad, evil person, bad writer, NOT a real philosopher, hypocrite that lived off welfare in her old age" line without putting any thought in it for most of my life, until I randomly stumbled onto a twitter thread about her by one of those spergy gay New Yorker rightwing microcelebrities. I would have linked it here but the coward deleted it.
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Ugliest woman I've ever seen. Also her work just seems very lame. But there is one quote of hers that I love:
"I have no faith at all. I only hold convictions."
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