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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