Has Anyone Else Read “Atlas Shrugged?”

Am I the only person who has read Ayn Rand's “ATLAS SHRUGGED” from cover to cover? I think so.

I keep hearing about people who started the book but gave up well before page 1,160. Many bailed by page ten!

Cenk, of the Young Turks, gave up on page three, saying it was the most boring book he ever read. And he made it through law school! Gore Vidal described the book as “unreadable.”

A few pundits, notably Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Rick Santelli have endorsed the book, as have some politicians, like Paul Ryan. But, did these conservatives actually read the book? None of them seemed to notice that the book promotes atheism and promiscuity, and is against family values. It has the church siding with socialists and conservatives believing in science!

Liberals can't stand the book. Besides being uninteresting, it promotes hatred, violence, selfishness, unregulated capitalism, financial elitism, and Hitlerian physical ideals. It's full of false assertions and predictions and other stuff that's hard to stomach.

The book is the size of the Mumbai telephone directory and about as easy to read. And the fact that Ayn Rand makes up her own definitions for words adds confusion to the toxic mix.

I read ten pages a day for four months to become, possibly, the first person to finish the book. Then I read several biographies about the author, being curious about what kind of an evil person would write a book like Atlas Shrugged.

As a public service, I put together a little video that tells people all they need to know about Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, and in under ten minutes! I did the reading, so you don't have to.

Let me know if you have questions about anything in the video. I took careful notes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-E7YQyYHZw

 

I've read it. Ayn Rand is a little dry. I can understand why people would find the book to be boring.

I have to disagree with the assertion that Ayn Rand promotes unrestricted capitalism. She is a financial elitist. She seems to believe that there is a small group of people who are better than the rest of us and therefore deserve to be put in charge of all production. She seems to believe that this elite team should be unregulated while the rest of us face regulations designed to keep us from competing with the elite team.

When it comes to capitalism, I'll take Adam Smith over Ayn Rand. I believe capitalism is something that should belong to everybody. Capitalism is the belief that all are entitled to own capital. We all have the right to own fixed capital and participate in the production of our nation's food and goods. I believe a system that does not give every individual the right to produce modern products cannot be called a capitalist system.

Capitalism will not survive elitism in any society, especially a voting society. All people must have the legal right and actual ability to have a capitalist venture for capitalism to survive. If only a few people have the right to be capitalists then the rest of the people will see no need to continue a capitalist system. Why would they continue to support a system that does not give them control over the production and distribution of their food and goods? If we want to retain capitalism we must give all people a way to have a legimate capitalist venture. If we want to retain capitalism then we must retain a nation of practicing capitalists. Adam Smith seems to have understood this concept. Ayn Rand does not seem to understand this concept.

 

Read a very little years ago, I'd be letting humanity down if I picked it up again.

 

I don't think you've read the book clearly. Maybe you ought to give it a second read. As it is hard to fully understand the book if you are only reading 10 pages a day for four months.

Ayn Rand doesn't promote financial elitism. She promotes the idea objectivity. What she hates are parasites in society, regardless if you are rich or poor. In regards to the poor, she hates the parasites who are unproductive and leech of the rest of society who are productive. In regards to the rich, she hates the parasites who have obtained wealth and have obtained that wealth by doing nothing to benefit society.

In promoting selfishness is never been a bad thing. The term selfishness is just rudimentary fit to describe one particular meaning. All selfishness means is that you live according to your own nature. You are concerned with your own individual interests. You live by the judgement of your own mind. You trust in your own ability to do what you believe is right, and not what is arbitrarily chosen by what society says is right.

Selfishness is not necessarily a bad thing. You are often taught to believe that the key to being a good person is to make other people happy, and therefore it makes you happy. Why is it only good to make others happy instead of yourself?

 

Should atheists and left wingers love it then?

 

Really? I think what you read impacts no one but you. Don't flatter yourself.

 

Really.

Since Rand is the topic..

It seems to me that some people who read her enormous tome-of-poop appear to be attempting to be somewhat influential in the nether regions of sleazy US politics which rather suggests that what one reads can indeed have an impact beyond the singular.

I forgot to flatter myself today so thanks for the reminder.

 

So now you want to throw around a few insults (tome-of-poop. Creative, I will give you that) and hope that others will infer from this that Rand's work isn't worth anyone's time. That's not very objective or, shall I say, active (yes, active, not open) minded. You aren't much different from some creationist who will make a passing remark about Darwin (has anyone ever called 'The Origin of Species' a tome of poop?)

 

Others can infer whatever they want from me, you, God, Satan, or Bob next door for all I care.

Actually.

But thanks for the cool story, bro.

 

I read Atlas Shrugged + listened to the audiobook version + read Leonard Pekoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. All in all, I wasn't impressed, though I did take a liking to her usage of the term "looters" - perfect!

Anyway, if I'm going to camp out in a book that could be used for a boat anchor, I'll take The Essays of Montaigne any day. They are filled to overflowing with deep insights and wondrous observations about the human condition. Plus you gain a huge appreciation for the keen insights of many of the notable classical Greek and Roman writers, especially the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. Toss Ayn Rand to the sea - try Montaigne!

 

Anyone who tells you that THEY did the reading so that YOU don't have to is doing the opposite of what any rational person would recommend. I would do the opposite and encourage people to read the book for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

 

Rand wrote fiction. She made up a fictional world to accommodate her notions because fiction provided the only venue in which they could be accommodated.

Perhaps it is the raging hormonal changes that cause some hyper-impressionable pubescent males to become smitten with Ms Rosenbaum's pulp but, barring acute arrested development, maturity inevitably happens, reality asserts itself, and the distinction is drawn.

Paul D. Ryan, a notorious randwank, was embarrassed into renouncing her ravings on Fox, but it was his preface to the rejection that strains credulity: “Those novels, I thought were interesting, but her philosophy, which is quite a bit different, is something I just don’t agree with.”

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[color=66006]"Wow. I could have had a Postum."[/color]​

 

This can be easily dismissed as a drive by insult, lacking in substance. I've seen some rational criticism of Rand's philosophy but, obviously, this isn't it.

 

Dullness aside, are you actually denying that she was a fiction writer that made up the world that fit her philosophy?

 

But of course you have.

Here's some more:

 

I wasn't really addressing that but, if you insist, yes, she manufactured a world that isn't like the one that existed at the time she wrote the book. She would be the first to tell you that. You act as if there is a hard and fast rule concerning what fiction should present but there isn't. All fiction is made up to a large degree (hint: that's why they call it fiction.). What I was addressing was this comment:

Nothing you wrote addresses the substance of Rand's philosophy, which, by the way, is presented in full by her in a series of non-fiction books and lectures (start with 'Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology' and 'Philosophy, Who Needs It" or you can access 'The Ayn Rand Lexicon' for many references to statements by Ms. Rand on a variety of subjects.).

 

As if on a schedule, every couple of months or so some Progressive/elitist posts some seething rant about Atlas Shrugged and/or Rand's continued monumental influence on society. For that fact alone, it is worth reading the book twice...and I have!

Contiues to amaze me how self-determined intellectuals claims to have read it and understood it, yet their tirades and hissy-fits determine otherwise. It seems to be running like clockwork though.

 

Yes, I'm aware of the conservative critique of the philosophy and the fiction. I've read Whitaker Chambers review of 'Atlas Shrugged' (You can find a full review in his collection of essays entitled "Ghosts on The Roof" which I have a copy of in my library) and I can tell you that it is not an accurate presentation of the book nor is it rational. For those who don't want to spend the money on the book, here is the online version of the review at National Review: Big Sister is Watching You.

 

A female told me I need to read it.

Therefore I will never read it.

I have read many many other great works though, and I'm pretty sure I don't need to subject myself to a book full of pretentious self aggrandizing garbage by some useless female
from a meaningless era.

 

Rand's turgid fiction, once the boy's equivalent of "chicklit," is, oddly, the TP's answer to Stephen Hawking's non-fictional A Brief History of Time, flying off the bookshelves of bookstores only to alight onto the bookshelf at home with nary a flutter between.

The marked contrast, of course, is in the subject matter's relationship to reality. Nowhere in SH's universe is AR's fiction fact.

 

I had perused it as a callow youth but, once I realized that John Galt couldn't fly, I opted for truth, justice, and the American way.

 

i read it back in the late 60s and i figured with the hippie craze and the drug craze that it would be bad if it was real..little did iknow it would would become the new bible for the democratic party in 2000s

 

Looks like you bailed before the next paragraph, which reads: Liberals can't stand the book. Besides being uninteresting, it promotes hatred, violence, selfishness, unregulated capitalism, financial elitism, and Hitlerian physical ideals. It's full of false assertions and predictions and other stuff that's hard to stomach.

 

If you want to spend hundreds of hours reading Atlas Shrugged, be my guest.

 

I read Anthem and We the Living when in College in the '60's, at least those were readable. Tried Fountainhead and Atlas, got about 150 pages into both and realized that the woman was a complete loss as a human being and proto-fascist. The sad thing is that she has so much influence in the libertarian wing of the republican party, while her contemporary Leo Strauss (father of the Neo-Cons and another proto-fascist) has so much sway in the other wing. Both were elitists who believed rules were only for the common folk and it was the job of the elites to keep the common people in check and under their thumb.