Quote:
Originally Posted by The Ozzman
Atlas Shrugged is a good book, but when Rand goes on and on regarding detail, it sometimes reminds me of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and I think Hawthorne is fucking awful.
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First off, Hawthorne dominates Ayn Rand so hard it's not even funny. The Scarlet Letter alone > everything Rand ever put on paper.
Secondly, here's a detailed explanation of why Atlas Shrugged is not, in fact, a good book. I think we can all agree that it's not particularly well-written, and that the plot alone is uninteresting (no sudden twists or anything) except in what it implies; in other words, the whole thing is just a vehicle for her to espouse her philosophy. That would be fine and all, except that her philosophy is totally fucking ridiculous. "Objectivism" is one of those special few ideas that succeeds at being both totally impractical *and* totally immoral at the same time.
What makes it worse is that Rand not only sucked (hard), she was also incredibly pretentious as she went about her sucking. To paraphrase the introduction to Atlas Shrugged, "books can only do three things: tell an old idea in an old way, tell an old idea in a new way, or tell a new idea in a new way, and as far as I know I'm the only one doing the latter." Hmmm. I wonder why nobody ever suggested that being selfish shortsighted assholes would be a good model for society?
Bah.
(Also the reason you dislike it when Rand goes into detail might have something to do with her characters being soulless bores.)