Happy Birthday, Ayn
Okay am I missing something here? Am I just, like, hopelessly out of touch? Why are people taking Ayn Rand seriously? What do they mean by it?
Carlin Romano, for instance. What’s up with that? Carlin Romano’s not an adolescent or a Wall Street Journal addict or the chairman of the Fed, so why is he treating Rand like someone who is worth paying attention to?
Well he is cagey about it. He doesn’t actually say he thinks she’s any good himself – he just says other people do. She’s famous, she’s influential, she made a big noise. But a hasty reader might get the impression that he agrees with those other people. It’s actually a somewhat interesting bit of journalistic sharp practice, I think. ‘Write us a thousand words on Ayn Rand for the centenary.’ ‘Oh hell – do I have to?’ ‘Come on – she’s important. Just hold your nose and do it. You don’t have to say she’s a second Hume or anything.’ ‘All right, all right – I’ll tell them how damn influential she was. I can certainly say that without lying! Unfortunately.’ And that’s all he does say. It’s quite amusing in a way. Like any bit of fan-dom. Hey, she’s famous, she’s really famous, she’s very very famous. The end.
No one, however, now doubts that she pulled off a major, enduring American career as both novelist and thinker, and that her influence and popularity have persisted among readers since her death in 1982…A 1991 survey by the Library of Congress found Atlas Shrugged to be the American novel most influential on readers’ lives. Her books have sold more than 30 million copies around the world and sell hundred of thousands every year in the United States.
Err…yeah. Notice how consistent all that (and the rest of the article) is with thinking her books are piles of crap. Notice how resolutely Romano never says what he actually thinks. Quite funny in a way.
Scott McLemee is much less coy.
My own outlook, of course, being more of the “first, let’s tax the rich to death” variety. We’re all doomed — doomed, I tells ya — until there is a rigorous program of confiscation of incomes above (let’s say for starters) a million dollars. If that is a political fantasy, certainly it is no more so than Rand’s utopian capitalism. The more I think about it, the more her worldview resembles a Soviet era socialist-realist novel with the word “communism” scratched out and “capitalism” written in. The joke has it that they were “boy meets tractor” romances. In her case, it’s more like “masochistic girl meets skyscraper.”
That’s more like it.
“No one, however, now doubts that she pulled off a major, enduring American career as both novelist and thinker”
There is at least on person who doubts she was a great thinker, and I suspect possibly more than one. How much thinking does it take to think that all liberals are anti american and ought to be shot as traiters. This kind of nonsense is not the output of a mind used to thinking great thoughts.
Interesting this eulogising of Ayn Rand, an extremist who at one point went so far as to claim that the Native American holocaust was virtuous because the Native Americans were uncivilised savages, and at another point went so far as to claim that altruism is morally wrong (although this point is inconsistently elaborated in her work).
At the same time as people on the right are claiming, with a straight face (see a recent comments thread on Crooked Timber), that “We on the right sure do marginalise our wackos, but the Left don’t!”
I just saw the issue of “Reason” magazine at Borders dedicated to the Ayn Rand 100th anniversary. It seems that if someone is even remotely still known 100 years after her birth, someone will lavish praise on her.
For a good, scholary pummeling of the Rand legacy, check out the book “The Ayn Rand Cult.” It’s a very entertaining look at the whole Objectivist phenomena, and the paradox that a movement dedicated to “reason” could be so damn unreasonable. Michael Shermer has a chapter in his book “Why People Believe Weird Things” on the same topic.
Phil
Chris – ah, but notice, Romano doesn’t say she was a great thinker. He doesn’t even really say she was a thinker. He says she ‘pulled off’ a career as a novelist and thinker. He’s pretty much saying she pulled off a con job. He’s very careful (if I’m not mistaken) not to say anything actually admiring, throughout the whole article. I think he chose the word ‘thinker’ carefully. Well, yeah, she was a thinker – that’s a pretty broad category. Almost anyone can qualify as a thinker. There’s that big ol’ statue, for instance.
The eulogising is interesting, isn’t it. But then – I’ve whined here before about the fact that Barnes and Noble shelves Rand in philosophy. She’s just taken absurdly seriously in the US.
Shermer has some inside knowledge of the cult, because he once was a Randy himself, as he says in that chapter.
But admitting what one thinks about something or, even worse, pointing out inconsistencies or factual errors in people’s statements violates the fundamental rule of American-style objective, balanced journalism. Far better just to transcribe whatever other people say and let the readers figure it all out. Who are journalists to say what’s right or wrong? That’s why they make the big bucks: They never succumb to the temptation to weigh opposing statements, check for accuracy and validity, and come to a reasonable conclusion, as we weaker beings are wont to do.
Just curious, does Rand have a following anywhere outside the USA?
“does Rand have a following anywhere outside the USA?”
Not that I’ve ever heard of. I think she’s seen as one of those inexplicable Murkan things – like Bush.
Romano’s actually not a hack journalist though – I think he teaches philosophy! He writes excellent review-essays – I’ve linked to several of them in News. That’s why I was and am suprised he was bothering with Rand. I kind of wish he hadn’t been so coy though. Most people will read that article and think it’s praising Rand. sigh
“I think he teaches philosophy!”
So does your friend Keith Burgess-Jackson!
snicker
So do a lot of fools and knaves!
I didn’t mean it as an encomium, just to say that he’s not an all-purpose beat reporter who writes about Ayn Rand today and Martha Stweart tomorrow.
I agree that there is no system of thought worth the name in the Randian ideas.
I was given ‘Atlas Shrugged’ when working in Zimbabwe in 1998. It is amazing how prescient the novel appeared in THAT context!
And studying entrepreneurship as part of the MBA included some exposure to the ideas about success and the ‘ubermensch’ that percolate around this general area of study. The value of ‘having a go’ is vastly under-rated in classical economics, and probably viewed as phallocentric colonialism in lit-crit. (John Legge was absolutely inspiring in this course, worth alone the entire MBA fee.)
Nevertheless, whether in military adventurism or economic value adding, this unfashionable virtue of the actor – proactive, seminal, colonising, building, designing, creating, helping – is what makes things better in our world.
“Chris – ah, but notice, Romano doesn’t say she was a great thinker.”
OB: As usual you are correct. I must confess, I had actually noticed the clever wording. However, I pretended to not notice it in order to denigrate Ayn Rand. There is not an excuse for deliberately misinterpreting someone elses words just to make a point. However, if there was an exuses, slagging off Ayn Rand must be it. (Having said that, if people deliberately engineer their words to be ambiguous they have less grounds for complaint when someone takes advantage of that for their own ends).
“The eulogising is interesting, isn’t it. But then – I’ve whined here before about the fact that Barnes and Noble shelves Rand in philosophy. She’s just taken absurdly seriously in the US.”
And that actually deserves some peering into. Why is such a shitty thinker and unspeakably bad novelist so widely regarded as important in American “philosophy” while totally ignored almost everywhere else in the World? Hell, I hadn’t even heard of her before I moved to the USA.
I actually have a bit of soft spot for Ayn Rand. She’s a reasonable writer at best (Atlas Shrugged is her worst), and an excruciatingly awful philosopher, but she adds vitality to ideas that are under-exposed in popular culture (although they’re not really her ideas, but its doubtful she was fully aware of that).
I thoroughly dislike what most Randians take from her, and they annoyed me so much throughout my teens and twenties I never got around to reading her books. When I did I found they were less objectionable than I imagined, albeit confused. Jose, I suspect that Americans think Rand is amazing because they don’t know much about Nietzsche.
“However, I pretended to not notice it in order to denigrate Ayn Rand.”
That made me laugh a good deal.
“Why is such a shitty thinker and unspeakably bad novelist so widely regarded as important in American “philosophy”…?”
Well at least she’s not regarded that way by American philosophers! Or political theorists or anyone else in that neck of the woods. She’s regarded that way by…well, by people who don’t have much to compare her to, as Simon hints.
It’s still bizarre though.
“Well at least she’s not regarded that way by American philosophers! Or political theorists or anyone else in that neck of the woods. She’s regarded that way by…well, by people who don’t have much to compare her to, as Simon hints.”
Nor is she particularly loved by literature professors. I was never assigned her work as a student in any undergrad, master’s or doctoral course. I’ve never known a co-worker who assigned her. Heck, I admit I’ve read of her, but not her work itself. Of course, on this blog, an English professor’s dislike may be considered a sign of something’s value! ;)
Rand’s following seems to be made up of adolescents…or people still emotionally stuck in adolescence. I’m basing this assessment on my acquaintance with three dozen or so Randians, all but one of whom were dorky white American males (the lone exception was a snotty teenaged girl from Shanghai–a haughty hottie!).
I have to admit I’ve never read Rand. I was always put off by her followers and by her repulsive performance on the old Phil Donohue Show. She couldn’t possibly be worth reading, could she?
Yes, worth reading in the sense that newspapers are worth reading. See what others are talking about.
The comment about people being enthusiastic because they don’t know much about Nietzche is pretty good, but 98% of the university-educated world are perhaps in that category, if you allow us non-Arts students to be counted.
But the idea that energy and initiative are something special does not require getting the forehead tattooed. Joining cults, whether of Rand or Scientology, is a sign of poor grounding in something or other.
The torture never ends. I just learned that my book discussion group’s next nonfiction selection will be Rand’s “For the New Intellectual.” I’ll still go though, just to get a few nice jabs in.
Phil
Man, if my book discussion group tried that – that would be one very sorry book discussion group!!
Nick S, great idea – that would rawk!
The Pink Floyd/Animal Farm music/book combo would be much more palatable to me than Rush/Rand. I also wouldn’t mind Radiohead/Philip K. Dick.
Phil
Kule. Rawk awn.
Iron Butterflies and Wheels…