I grew up in a place where we were required to read Rand in school, which I think must have resulted from some school board compromise, because we had to read ANTHEM, but we also had to read CATCHER IN THE RYE. But at the time, a nerdy boy who hadn't dated yet, had undergone a certain amount of trauma, and generally felt very isolated, I found myself quite attracted to Rand's writing, and found(and still do, frankly) Holden Caulfield to be an uninteresting, whiny prep school boy with little to tell me. The writer's reference to "mini-malls" is only partly accurate, as it was in a bookstore in a local mall that I found her books. I was not even slightly right-wing and never have been.

I suppose it was the fact I was in the South and she was atheist that I had a hard time seeing how much of it was right-wing. She was controversial down there solely on religious grounds; in the South in the 80s that was enough to be rejected. I was exactly the target for her writing, and the skewed atmosphere of the South made it feel rebellious to read her.

And I did, every one of them, even the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Even the doorstop that is ATLAS SHRUGGED(and unless you're as much a masochist as me, I do not recommend it. Did you know the climax has to do with the use by the altruists of a lethal infrasound machine, for no particular reason?).

But what I found disturbing and tried to look past before I couldn't anymore was how she describes everyone that is not the hero, or a worshipper of same. My use of the word "worshipper" is advised: it's the word she used herself. She said that men, at their best, were heroes, and women, at best, could only be "hero-worshippers." Like Dagny Taggart, or Dominique Francon, the latter of which comes to her worship of Roark via being unambiguously raped. Which Rand, an apparent admirer of sociopaths, would believe was Roark's right to do. Does believe that, if the fact that there's no indication in the text the hardly-subtle Rand disapproves of this act. Quite the opposite--she seems to think it's very romantic. You rarely see as much emotion in her work as the moments like that one. (in that I suppose she's simply a bestseller-writer)

But more than that, the way she describes the masses. The author of the article mentions many. He doesn't mention the workers who blindly and maniacally destroy the plant of Henry Rearden, who are described(by a stock, dying "da kid" character) as like marauding ants.They don't destroy the plant for any particular reason. It's just that without Rearden's leadership they become animals. There's also the strike the writer mentions, and the train is running on Rearden Metal, a symbol of all the "parasites" want to steal in the book. But Rand acts like strikers are terrorists, and believes most people aren't much better than animals. It's pretty obvious that, knowing not everyone can possibly get to the top, even those of equal talent, Rand assumes that most would be the servants of her elite. Not by force, by natural default. If not for the do-gooder altruists ruining everything.

This in a world, in ATLAS(published in the late 50s), where radio is the predominant mass medium and classical music is popular music, an opera called "Phaeton"(again, not subtle--and interestingly, Rand's composer changed it so Phaeton survives. Keep in mind, the whole point of the story is Phaeton steals his father Apollo's chariot. Steals it. I guess it's not theft if Rand says not) is as big a deal as a pop album would be now. In the Fountainhead, the most influential cultural and political figure is Ellsworth Toohey, an architecture critic. I suppose it would be easier to take her seriously if she spoke of anything like a real world, but she does not. She creates her own world, stacks the deck so her arguments will work, and then reapplies these junk philosophical "findings" to the real world. In THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, she writes an entire essay avoiding a question a student asked her, the classic "Would you save a drowning man if it meant risking your own life" with nothing but contempt for a mindset that would even be thinking in those terms. (For the record, it happens. My great-grandfather died trying to save a drowning kid) This tells you all you need to know.

And leave poor Nietzsche alone. He would have spat upon her work. He gets unfair blame enough for the Nazis, don't drag him in with the Randroids as well.

Interesting contrast between Ayn Rand and J.D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye is not the perfect novel some fans think it is, but it is a sweet depiction of addled adolescence. Rand's work is shitty by comparison because it is devoid of nuance. Every character she writes is a type. Holden Caulfield, on the other hand, has become a type.

That was a twisted and irrational analysis of Objectivism. I agree you were a Randroid, i.e. someone who never understood the ideas and likely spouted terms dogmatically. They do exist.

The virtue of selfishness, just to take one point at random, inductively establishes why a code of morality is required, and why selfishness is that code. Yet all you got from it was a point about a drowning man.

All people like you do is muddy the waters.

Just a few more points. Eddie Willers represents your 'average' man in AS. He is average, yet the moral equal of the heroes in the novel. He was considered to be good, thus showing that Ayn Rand didn't have contempt for the average man. Which is clear from her writings anyway. Her were is there to inspire *everyone*. The term "the masses", btw, is collectivistic. It's the way the left refers to the citizenry. You don't uphold individual rights and have contempt for people. Ayn Rand did not have contempt for people, unless they deserved it as individuals.

As to hero worship, that has to do with admiring the ideal in man, what man ought to be. I personally have many heroes, including men like Sir Isaac Newton, Archimedes, Aristotle, Jefferson, et.al. Heroes give us inspiration, by letting us know what is possible to man.

Error correction: "Her were is there to inspire *everyone*. " I screwed that sentence up! "Her writings were meant to inspire *everyone*." is what I should have written!

Let's not forget that Eddie Willers, the "average guy," does the exact same thing that Dagny does for the entire book - dedicate himself to supporting Taggart Railroad and fighting the looters. The only difference between him and Dagny is that Dagny gives up a bit earlier and goes off to Sparkly Sunshine Land with John Galt and lives in an Objectivist paradise, while Eddie Willers continues the struggle (again, the SAME THING that the heroine does) and is abandoned to die when the train he's on breaks down (he is the only one to stay to fix it).

Dagny lives the rest of her life in happiness not because she's a better, smarter person than Eddie (although she is, in the book), but because she met the right people at the right time (John Galt). Eddie didn't meet those people (well actually he did, but John Galt didn't care to make any personal investment in Eddie), therefore he continues on the same path that Dagny was on.

Moral of the story: It's not what you know, it's who you know.

No, I was not talking about the whole book, I was referring to the point of a single essay within it, in which the point about the drowning man argument was made.

"Her writings were meant to inspire *everyone*."

Then she failed spectacularly. I have never been so un-inspired by someone's writings. Ugly prose describing an ugly premise.

In the 1950s, radio was much more universal in the United States than television. In 1955, only 50% of American households had a TV. Radio was still "the predominant mass medium."

Classical music accounted for 20% of all record sales in the early 1950s.

The changes in society, etc., are more compressed than you realize. Rand's books, for whatever other faults they might have, aren't really anachronistic.