I still remember the first time I read Anthem


unklelemmy

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In fact it was the first time I read any Ayn Rand. I had heard of her and new she was an author but didn't know much else. A coworker of mine, Jen, told me she just read a book that I had to read too. She (my co-worker, not Ayn) was cute, intelligent and funny and I had a huge crush on her so I did. Alas she turned out to be a lesbian but that is a story for another day. Anyway, one day at work she came up to me and said she read a book that was so awful that I just had to read it. I figured no way could it be as bad as she was saying and it was very short so I figured what the heck and read the whole thing that night. Well, needless to say it was awfull beyond my dreams. I have often told other people of this horrible book and how they need to read it too but no one will. I guess only Jen and I shared the same interest in awful works of fiction. Alas, if only she was staright....

PS-I started reading it again on the forum and yep-its as bad as I remember!

Thank you for posting it and have a great day!

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In fact it was the first time I read any Ayn Rand. I had heard of her and new she was an author but didn't know much else. A coworker of mine, Jen, told me she just read a book that I had to read too. She (my co-worker, not Ayn) was cute, intelligent and funny and I had a huge crush on her so I did. Alas she turned out to be a lesbian but that is a story for another day. Anyway, one day at work she came up to me and said she read a book that was so awful that I just had to read it. I figured no way could it be as bad as she was saying and it was very short so I figured what the heck and read the whole thing that night. Well, needless to say it was awfull beyond my dreams. I have often told other people of this horrible book and how they need to read it too but no one will. I guess only Jen and I shared the same interest in awful works of fiction. Alas, if only she was staright....

PS-I started reading it again on the forum and yep-its as bad as I remember!

Thank you for posting it and have a great day!

It isn't one of her better books.

Did you object to the idea behind it or to the pseudo-archaic style?

Edited by Michelle R
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unklelemmy:

Welcome aboard. What did you do professionally other than cruise the halls looking for heterosexual women?

Adam

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This post seems so phony to me, the misspelled words (new for knew, etc.) Why would someone come on here to dis 'Anthem' knowing that most of us love Ayn Rand's works? And he has trouble getting people to read Anthem? I know people who don't like Ayn Rand at all who still respond to Anthem.

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I've never been much of a fun of short stories - too little character building, etc, etc. But, after reading Anthem, it changed my mind.

Curious if 1984 was a derivitive of sorts from Ayn's story...

~ Shane

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I've never been much of a fun of short stories - too little character building, etc, etc. But, after reading Anthem, it changed my mind.

Curious if 1984 was a derivitive of sorts from Ayn's story...

~ Shane

Rand's Anthem is extremely derivative of We.

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This post seems so phony to me, the misspelled words (new for knew, etc.) Why would someone come on here to dis 'Anthem' knowing that most of us love Ayn Rand's works? And he has trouble getting people to read Anthem? I know people who don't like Ayn Rand at all who still respond to Anthem.

I promise you this isn't phony. I apologize about the typos/misspellings but I am 100% serious. Anthem is awful.

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This post seems so phony to me, the misspelled words (new for knew, etc.) Why would someone come on here to dis 'Anthem' knowing that most of us love Ayn Rand's works? And he has trouble getting people to read Anthem? I know people who don't like Ayn Rand at all who still respond to Anthem.

I promise you this isn't phony. I apologize about the typos/misspellings but I am 100% serious. Anthem is awful.

Welcome aboard. What did you do professionally other than cruise the halls looking for heterosexual women?

Adam

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This post seems so phony to me, the misspelled words (new for knew, etc.) Why would someone come on here to dis 'Anthem' knowing that most of us love Ayn Rand's works? And he has trouble getting people to read Anthem? I know people who don't like Ayn Rand at all who still respond to Anthem.

I promise you this isn't phony. I apologize about the typos/misspellings but I am 100% serious. Anthem is awful.

Welcome aboard. What did you do professionally other than cruise the halls looking for heterosexual women?

Adam

I wasnt cruising the halls looking for heterosexual women. I was cruising an ice cream store. I also like reading, discussing religion and politics, watching sports a/o reality television, being a smart ass in general, and drinking tea and beer. Mainly being a smart ass though.

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This post seems so phony to me, the misspelled words (new for knew, etc.) Why would someone come on here to dis 'Anthem' knowing that most of us love Ayn Rand's works? And he has trouble getting people to read Anthem? I know people who don't like Ayn Rand at all who still respond to Anthem.

I promise you this isn't phony. I apologize about the typos/misspellings but I am 100% serious. Anthem is awful.

Welcome aboard. What did you do professionally other than cruise the halls looking for heterosexual women?

Adam

Excellent, you fit in perfectly.

I always found Anthem extremely awkward, but the first book I read was Atlas Shrugged so Anthem was work. However, I enjoyed it.

As Michelle notes it is real close conceptually to We. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29 Russian, 1921, dystopian, funny number names, but that was before the Austrian gave us a real look at a "government number" first hand, on a human being's forearm.

Coincidence?

Adam

I wasnt cruising the halls looking for heterosexual women. I was cruising an ice cream store. I also like reading, discussing religion and politics, watching sports a/o reality television, being a smart ass in general, and drinking tea and beer. Mainly being a smart ass though.

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What's awful about Anthem? You objected to her individualism, or the writing or to all her books?

The main thing I disliked about Anthem was how it was written. Very heavy handed and cliched. Completely unrealistic. Plus the entire book was nothing more than a poorly constructed straw man argument for objectivism. I havent read her other books so cant comment on them.

Edited by unklelemmy
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I've never been much of a fun of short stories - too little character building, etc, etc. But, after reading Anthem, it changed my mind.

Curious if 1984 was a derivitive of sorts from Ayn's story...

~ Shane

Rand's Anthem is extremely derivative of We.

Noted. But did 1984 get any of its construct from Anthem, or possibly We?

~ Shane

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I've never been much of a fun of short stories - too little character building, etc, etc. But, after reading Anthem, it changed my mind.

Curious if 1984 was a derivitive of sorts from Ayn's story...

~ Shane

Rand's Anthem is extremely derivative of We.

Noted. But did 1984 get any of its construct from Anthem, or possibly We?

~ Shane

I never thought of even finding out if any of them were related: This is what Wiki wrote...

Every hour in one's life is directed by "The Table," a precursor to Nineteen Eighty-Four's telescreen. It is also prefigured by the repellent Vicar Dewley's 'Precepts of Assured Salvation' in Zamyatin's 1916 Newcastle novella: Islanders.

George Orwell believed that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) "must be partly derived from" We.[11] However, in a 1962 letter, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World long before he had heard of We.[12] According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying.[13]

Ayn Rand's Anthem (1938) has several major similarities to We, although it is stylistically and thematically different.[14]

George Orwell began Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) some eight months after he read We in a French translation and wrote a review of it.[15] Orwell is reported as "saying that he was taking it as the model for his next novel."[16] Brown writes that for Orwell and certain others, We "appears to have been the crucial literary experience."[17] Shane states that "Zamyatin's influence on Orwell is beyond dispute".[18] Russell, in an overview of the criticism of We, concludes that "1984 shares so many features with We that there can be no doubt about its general debt to it", however there is a minority of critics who view the similarities between We and 1984 as "entirely superficial". Further, Russell finds "that Orwell's novel is both bleaker and more topical than Zamyatin's, lacking entirely that ironic humour that pervades the Russian work."[12]

Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Eugene Zamiatin's We."[19]

Adam

Edited by Selene
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Adam,

Thanks!

What drove me to that question was the nature of relationships between men and women, which were explicitly forbidden outside of pre-arranged couplings.

~ Shane

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Noted. But did 1984 get any of its construct from Anthem, or possibly We?

~ Shane

Eric Blaire (George Orwell) wrote -1984- in 1948 or before. I think it was totally original with him. He had finally given up on Communism and Totalitarianism and portrayed it as it was. It required the total denial of objective reality and of identity.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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