The Greatness and Heroism of Ayn Rand


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To justify this thread's title I refer the reader to two diffwerent parts of Atlas Shrugged. The first is the first run of the John Galt Line and the second is Dagny's pursuit of John Galt into Colorado including the next few pages wherein she meets him. Rand's greatness here refers to the power and clarity of her writing and the heroism of how she sat down for 13 years to create this monster of a prescient novel set in something of an alternate but somewhat familiar universe that describes the world of the 1950s and even more the world of today by getting under the surface of things and surfacing them. For that last, one needs to read the whole book.

--Brant

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Correct. AS is dystopian alternate time line fiction, or at least that is the way I read it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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I agree with Brant’s jolting sentences. Rand’s novels are a wonderful avenue for the introduction of reason into our daily lives and into every government and society on earth. It works well as a gateway in ways that “The Fountainhead” did not. I truly enjoy the feeling of looking at rational Politicians like I might look at a sports hero. Way to go, man! Welcome to my world! I just gave Rand Paul 25 bucks and the same to Senatorial candidate Nancy Mace.

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Fine, but the book is not set in the 50s. Most of the technological and pop-cultural details (business trips by train, network radio, movie newsreels) place it in the 40s; "rotter", I understand, was in use as far back as the nineteenth century.

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Peter Reidy wrote:

Most of the technological and pop-cultural details (business trips by train, network radio, movie newsreels) place it in the 40s;

end quote

I wonder what the experience of reading it is like for a modern, first time reader? Do its retro details make it seem like scifi? I remember watching Harrison Ford in “Blade Runner” at a packed theatre. The movie seemed like a combo of the futuristic, the old fashioned and the arcane. The small, sentient robots moved like wind up toys. We were colonizing far off planets but life on busy earth seemed like Tokyo last Thursday.

Heroic Ayn Rand. Yes she was. Here is an odd thought. What if Rand had little sex drive? Did her “drive” aid her productive greatness or detract? Would her productivity have increased if her husband Frank had been ten years her junior and more vigorous in the sack? BBC’s Graham Norten wants to know. Not me.

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