Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged
- Thread starter KeyserSoze
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I think we should start a book club. You know, we all sit around in a circle, drink tea and talk about what we felt while reading the book.
This could be our first book.
This could be our first book.
A decent book, though it is semi-ranting, and written on a chain-smoking adderall binge (and you cant tell).
You read this in high school?
Or are you making fun of the book?
Either way, the liberal public schools where I grew up would never in a million years let this book be discussed in classrooms.
I read it in high school, yes. Most people I know read it around the same time as Catcher in the Rye (same class I mean). Hell, even my parents had to read it in high school... I had to read it *again* in college.
I thought this was fairly common in the U.S.
Started reading it and it gets so god damned boring that I get to the point where it's a struggle to make it through the chapter. I'd like to get through it and I will at some point but dayum it is dry in spots.
Good book to introduce people to ways to think about the world contrary to the way they are taught within the culture.
Read it post college. I imagine it is a book that, like many things, would be a waste if read in HS.
Read it post college. I imagine it is a book that, like many things, would be a waste if read in HS.
Read this book in HS as well. Have read it since i graduated a couple times, if you ask any successful business owners or executives you may know, there is a high probability that they have read Atlas Shrugged and/or Fountain Head.
Life is a bitch and then u DIE.....
Life is a bitch and then u DIE.....
Re-read - I read The Fountainhead 100 - 200 pages at a time it was so compelling.
+1
changed my whole outlook on things. helped me reach a high level of confidence (not giving a fuck what others think).
I always thought that Atlas Shrugged was a neat story idea, rendered into crap. It's a 400 page political treatise wrapped in a 1,200 page book. The treatise is interesting -- most of Rand's non-fiction is very compelling and thought-provoking, in contrast with her largely awful fiction. The story is neat, the characters neat in concept but shit in execution (I mean, seriously, no people are 100% anything, but all of the characters in AS are 100% in their "mode" from the protagonists to the antagonists to the minor supporters, which basically puts them on level with a pulp romance novel or Dr. Seuss in terms of literary quality.)
The Fountainhead was an amazing novel. Night of January 16th was a pretty good play, especially in its expanded form where the audience becomes the "jury" in the trial in the play. Most of the rest of Rand's fiction should have gone where my fiction (and I think most other people's fiction) goes -- in box in the back of the closet, eventually pulled out, reread, chuckled at, and thrown away.
Additionally, although Rand and her cultist followers vehemently denied it, it is impossible for me to believe that Atlas Shrugged was not heavily influenced by the less-known novel The Driver by Garrett (published more than 30 years before AS, it's about a railroad magnate named Henry Galt who almost singlehandedly saves the American economy from meltdown, only to have the government and people label him as a greedy exploiter and try to take it all away from him "for the people's benefit.") Just my opinion, and there's no harm in being influenced by another author -- it's as if the notion that any idea Rand ever had was not something she created from the Eternal Objectivist Ether is blasphemous. Funny stuff, really.
The Fountainhead was an amazing novel. Night of January 16th was a pretty good play, especially in its expanded form where the audience becomes the "jury" in the trial in the play. Most of the rest of Rand's fiction should have gone where my fiction (and I think most other people's fiction) goes -- in box in the back of the closet, eventually pulled out, reread, chuckled at, and thrown away.
Additionally, although Rand and her cultist followers vehemently denied it, it is impossible for me to believe that Atlas Shrugged was not heavily influenced by the less-known novel The Driver by Garrett (published more than 30 years before AS, it's about a railroad magnate named Henry Galt who almost singlehandedly saves the American economy from meltdown, only to have the government and people label him as a greedy exploiter and try to take it all away from him "for the people's benefit.") Just my opinion, and there's no harm in being influenced by another author -- it's as if the notion that any idea Rand ever had was not something she created from the Eternal Objectivist Ether is blasphemous. Funny stuff, really.
fm1234
Thanks for the heads up on The Driver. I will add it to my reading list.
I read Atlas Shrugged in high school and it meant nothing to me but another book to fight through.
After reading it this past year it has changed my perspective. Changing the dynamics of a country hell bent on self consumption is something that every entrepreneur should at least pay attention to.
Thanks for the heads up on The Driver. I will add it to my reading list.
I read Atlas Shrugged in high school and it meant nothing to me but another book to fight through.
After reading it this past year it has changed my perspective. Changing the dynamics of a country hell bent on self consumption is something that every entrepreneur should at least pay attention to.