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I loved the book, though I think her development of character and control of dialogue was weak. Her sense of location was wonderful and her story was excellent. I think she would have made a good movie director as well.
I am not big on Objectivism, but I do think Atlas Shrugged is very good.
I detested what I read of Infinite Jest. It is an excersize in boredom, one of those pretentious pieces of crap that some people put themselves through to prove they are intellectual, pretending to enjoy something that no one could possibly enjoy.
I usually finish books that I start, even if I don’t like them. Once in a while, however, I simply don’t have the stamina and I put it down. Only once have I actually torn the book to shreds and thrown it away.
This is not to say that David Foster Wallace couldn’t write, merely that he chose not to. There are some glimmers of some interesting things in the first 150 pages - or however far I got - but it bogs down in tediousness for the sake of it.
I never read Atlas Shrugged but I think it’s overrated.
Thanks for the educated opinion.
No, it’s the best book in the history of mankind.
This accurately describes my opinion on softer libertarian works like Atlas Shrugged and Road to Serfdom. They’re both good introductions (especially Serfdom), but once you’ve experienced Rothbard and Spooner, there really is no going back.
And Shrugged was just…too long. I’ve read plenty of novels of similar lengths (most recently, Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series) and never got tired of them. I think that Rand’s style of writing just doesn’t appeal to me.
I only made it through about 2/3’s of it, but I really only found Francisco’s money speech to be worth reading.
I loved most of the novel but i also thought the ending felt rushed. It is what converted me from Stirner’s Egoism to Anarcho Capitalism.I love rothbard’s play about her and her cult and i think i have also become disillusioned with objectivism b/c of the cult of personality, rand’s vitriolic personality, and the ass backwardness of PARTS of her philosophy.
“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”- Rand
That quote sums up the best part of objectivism and what makes atlas shrugged beautiful. the love of the self and one’s happiness. the rising up of individuals using reason. But i hate the crazy “philosophical” parts. She was a novelist and unfortunately instead of creating a form of selfish libertarianism she created a “philosophy” on her own. And today this philosophy is pretty much a NEO CONSERVATIVE philosophy and all organizations are practically neo-con think tanks. And her night watchmen state is full of shit.
If it weren’t for rand i would still be stuck on revleft like a psycho, but her vitriolic personality just turns me off especially what she said about gays and her naive opinion on women. But i still love atlas shrugged and the fountainhead. They are both good especially atlas but glen beckians in this world will always make it look like a god wrote it so love the book hate the woman and slightly like the philosophy.