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driver

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  1. I don't dislike Romanticism in general. My biggest problem with Ms. Rand's writing style in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged - her fiction with which I'm most recently familiar - is that the characterizations in her novels strike me as absolutely unbelievable. I realize that a certain amount of romanticization is a design feature, not a bug. There's a fine line between romanticism and caricature, though, and I think Ms. Rand overshoots it considerably. The heroes alternate between steely-eyed speechifying, violent copulation, and divining each other's motives almost telepathically; the heroes are square-jawed industrialists, masochistic ubervixens, and Viking pirates named Ragnar. The villains are weak-chinned goobers, thoroughly rotten, irredeemable, and transparent. Lest you think I logged on simply to bait or troll, I thoroughly enjoy her non-fiction. Her essays on ethics and capitalism have influenced me greatly, probably more than any other political thinker. As far as Ms. Rand's other ideas, the only other major problems I have are with her picayune sense that she was *right* about aesthetics - especially when her own work was reminisicent of a potboiler - and that her ideas had to be accepted in toto or not at all.
  2. The major reason is, as you said, for the ideas. I enjoy a lot of things that weren't necessarily created with the greatest technical proficiency. I'd often rather read a poorly written work expressing great ideas than a brilliantly written work expressing stupid ideas.
  3. I've also read Anthem (was a big Rush fan back in the 80s) and We the Living, haven't read either in almost two decades, I'd say. I re-read Fountainhead and Atlas this summer. I'd say, baseline, they're about as smart as cats. For some tasks, i.e., tasks you don't want them performing, they're probably as smart as a small primate; for others, they're roughly as smart as a large cabbage. Temperamentally, they're somewhere between "kitten" and "marmoset," and they thrive on frequent and extensive interaction with their owners and with other ferrets. Very high maintenance animals, although they sleep about 16 out of 24 hours. My wife and I shun the company of human children, but happily spend hours per day with the ferrets.
  4. I'll be lurking for the most part, but I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm a 34-year old law clerk for a state circuit judge. Before law school, my undergraduate majors were English and philosophy. My hobbies are Brazilian jiu-jitsu, strength training, reading, and spending time with my 6 ferrets and my wife. I've read all of Ayn Rand's major works, but don't really consider myself an objectivist, though my own ideas are most often in line with objectivist political thought. I have to confess that while I thoroughly support many (if not most) of Ms. Rand's ideas, I think her writing itself is so overwrought and turgid as to border on berserk. Sorry. I believe she was a fine writer of polemics but a wretched novelist. In any case, I look forward to reading through the back pages!
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