• ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Eh, it wasn’t bad as a revenge fantasy. You might like it if you enjoy thinking about how all the people who don’t appreciate you would be screwed if you just left. The political philosophy being proposed won’t be too offensive if you already lean libertarian.

    My main objection to the book (other than the infamous speech, which I admit I couldn’t read all the way through) is that it’s a sort of morality play with with exaggerated good and bad and no shades of gray, but it keeps denying this and insisting that the real world really is that black and white. The reader ought to take it with more than a little pinch of salt.

    Oh, and that Ayn Rand’s self-insert has a BDSM fetish I really would have preferred not to know about. (Why do authors keep inserting their kinks into books? I’m looking at you, Robert Jordan. And especially at you, Piers Anthony.)

    • SCB@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My main objection i similar to our but broader in scope. None of the main characters feel like real people. They are Platonic Ideals of Ayn Rand’s fantasy lifestyle, full stop

      That always annoys the shit out of me when not one well. It can be done well, but it takes a significantly better author.

      I think author-kinks are a bit misrepresented (especially with Jordan, who I read more as commentary on power dynamics) but the point is not invalid at all.

      • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        None of the main characters feel like real people.

        Apparently she did that on purpose. From Wikipedia:

        She wanted her fiction to present the world “as it could be and should be”, rather than as it was. This approach led her to create highly stylized situations and characters.

        • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I consider that to be a wishful revisionism on her part. The truth is shes just a bad writer. The charactors in her first book “Anthem” are exactly as wooden and fake as the charactors in “Atlas shrugged.” She never developed any finesse or depth because real people aren’t as shallow as the fake people she dreamt about.