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Ken's Reviews > Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
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by
This book was the most overrated piece of crap of the twentieth century. It spars only with Dianetics and in its absolute absurdity.
The characters are absolutely idealized 'heroes of capitalism' action figures. I wonder if Rand imagined some of these great barons of industry coming to her rescue when she immigrated away from the vile pit of communism that she left behind. You know, during the time where she forged her citizenship papers and depended on the generocity and kindness of a liberal, open society.
If only she had us all her irritating, long winded, repetative tales of woe for the monied class of brilliantly handsome, powerful super geniuses.
She bases all of this on her objectivist claptrap, claiming rationality as her own private high ground. But this is a general critique of her works. Specifically this book is completely overwritten and serves as flak cover for all the wrong people. The Jack Welch's and Phil Knights that imagine themselves to be the heroes of this book.
This book has done more to create a generation of self interested greedy mindless zombies than any other book I can think of.
The characters are absolutely idealized 'heroes of capitalism' action figures. I wonder if Rand imagined some of these great barons of industry coming to her rescue when she immigrated away from the vile pit of communism that she left behind. You know, during the time where she forged her citizenship papers and depended on the generocity and kindness of a liberal, open society.
If only she had us all her irritating, long winded, repetative tales of woe for the monied class of brilliantly handsome, powerful super geniuses.
She bases all of this on her objectivist claptrap, claiming rationality as her own private high ground. But this is a general critique of her works. Specifically this book is completely overwritten and serves as flak cover for all the wrong people. The Jack Welch's and Phil Knights that imagine themselves to be the heroes of this book.
This book has done more to create a generation of self interested greedy mindless zombies than any other book I can think of.
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Natalie
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rated it 4 stars
Dec 17, 2008 10:38AM
Interesting....I will be honest and say I don't have a lot of political reading to compare this too but simply read it as an interesting fiction based on an ideal of politics. I know she was a political writer before this work but this is all I've read of her. I enjoyed her overstatement of characters as it seemed to force me to think outside the box of realism where a situation such as this could never occur. I'm very literally minded and things like her lack of inclusion of the world outside the US would have hung this book for me for sure, however, she made my mind go into fiction mode on this one and it worked. I liked that she was daring enough to push the book past where I thought she would. I expected her to cave at some point but she makes it all the way through to the fictional valley of happiness and enlightenment...I was impressed! lol!
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Doers do and whiners whine.
Right. Workers work and owners... well they just get stuff, especially if they inherit it, as most of the wealthy do.The problem with responding to a critique or a question with a made up proverb is that the proverb can be contorted to say anything. Also I have no idea if you are agreeing or disagreeing.
Seriously, make an actual argument or something.
I doubt if this book has created so much as a single self-interested greedy mindless zombie. I think you may have missed the point, which is essentially the mutual respect of human rights.
Would you really want me to create a list of the adherants of Rand's absurd "philosophy" that have acted in the greediest and most short sighted manners imaginable?I could top the list with the brothers Koch. Through their money and influence they have caused terrible havoc on the United States.
The book pretends to be about human rights but only so far as the protagonists are concerned. Everyone else in the book is some terrible socialist stereotype that has all the reality of a comic book. Oh wait, comic book villains are frequently given pathos and not treated as pathogens, which is how Rand embodies the working class and their representatives.
Ayn Rand was a textbook sociopath who idolized a serial killer. In her personal notes, she used a notorious serial killer as the inspiration for some of her "heroes." There's a good reason that her work has been widely criticized by academia and serious literary critics. When a politician cites this as one of their most influential books, it makes me want to weep.
I think that your first paragraph summed it up perfectly.
One thing that, I believe, you have wrong is that Ms Rand would not have "imagined some of these great barons of industry," or anyone else, "coming to her rescue." And, that is one of the points that she made in her novel...self-reliance, at least, for those who are not incapacitated physically or mentally.
The real pity is that she can't write. If anyone doesn't know what creative writers mean by show not teel, this book is tell, tell tell. That is one of the reasons why it is so boring.
I read this as a teenager, and like parts of it, but I also felt her characters were about as unreal as possible. At a much older age, I wonder where the editor was. This is longer than Dickens without the fun of Ebeneezer Scrooge or Sam Weller.
Any Rand's ego-driven jungle ME ME ME capitalism is just as repressive and destructive as cod-communism and cod-socialism. Plus it rapes the planet and only serves the super-rich. GREED is truly the most terrible challenge of our times, and capitalism is its tool, its means to power and more greed.
Greed is a (contagious) mental illness, an unfillable hole, a hunger that denies justice, a brutal expression of broken egos.
Greed is having a million times as much as the poor and still feeling you don't have enough.
Greed consumes the earth without respite, and is a cancer on humanity.
Greed destroys us and our children and their future.
Greed is death.
I find it refreshing to see looters and mooches foaming at the mouth with anger because they see how accurately Ayn Rand described them.
