In the past half-decade, the name and legacy of Ayn Rand have become the subject of much prominent comment, debate, analysis, and punditry in the English-speaking press, where a swelling sea of multiform journalism examines her enduring and pervasive (some would say insidious and awful, while others would say heroic and wonderful) influence on American politics, culture, and economic policy. Nor is her influence limited to just one nation; as reported in 2009 in Foreign Policy magazine, she has become roaringly popular in India. This is precisely what her admirers would hope; one of them recently averred in The Guardian that Europe’s woes have resulted largely from its adoption of ideas and policies contrary to the Randian ethos of economic egoism.
The entry of Paul Ryan into the current American presidential race has naturally occasioned an explosive new surge of Randian journalism, since Ryan is an avowed admirer and semi-disciple of laissez faire libertarianism’s high priestess. (The public recognition and analysis of this fact is, however, not at all new.)
So in the midst of all this, it’s interesting to see what may be the single most useful — as in compact, accurate, engaging, detailed, and user-friendly — introduction to Rand’s life, work, and legacy appear not in an American publication at all, but in BBC News Magazine. “A Russian-American writer who died 30 years ago is still selling hundreds of thousands of books a year, and this week one of her former devotees, Paul Ryan, became Mitt Romney’s running mate in the US presidential election,” says the teaser/lead-in. “So why is Ayn Rand and her most famous work, Atlas Shrugged, so popular?” The article then proceeds to illustrate and answer that question. If you’re in need of an Ayn Rand primer, then this piece is for you, since it includes not only information about her life, work, philosophy, and influence but a rundown of prominent characters, quotes, and ideas from her books. It’s also even-handed, in that it explains the views of both Rand’s admirers and her detractors.
If you’re not informed about Ms. Rand right now, then you’re not clued in to one of the most significant philosophical conflicts — with real-world practical ramifications — that is presently informing (some would say deforming) American political, economic, and cultural reality. This is an opportunity to remedy that.
It’s 1,200 pages long and was panned by critics when it was published 55 years ago. Yet few novels have had an impact as enduring as Atlas Shrugged, a dystopian allegory in which captains of industry struggle against stifling regulations and an over-reaching government and one by one close down production, bringing the world economy to its knees. Rand’s philosophy, which she called objectivism, tapped directly into the American ideals of freedom, hard work and individualism. In novels like Atlas Shrugged, and her non-fiction like The Virtues of Selfishness, Rand argued for the removal of any religious or political controls that hindered the pursuit of self-interest.
… [M]illions were drawn to her central message of individualism and unfettered capitalism, even if they didn’t buy into her whole philosophy. In the 1990s, a survey by the Library of Congress named Atlas Shrugged as the most influential book in the US, after the Bible. And more than 50 years after publication, sales are booming … Beyond politics, the novel also had an impact in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs identified with its emphasis on heroic individuals and their work ethic. Some have named their companies or their newborn children after the author or her characters. Rand’s popularity is not confined to the US, however, with healthy book sales in the UK, India, Australia, Italy and South Africa.
… The emergence of the Tea Party — a wing of the Republican Party which favours a shrinking of the state — appears to be driving her recent resurgence.
— Tom Geoghegan, “Ayn Rand: Why is she so popular?” BBC News Magazine, August 17, 2012
I don’t see what’s so great about this woman’s work. It only appeared to be half-cooked vegetables from a severely masculinized woman. You don’t want to bed such, you’ll get diarrhea. Much of her work is just bombastic, she did not ruminate well enough.
PS: Don’t know why all those gut metaphors pervaded what I said. Maybe that’s her effect on people – they defecate all that is human in them, leaving some silly ersatz devils.
I’ve read Rand’s The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and many of her philosophical essays, as well as most of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by her literary and philosophical heir, Leonard Peikoff. And I’ve felt the attraction of her uber-romantic (in the philosophical sense) philosophy and worldview. But I can never shake the feeling that I’m reading the philosophical equivalent of a comic book, and not in the vaunted current sense of a graphic novel that stands as a true literary work, but more in the sense of Richie Rich or Archie. In other words, her entire shtick amounts to producing something gaudy and cartoonish — artistically, philosophically, and in all other ways — that wants desperately to pass itself off as something exalted, noble, and profound. Plus, the reports of her totalitarian nutjob-ness simply can’t be dismissed. She is to philosophy what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion and spiritual science. But, like I said, I’ve been able to suspend my judgments and criticisms and let the heady pleasure of inhabiting her breathlessly excited and excitable literary and mental soulspace envelope me. Apparently — alas — so have a great many other people, who receive it far less critically than they should.