Ayn Rand

[jbor]

mudslinger monroe:

> You, sir, Mr. jbor, sir, are an Ayn Rand fan, former,
>> crypto, or closeted, and I claim my prize.

Not true at all. Of course. My undergraduate honours thesis (many years ago
now) on Ayn Rand's novels and polemical writings took a thoroughly
adversarial stance towards her propagandistic rhetoric and
political-epistemological pronouncements. What it did also consider, though,
was the extent of the popularity of Rand's novels -- their sales; that major
studio Hollywood movie; their advocates in the years since (including a
former Australian Prime Minister and the Canadian? heavy metal band 'Rush'
-- and her rabid support of those anti-Communist purges during the 50s, her
involvement with the HCUAA in particular. The 'Greed is Good' groundswell
mindset of the American (and thus, world) 1980s, which is still around now
in the West to some degree, probably owes as much to the legacy of Rand's
pulpesque thrillers and her attempted vindications of capitalism and
self-interest, as anything else imo.

On the other hand, the story of Rand's own escape/emigration from Stalinist
Russia, grossly and melodramatically romanticised in her first novel _We,
The Living_, and her depictions of that regime, are of some interest.

I'd be more than willing to discuss it at greater length, but perhaps it can
be left until Pynchon's parody of her in Mafia Winsome comes up in the
reading of _V._?