Pynchon, Rand, school reading lists

[Paul Mackin]

On Mar 27, 2006, at 1:13 AM, jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> Rand's _We, The Living_ gets taught quite a bit in schools. It's  
> semi-autobiographical and quite readable, if soap operatic and not  
> particularly well written, and is actually a pretty interesting  
> (however biased) primary source depicting ignorance, corruption and  
> oppression under the Soviets into the 1920s. _The Fountainhead_ and  
> _Atlas Shrugged_ are worse (because longer), but Rand is still  
> hugely popular and very influential, particularly in the U.S. Her  
> novels are Harold Robbins-ish in plot and heft, but with an  
> insidious capitalistic, elitist, "egoism and selfishness are  
> virtues" propaganda message which Americans in particular seem to  
> find appealing.

America today, tomorrow the World. She has been translated into  
Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek,  
Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese,  
Romanian, Spanish, Swedish,  and Turkish,

>
> Howard Roark in _The Fountainhead_ is supposedly loosely based on  
> Frank Lloyd Wright.

At least they were both famous architects.