Comment by afpx
4 days ago
Her books were very popular with the gifted kids I hung out with in the late 80s. Cool kids would carry around hardback copies of Atlas Shrugged, impressive by the sheer physical size and art deco cover. How did that trend begin?
By setting up the misfits in a revenge of the nerds scenario?
Ira Levin did a much better job of it and showed what it would lead to but his 'This Perfect Day' did not - predictably - get the same kind of reception as Atlas Shrugged did.
People reading the book and being into it and telling other people.
It’s also a hard book to read so it may be smart kids trying to signal being smart.
The only thing that makes it hard to read is the incessant soap-boxing by random characters. I have a rule that if I start a book I finish it but that one had me tempted.
I’m convinced that even Rand’s editor didn’t finish the book. That is why Galt’s soliloquy is ninety friggin’ pages long. (When in reality, three minutes in and people would be unplugging their radios.)
It’s hard to read because it’s tedious not because you need to be smart though.
tbf you have to have read it to know that!
I can't help but think it's probably the "favourite book" of a lot of people who haven't finished it though, possibly to a greater extent than any other secular tome (at least LOTR's lightweight fans watched the movies!).
I mean, if you've only read the blurb on the back it's the perfect book to signal your belief in free markets, conservative values and the American Dream: what could be more a more strident defence of your views than a book about capitalists going on strike to prove how much the world really needs them?! If you read the first few pages, it's satisfyingly pro-industry and contemptuous of liberal archetypes. If you trudge through the whole thing, it's not only tedious and odd but contains whole subplots devoted to dumping on core conservative values (religion bad, military bad, marriage vows not that important really, and a rather jaded take on actually extant capitalism) in between the philosopher pirates and jarring absence of private transport, and the resolution is an odd combination of a handful of geniuses running away to form a commune and the world being saved by a multi-hour speech about philosophy which has surprisingly little to say on market economics...
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Fountainhead is written at the 7th grade reading level. Its Lexile level is 780L. It's long and that's about it. By comparison, 1984 is 1090L.
This gives strong Dead Poets Society vibes.
What's funny is that Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shear already took the piss out of Ayn Rand in Illuminatus! (1969-1971).