Ayn Rand, whom, for my sins, I've probably forgotten more about than you'll ever know, and whose system I now despise just as much as you do, does not actually write badly.
Her style is a bit purple, but that has its place. I think Rand's philosophy is on the whole so terrible, and her behaviour as a person so egregious, that people feel compelled to reject her totally. There can't be anything about her that is remotely, you know, not that bad. It's important for her to be a terrible prose writer as well. And, well, she kind of wasn't.
It's interesting that this is exactly the way she operated herself. If she disagreed with you about one thing, no matter how minute, then it ipso facto invalidated everything about you. She was very vocal about the world not being complex at all.
But if we're talking about words, and considering that English was not her first langue (not is it mine, as you may well be able to tell), Ayn Rand was a perfectly fine writer.
by Ok_Employer7837
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She had no literary nuance and no realistic character development. All you get out of her is didactic monologues and two-dimensional characterizations that served only to advance her Objectivist philosophy.
How about you cite samples of particularly strong, evocative writing if you want to prove this talentless hack didn’t write worse than Ikea instructions?
I’m pretty progressive and I generally hate her ideals, but for me personally, I love Anthem and We the Living. I found the narratives compelling and her writing style, while a bit cold, was perfectly cromulent.
As for her philosophy, I think — even as someone who strongly believes in altruism — that there is some value in considering the merits of selfishness, mainly because I believe one cannot be altruistic without caring for oneself.
The Fountainhead had a few moments but Atlas Shrugged deserves all the hate it gets. The entire Objectivism series is trash.
I have always disliked Ayn Rand, everything she stands for and all the evil she brought to the world.
That being said, I have also really enjoyed The Fountainhead when I read it many years ago.
My primary complaint against Ayn Rand as a writer (rather than a philosopher) is that her books are didactic in the worst sense of that word — characters tend to be flat and too prone to deliver lengthy monologues that only serve to convey the author’s thoughts.
You make the statement at the end but don’t really build up an argument based on her writing. If you would quote either the best bit in Ayn Rand (something that shows off how effective she was at writing) or even something more typical and talked through it, then maybe we could talk about that.
But just three paragraphs of irrelevant positioning followed by your take isn’t much to go on. So, to reply in kind, nuh-uh.