‘So her sentence seems like a precise and economical description to me.’

I am not sure I completely agree that precision was her main concern here. Stand and slouched used together are something of a metaphor; they impart a homey image in my mind that neither word by itself would.

In general Rand uses a lot of words but they all seem to have a purpose. She is definitely not concise, so it you are unused to it, I can see how it might become difficult to get through. However, when I read it for the first time, I was just caught up the story; didn’t really notice the style at all and hardly even the philosophy until later in the book.

‘Her good guys are, without exception, awful human beings.’

I hear this objection or variations of it all the time, like stiff, mean spirited or lacking in empathy. However, it never even occurred to me. Where does it come from? Simply because of her good guys show no empathy for the bad guys or is there some other deeper reason? There is the possibility that the ‘stiff’ aspects of their characters resonate with the readers but the ‘empathic’ aspects for some reason do not or are quickly forgotten. It may possibly be that her initial descriptions of them solidify in the readers mind, driving out all the ‘nice’ things they do later.

On the other hand, Dagny Taggart came across to me as a very nice person from the get go.

‘Objectivism, at least as presented in this seminal text, affords no nuance.’

One of the difficulties with writing is determining how nuanced to be. Some readers will look for it but a lot of readers will completely miss things which seem obvious. If you are too nuanced, everyone will miss it and then accuse you of having no nuance. On the other hand, if you are too obvious it takes a lot of the challenge and interest away from the reader.

It’s rather striking that the person critiquing Rand’s work can’t even be bothered to quote the sentence. It’s not like the book is hard to find, and if the line left that much of an impression it should be worth it to present the actual text. It indicates incredibly sloppy thinking. It also baffles me that someone could say something so extraordinarily stupid. Language isn’t intended to be interpreted word-for-word–that’s why it’s so much fun to type a sentence into Babblefish and start translating it. It’s meant to be taken as phrases, particularly in English where idioms are almost omnipresent. And in a novel there’s this little thing called “literary license”, which means you can muck up the language as much as you want as long as you get the point across. This is the kind of analysis that I got fed up with back in high school.

Also, the idea that her characters show no compassion and no empathy can only be held by someone who didn’t read the book, or who paid so little attention that it amounts to the same thing (the lack of ability to accurately quote the book indicates the latter). The entire book is about a guy trying to save others from being tortured. Francisco doesn’t sleep for three days to find Dagney. I’ve done that–it’s not something you do lightly, or something that you do without a deep passion. For most of the book Rearden goes out of his way to empathize with his family, well past the point of reasonable care for a loved one. The whole thing between Dagney and Sheril, Hank’s attempts to protect Dagney, Dagney’s love for music, Rearden’s chain bracelet–examples of compassion abound in the book. It’s astounding that anyone can miss that.

But it illustrates a problem I’ve encountered when discussing Rand’s works: her critics don’t feel it necessary to back up anything they say, or if they do it’s extremely shoddy. They feel permitted to make outrageous claims without any support, even when they contradict the work itself. On the other hand, her defenders are expected to present precise arguments, perfect quotes, etc. It’s a double-standard that’s specifically designed to make Rand look bad. It’s an attempt to manipulate the nature of the discussion itself such that Rand has no chance–the whole point is to put Rand’s fans on the defensive, and to do a Gish gallop to make us seem like uneducated morons (at least, in my experience).

I’ve always found Ayn Rand’s writing style to be quite lovely. I understood that many people disliked her philosophy, usually to a downright ignorant extent, but I never realized that so many people disliked the actual style of her writing. The idea that her characters have no feeling at all is dreadfully daft as well. They do have depth, but it’s nuanced and within an archetypal template. Perhaps people prefer to be slapped in the face with character development, I don’t know. All I really know is that it has become the trend to hate Ayn Rand — more so than I ever knew. It’s like people hear her philosophy is anti-liberal, anti-poor, etc and they decide to hate all of her work before even giving it a chance. It’s peer pressure on a larger scale. I’m just glad I could actually read the books I have by myself and away from the snide remarks of other people. I just wanted to find writers with styles similar to Ayn Rand’s and I was instead bombarded with pages upon pages of half baked literary critics and journalists throwing their two cents at me. Very mean and fairly unfounded two cents at that! *sigh* Well, I’m glad I found this page at least. It’s the first valid response I’ve seen all night. Thank you for that.