Dale
Ayn Rand writes her novels like propaganda, and this is both their greatest strength and most blatant weakness. When I first read this book as a teenager, it had the desired effect of propaganda, and for a year or two I was a devout “Randian”.
In those years I had many discussions with people on Rand's views. One pattern I noticed is the type of people that tend to be drawn to her views are the types of people who get things done. The types of people who don't come up with excuses; even when something isn't fair, and the odds are stacked against them, they don't spend their time complaining about it. They simply see a problem that needs a solution. For them, morality is a personal statement, and not a mutual agreement. These are qualities I still admire today.
Maturity and experience, however, tempered my commitment to her views on morality; I began to see the world wasn't quite so black and white. Emotion, while not always logical, is a fundamental part of human existence, and one that cannot be ignored. Sometimes practicality wins out over idealism. Compromise is not always a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
However, one lesson that stuck with me from my time as an Objectivist was that I will not apologize for my success, or how I achieve it. I dictate the terms of my morality, and have no need for validation from someone who uses their criticisms of success as a simultaneous excuse for their lack-there-of.
Still, sometimes it can be fun to temporarily buy in to the propaganda. Sort of like watching a good revenge-movie: the morality is questionable, but we suspend our advocacy in favor of the guilty pleasure. And once it's over, we return to the real world, knowing those rules, alluring in their simplicity, just don't work in the complexities of every-day reality.
Despite Rand's heavy-handed espousal of her Objectivist philosophy, behind her propaganda is an expertly crafted mystery. This book generates a lot of hatred for it over the controversial, and often overly simplistic views on morality. If you have the mental fortitude to withstand the pages upon pages of being hit over the head with her views, their is a very intriguing novel here as well.
I give this book 5 stars for the addictive plot, and controversial views, even if those views weren't, in the end, ones I entirely stuck with.
Couldn't do it. I was expecting some existential ode to free roaming, something in the vein of Into The Wild. Instead I found myself reading about the 1940's equivalent of a bunch of dude bros on a cross country kegger. And what awful writing style. Nothing but “and then this happened. Then this happened. And then this happened.” Very disappointing.