Rand’s bankrupt ‘literature’

Seduced by an essay contest, I read Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged,” last summer. The book was as seductive as the cash. I began to think she might be right, at least about freedom. I mean, who doesn’t like freedom?

After a while, though, I realized Rand’s literature has little merit and that her philosophy opposed my own thought. I never entered the contest.

I have no problem with idealism. It’s not that I don’t think there should be a vision for an ideal society. I just wouldn’t want to live in Rand’s utopia.

Rand’s ideal society regards gifts as allowable but inessential. I began this school year writing about simple gifts, ones the giver doesn’t expect to be returned. A gift economy creates a closely bound community because a simple gift creates a connection between the giver and receiver.

The novelist’s Shangri-La is a pure exchange economy. Exchange maintains distance between people.

Buying a burger from someone doesn’t make you their friend. In fact, exchange requires some distrust, to ensure that the transaction is fair.

Her novels are vehicles for her philosophy of Objectivism. As literature, they are forced, repetitive and melodramatic.

Rand essentially has two types of characters: the honest industrialist and the evil communist. One naturally identifies with the former.

Who wouldn’t want to be a great industrialist (John Galt) over a weak, insecure looter (James Taggart)?

As she praises her noble “movers,” the reader’s ego inflates. Meanwhile, hatred builds for the “looters,” the ones who take our rightful possessions.

This dichotomy is also gendered. Although one of the protagonists of “Atlas Shrugged” is the female industrialist Dagny Taggart, it’s not difficult to see through Rand’s characterization, which codes Dagny as masculine despite her sex.

Likewise, James Taggart’s weakness is coded as feminine, associating him with the traditional dependent role of wife.

Even though she has men acting like girls and vice versa, there is still a rigid role for each.

John Galt’s insufferable monologue in “Atlas Shrugged” is pure ventriloquism. He tells us what to think for sixty pages. At some point, the heavy-handed propaganda gets old.

Comically, Casey McGlasson began her laudatory column on Rand that appeared here last week by warning against platitudes but then followed up with eight of her own. However, this style is appropriate for praising Rand.

After all, Ayn Rand doesn’t do subtle. One platitude follows after another.

Harry Binswanger, a philosopher friend of Rand, left a comment on McGlasson’s column, ridiculously placing Rand’s novels “in the top rank of all post-Renaissance art.”

Sorry, but James Joyce would eat Ayn Rand for breakfast.

One thing is certain: Rand remains relevant as a cultural phenomenon.

Every time a major social program gets passed, she gets dragged out of the closet to provide an intellectual foundation for the opposition to “socialism,” or the “welfare state.”

She’s great for lending a veneer of legitimacy to diffuse anger about taxes and “handouts.” Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society sold as many Rand books as health care and bailouts.

I read Rand, considered her and rejected her. Make up your own mind, but remember that saying something over and over does not make it true.


E-mail: brownjoh@indiana.edu