A Link
Okay, got to do it.
I know, I know. Two posts in one day.
But this link goes to an essay by Theodore Dalrymple on Ayn Rand:
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Ayn-Rand–engineer-of-souls-4385
and I’m dying to know what you think.
4 Responses to 'A Link'
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That is the best example of negative criticism I have seen in a long time. Those people who think the only way to express their disagreement with someone is to rant and rave should take lessons in how to do it right.
I can’t say I ever read much Ayn Rand. I tried one of her books when I was a teenager, and couldn’t get into it at all. I can’t even remember which one it was.
Cheryl
12 Feb 10 at 3:25 pm
OK. First, this was a really bad book review. For a non-fiction book, you explain enough about the subject to tell someone why a book on that person, event or place might be interesting or otherwise. Then you discuss sources used or neglected, insights or oversights, and prose style. This does almost none of that.
As a life of Ayn Rand, it’s marginally better–facts, but no worthwhile insight. Barbara Brandon did a life of Rand a few years back–I believe the title was THE PASSION OF AYN RAND–which addresses virtually every substantive point raised, and places them in the context of a live human being. This just grabs every defect he can find in Rand and heaps them together–in some cases neglecting facts as well as context.
As for the persistent “selfishness” of the adolescent, I’d say all too often they exemplify exactly what Rand denounced in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS–the tendency to rank oneself according to the opinions of others, and the urge to use one’s superior wisdom to help others in ways they don’t desire to be “helped.”
But then, I’ve actually read a bunch of Ayn Rand, once upon a time. This fellow doesn’t appear to have done so. Can he really be Dalrymple? Dalrymple is generally much better than this.
robert_piepenbrink
12 Feb 10 at 7:14 pm
And I was right. The review of the new Heller Ayn Rand biography to which the link leads is not by Dalrymple but by one Anthony Daniels.
robert_piepenbrink
12 Feb 10 at 11:01 pm
Well, not quite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Daniels_%28psychiatrist%29
Mique
13 Feb 10 at 3:32 am