Kurt, I never myself went through an Objectionist phase. I agree there was an overabundance of negativity in Rand's writings, especially in her non-fiction. She could seldom find any achievement in the culture that was not her own achievement. She claimed that the achievements of science had fallen off the pace in the 19th century. That is outrageously false. She had a reason for claiming that, and that was that in her estimation philosophy had gone from bad to worse from Descartes to Hume and Kant to any of her contemporaries that she would have known of. Since she wrongly thought that in science we are waiting for philosophers to tell us how to roll back the darkness, science must be deteriorating. It is like Leibniz with his background assurance in concluding that our actual world of compossibilities is the best among such sets of compossibles. He'll tally up how much goodness there is in the world, but really he has his verdict already, because God made the actual world and could only have chosen to make the best possible one.
Of the Horror File of the periodicals issued by her and N. Branden in the 1960's the question was recorded therein Why did they speak only of negative things in the culture? and they replied that the rest of the pages, penned by them or under their superintendence, was the positive thing going on in the culture. That sort of pumping of one's product by feigning the zero of anything or anyone alternative to it still goes on in Objectivist publications to this day. An Objectivist philosopher of science (not Jim Lennox) casts the dominant voices in the field for the last three decades, not as the realisms they are, but as only in line with the subjectivist strand there has been. Similarly, readers are given the impression from Objectivist writings that post-modernism has been a significant influence in Ango-American philosophy. It never was and still is not.
This selling by omission of what else good is going on or over-emphasis of the negatives of work not coincident with their own is pitched for idiots. Since I'm old now, I have to be especially wary of any pessimism I take on concerning the younger generation. It is chronic that the elderly come to such pessimism generation after generation, century after century. I do have some growing pessimism due to the recent election of the proto-fascist faction in America that Rand warned against in 1968 (Objectivist Leonard Peikoff championed that choice in the election, indeed proclaiming that anyone who hated Trump, the anti-intellectual LEADER who threatens to use the FCC to shut down NBC . . ., is a hater of reason[!]) But science, technology, and some philosophy too, continue their illumination better than ever. And the US continues unabated as far and away the most productive-per-capita country in the world for countries having GDP of over $3 trillion.
The writers I read some of besides Rand were notably Steinbeck, D. Lessing, Faulkner, McCullers, Baldwin, and Forester. All of them, including Rand, and older novelists too, are marvelous to me in what they can do with words. I love them all, although my reading time did and still does see them mostly pushed aside for non-fiction. I love Rand's protagonists. They have truth in them, and my youthful circle and I identified with them psychologically in significant ways. Being fiction characters, they are not so noble and interesting as real people I've known and admired. But they are friends of mine. (And delightfully, unlike a lot of Objectivists, their attention is not consumed by political ideas and discussions.)
I find it interesting that you say about Rand's characters, "Being fiction characters, they are not so noble and interesting as real people I've known and admired." That seems to say that you don't worship Rand's creations as much as she herself did!
When I was much younger and still new to Ayn Rand's work, I came across a serious debate in a discussion group over whether it was productive, thus rational, thus moral to play in a pickup volleyball game. Nobody in the debate could fathom how a simple, fun activity shared with friends could be an "acceptable" activity for an Objectivist, and they twisted themselves into knots trying to come up with a sort of "Objectivist-approved" rationale.
I've seen many other, similar debates over the years. Is it "okay" to read science fiction? Is only classical music moral because it uniquely represents the Western cultural ideal? Is a person who doesn't cry during operas intellectually deficient? Can an activity be moral without one being able to identify within it a sufficient measure of "productive work"?
What I realized is that some people look to the philosophy to give them meaning, up to and including believing that Ayn Rand was the ultimate and only valid authority on the question of the proper values. If Ayn Rand didn't approve, why then, it can't be a moral pursuit. They don't understand that any philosophy is only a framework upon which we can build our own system of values. It's nobody's business but ours whether what we value is "proper," and indeed, Objectivism demands that we make these decisions for ourselves. Its unique quality is that it outlines for us the means by which we have the best chance at happiness, while simultaneously showing us that we're the only ones who can properly define what that means.
I wonder sometimes how many young people turn away from Objectivism because they think it means they can't, e.g., jump into a game of pickup volleyball and still be moral. I think that's a rather bleak impression of the philosophy, and to the extent that it's what people think it says, it helps explain why it's not having more impact on our culture.
"They don't understand that any philosophy is only a framework upon which we can build our own system of values." That states my attitude to a T. Philosophy is a tool. We should use it, not the other way around. Furthermore, the purpose of philosophy is to help us to do what we were trying to do all along, as I write in this essay for my book: https://kurtkeefner.substack.com/p/the-perfection-of-desire?r=7cant
Have a look at the South African novelist Wilbur Smith, particularly the Ballantyne novels (Men of Men is my favorite) or the Courtney novel series. They're full of dynamic characters who know how to fight for values and achieve them.
As far as Rand's characters being largely a part of what we would call "white culture", a writer should stick to what they know about. Getting outside your wheelhouse without having grown up in a particular culture requires an incredible amount of time and research to pull it off. Wilbur Smith's novels feature many African characters, but he grew up being heavily exposed to their culture.
I take your point about Rand getting outside of her wheelhouse. That might explain why she didn't put any black characters in The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. But she could easily have put a character with a Jewish or Eastern European name in. Surely, she knew something about that. My guess is that she would have regarded anything other than a "vanilla" American as a distraction from her universalist concerns. But that's just speculation.
I've known a few Objectivists whose journey took a similar route, including a few friends who came and went (perhaps for similar reasons).
Happily, I've managed to maintain an attitude of gratitude ... an appreciation for the magnificent bounty of rich, deep values surrounding us ... in life, in business, and in art & literature.
We are surrounded by miracles ... not least of which is ourselves.
Greatness existed before 1957 ... and it continues to exist, and to provide us with inspiration, insights, reason for joy, and reason for hope.
I don't think Ayn Rand focused more on the evils of the world than she should have ... it was part of her purpose, and her project, to fully understand the ideal, and those who contradict it.
But I do know that some people believe that they should do the same ... despite the fact that that's not their proper purpose, nor their proper project.
For those who do this, I hope they realize their mistake ... and soon ... and get on with the business of living rationally, purposefully, joyously, passionately!
As for books to recommend, the gift I've given most often (in books, or anything else) is Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (the Brian Hooker translation ... of course).
Personally, I love light fiction ... I grew up on Robert A. Heinlein & Richard Bach. Heinlein had a lot in common with Rand ... Bach, very little. But their value-oriented views both align with (and motivate) me.
And I believe everyone should read To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) and The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett).
I definitely agree that To Kill a Mockingbird is indispensable reading for people in search of heroes on a human scale.
I disagree about Rand's negativity. She did have some Dominique in her. She had Galt address his audience as "moral cannibals." She said that anyone who would ask out loud why she would use the word "selfish" was a coward. She told Mike Wallace that most people do not deserve to be loved. She said that women's libbers were unattractive.
I think you underestimate yourself and your own positivity. I would say that Rand created some of her positive characters, especially Roark and Francisco, as self-therapy, intended to reach the dark parts of her soul. But those dark parts were real.
Thanks for the recommendations; I've added a few more books to my reading list. In addition to yours, I suppose we could adduce many more novels as signposts on the path down Mount Olympus: Memoirs of Hadrian, Adam Bede, Martin Eden (which I've not yet read), Ninety-Three (one of Rand's favorites), The Glass Bead Game, and on and on...
No. Unfortunately, since the time I wrote this essay years ago, I have found it harder to read. My eyesight is bad and I have sleep issues that make it difficult for me to concentrate. I mostly read non-fiction for my writing, although I am in the middle of Hawthorne's The Marble Faun. What do you read?
One of the books that moved me "recently" was Shantaram by an Australian Gregory David Roberts.
Kurt, I never myself went through an Objectionist phase. I agree there was an overabundance of negativity in Rand's writings, especially in her non-fiction. She could seldom find any achievement in the culture that was not her own achievement. She claimed that the achievements of science had fallen off the pace in the 19th century. That is outrageously false. She had a reason for claiming that, and that was that in her estimation philosophy had gone from bad to worse from Descartes to Hume and Kant to any of her contemporaries that she would have known of. Since she wrongly thought that in science we are waiting for philosophers to tell us how to roll back the darkness, science must be deteriorating. It is like Leibniz with his background assurance in concluding that our actual world of compossibilities is the best among such sets of compossibles. He'll tally up how much goodness there is in the world, but really he has his verdict already, because God made the actual world and could only have chosen to make the best possible one.
Of the Horror File of the periodicals issued by her and N. Branden in the 1960's the question was recorded therein Why did they speak only of negative things in the culture? and they replied that the rest of the pages, penned by them or under their superintendence, was the positive thing going on in the culture. That sort of pumping of one's product by feigning the zero of anything or anyone alternative to it still goes on in Objectivist publications to this day. An Objectivist philosopher of science (not Jim Lennox) casts the dominant voices in the field for the last three decades, not as the realisms they are, but as only in line with the subjectivist strand there has been. Similarly, readers are given the impression from Objectivist writings that post-modernism has been a significant influence in Ango-American philosophy. It never was and still is not.
This selling by omission of what else good is going on or over-emphasis of the negatives of work not coincident with their own is pitched for idiots. Since I'm old now, I have to be especially wary of any pessimism I take on concerning the younger generation. It is chronic that the elderly come to such pessimism generation after generation, century after century. I do have some growing pessimism due to the recent election of the proto-fascist faction in America that Rand warned against in 1968 (Objectivist Leonard Peikoff championed that choice in the election, indeed proclaiming that anyone who hated Trump, the anti-intellectual LEADER who threatens to use the FCC to shut down NBC . . ., is a hater of reason[!]) But science, technology, and some philosophy too, continue their illumination better than ever. And the US continues unabated as far and away the most productive-per-capita country in the world for countries having GDP of over $3 trillion.
The writers I read some of besides Rand were notably Steinbeck, D. Lessing, Faulkner, McCullers, Baldwin, and Forester. All of them, including Rand, and older novelists too, are marvelous to me in what they can do with words. I love them all, although my reading time did and still does see them mostly pushed aside for non-fiction. I love Rand's protagonists. They have truth in them, and my youthful circle and I identified with them psychologically in significant ways. Being fiction characters, they are not so noble and interesting as real people I've known and admired. But they are friends of mine. (And delightfully, unlike a lot of Objectivists, their attention is not consumed by political ideas and discussions.)
I find it interesting that you say about Rand's characters, "Being fiction characters, they are not so noble and interesting as real people I've known and admired." That seems to say that you don't worship Rand's creations as much as she herself did!
When I was much younger and still new to Ayn Rand's work, I came across a serious debate in a discussion group over whether it was productive, thus rational, thus moral to play in a pickup volleyball game. Nobody in the debate could fathom how a simple, fun activity shared with friends could be an "acceptable" activity for an Objectivist, and they twisted themselves into knots trying to come up with a sort of "Objectivist-approved" rationale.
I've seen many other, similar debates over the years. Is it "okay" to read science fiction? Is only classical music moral because it uniquely represents the Western cultural ideal? Is a person who doesn't cry during operas intellectually deficient? Can an activity be moral without one being able to identify within it a sufficient measure of "productive work"?
What I realized is that some people look to the philosophy to give them meaning, up to and including believing that Ayn Rand was the ultimate and only valid authority on the question of the proper values. If Ayn Rand didn't approve, why then, it can't be a moral pursuit. They don't understand that any philosophy is only a framework upon which we can build our own system of values. It's nobody's business but ours whether what we value is "proper," and indeed, Objectivism demands that we make these decisions for ourselves. Its unique quality is that it outlines for us the means by which we have the best chance at happiness, while simultaneously showing us that we're the only ones who can properly define what that means.
I wonder sometimes how many young people turn away from Objectivism because they think it means they can't, e.g., jump into a game of pickup volleyball and still be moral. I think that's a rather bleak impression of the philosophy, and to the extent that it's what people think it says, it helps explain why it's not having more impact on our culture.
"They don't understand that any philosophy is only a framework upon which we can build our own system of values." That states my attitude to a T. Philosophy is a tool. We should use it, not the other way around. Furthermore, the purpose of philosophy is to help us to do what we were trying to do all along, as I write in this essay for my book: https://kurtkeefner.substack.com/p/the-perfection-of-desire?r=7cant
Have a look at the South African novelist Wilbur Smith, particularly the Ballantyne novels (Men of Men is my favorite) or the Courtney novel series. They're full of dynamic characters who know how to fight for values and achieve them.
As far as Rand's characters being largely a part of what we would call "white culture", a writer should stick to what they know about. Getting outside your wheelhouse without having grown up in a particular culture requires an incredible amount of time and research to pull it off. Wilbur Smith's novels feature many African characters, but he grew up being heavily exposed to their culture.
Thank you for the recs. I will check them out.
I take your point about Rand getting outside of her wheelhouse. That might explain why she didn't put any black characters in The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. But she could easily have put a character with a Jewish or Eastern European name in. Surely, she knew something about that. My guess is that she would have regarded anything other than a "vanilla" American as a distraction from her universalist concerns. But that's just speculation.
I've known a few Objectivists whose journey took a similar route, including a few friends who came and went (perhaps for similar reasons).
Happily, I've managed to maintain an attitude of gratitude ... an appreciation for the magnificent bounty of rich, deep values surrounding us ... in life, in business, and in art & literature.
We are surrounded by miracles ... not least of which is ourselves.
Greatness existed before 1957 ... and it continues to exist, and to provide us with inspiration, insights, reason for joy, and reason for hope.
I don't think Ayn Rand focused more on the evils of the world than she should have ... it was part of her purpose, and her project, to fully understand the ideal, and those who contradict it.
But I do know that some people believe that they should do the same ... despite the fact that that's not their proper purpose, nor their proper project.
For those who do this, I hope they realize their mistake ... and soon ... and get on with the business of living rationally, purposefully, joyously, passionately!
As for books to recommend, the gift I've given most often (in books, or anything else) is Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (the Brian Hooker translation ... of course).
Personally, I love light fiction ... I grew up on Robert A. Heinlein & Richard Bach. Heinlein had a lot in common with Rand ... Bach, very little. But their value-oriented views both align with (and motivate) me.
And I believe everyone should read To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) and The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett).
I definitely agree that To Kill a Mockingbird is indispensable reading for people in search of heroes on a human scale.
I disagree about Rand's negativity. She did have some Dominique in her. She had Galt address his audience as "moral cannibals." She said that anyone who would ask out loud why she would use the word "selfish" was a coward. She told Mike Wallace that most people do not deserve to be loved. She said that women's libbers were unattractive.
I think you underestimate yourself and your own positivity. I would say that Rand created some of her positive characters, especially Roark and Francisco, as self-therapy, intended to reach the dark parts of her soul. But those dark parts were real.
Thanks for the recommendations; I've added a few more books to my reading list. In addition to yours, I suppose we could adduce many more novels as signposts on the path down Mount Olympus: Memoirs of Hadrian, Adam Bede, Martin Eden (which I've not yet read), Ninety-Three (one of Rand's favorites), The Glass Bead Game, and on and on...
I have a long "to read" list, but mostly end up prioritizing other things.
Fiction in the last few years: Ken Follett, John Masters. Also, not quite fiction, but supposedly true stories of some CIA spies.
Do you use Goodreads?
No. Unfortunately, since the time I wrote this essay years ago, I have found it harder to read. My eyesight is bad and I have sleep issues that make it difficult for me to concentrate. I mostly read non-fiction for my writing, although I am in the middle of Hawthorne's The Marble Faun. What do you read?