In my reprint of a post about young conservative students, I made a crack about Ayn Rand. Since Rand has been the subject of a pair of recent biographies, and has been much discussed on the right as a kind of ideological mother figure of the so-called Tea Party Insurrection against the Obama Administration, I think it’s time to say a bit more about her work.
I discovered Ayn Rand at 16. A friend of mine finished “The Fountainhead”, and came to me one morning before class: “This book has changed my life, Hugo, and it will change yours. Read it!” I liked and respected Lisa, and accepted the thick and battered paperback she proffered. I took it home, and showed my mother, a philosophy professor. She took one look at the book, grimaced, and then said “Darling, I won’t say anything. Make up your own mind.”
It wasn’t until I read “American Psycho”, many years later, that I had a comparable experience of near-instant loathing of a text, an author, a prose style, and a worldview. I was a young lefty at 16, struggling through John Rawls and Herbert Marcuse. My favorite novel that year was Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle” one of the most polemical works that the great local writer (I grew up on the Monterey Peninsula) wrote. Rand was ideologically and stylistically abhorrent to me at 16, and though it’s been years since I’ve picked up any of her work (I finished “Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” through sheer acts of will in my youth), my general feeling of disdain on every imaginable ground remains.
But I’ve met many young people, more often women than men, who — like my friend Lisa in high school — find great inspiration in Ayn Rand. Generally, there’s a specific type of teen who falls in love with either “The Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged”. She’s usually very bright, raised to one degree or another with the “pleasing woman discourse” (what I call “the Martha Complex.“) She often finds her classes dull and her teachers pedestrian. She suspects she’s destined for something extraordinary, that she’s somehow different from everyone else — but unlike the immensely talented dancer or athlete or actor, she doesn’t have one specific skill that stands out as a ticket to stardom. She vacillates between feelings of intense superiority — and feelings of equally intense guilt for the way in which she looks down on so many of those around her.
She picks up Rand, and suddenly it all makes sense. She is superior, one of the elect. She isn’t what a far more interesting and talented writer would call a “Muggle”. She has an exalted destiny, just as she had suspected. Rand inspires her; telling her that it’s time to throw off the chains of obligation and guilt which have left her confined and miserable. In an odd way, Rand — who would be exceedingly difficult to classify as a feminist — is often a gateway into feminism for some young women. It’s through reading Rand that not-insignificant percentages of young women begin to think seriously about what they want for themselves rather than what others want for them. Young women who have the false impression that feminism is about collective victimization find temporary inspiration in “The Fountainhead” — and in due course, when they encounter real sexism in the real world, they reluctantly concede that perhaps those nasty old feminists had a point after all. I’ve met a hell of a lot of strong young progressive feminists in their twenties and early thirties who were enchanted by Randian philosophy in their teens.
So yes, I think an infatuation with Ayn Rand is developmentally appropriate for adolescents. She flatters and inspires the bright and the isolated and the uncertain; she’s useful for helping some young people, girls in particular, break the deadly people-pleasing habit. So if reading “Atlas” or “Fountainhead” is what it takes to inspire the lonely, the introverted, and the insecure — then may the God that she rejected bestow blessings upon that poor unhappy soul that was Ayn Rand.
This post has been altered from the way it originally appeared earlier today, ill-considered references to comic books, Star Trek, and New Kids on the Block were deleted.
Oh Hugo, did you really have to go with that last paragraph? I know that you absolutely can’t wrap your head around video games and comics and the like, but adults do like those things. Well-adjusted, happily married adults who have children and successful jobs and their own homes where they sleep on the top floor, not in the basement. Sometimes your snobbery towards geekdom is painful.
Having not read Ayn Rand (I am just one for the great American classics), I’m having a difficult time understanding where you and her part ways. It sounds like you both disapprove of The Martha Complex. How does her solution differ from yours? Does she just swing the pendulum too far in the other direction?
There should be a “not” in my 2nd paragraph - I am just NOT one for the great American classics. Sorry to clutter up the comments with my corrections.
I confess the comic book crack was snarky.
Rand’s objectivist philosophy advocates for a kind of reckless heroic individualism, where what she calls the “second-handers” (those who lack the substance or courage to be great) can be ignored or used by the heroes who can and do anything they like to accomplish their dreams. It’s not just contempt for mediocrity, it’s contempt for mundanity, domesticity, and the lives that most people actually lead.
Not to mention that Rand famously justifies rape (Howard and Dominique’s first sexual encounter in the book). It’s an ugly vision of women needing to be fucked hard by a strong and powerful hero in order to find herself.
You’re trolling for blog hits, aren’t you? You have to realize that any less-than-fawning mention of Objectivism results in a Contingency summoning of Galt wannabes, right?
“Like collecting comic books or Star Trek memorabilia, lugging around Rand is perfectly fine in puberty — and becomes rather pathetic evidence of a failure to launch if it persists past the age of thirty.”
My first reaction was “WHAT?!!”
A more considered response is that quite a lot of the online feminist-o-sphere appears to be fairly “geek friendly” (positive attitudes towards stuff like fanfiction, comics books and other non-mainstream popular culture) so I am a bit surprised by your attitude.
Personally I wouldn’t say I COLLECT comic books but I do have a substantial stack of MAD magazines which I have no intention of throwing away. And if I ever got my hands on an original 1980s copy of “Watchmen” you bet I would hang on to it. I don’t go to conventions or speak Klingon or anything, but I can happily recite my favorite episodes of all 5 Star Trek series (well the first 3 at least, didn’t watch the other two as much) and periodically rewatch and discuss them. If I ever got my hand on some really cool memorabilia like say a copy of the script for “City on the Edge of Forever” signed by Leonard Nimoy, I would guard it with my dear life.
Point is, none of this interferes with my adult responsibilities any more than being a Steelers fan interferes with my “grown up” duties or being a Cal Bears fan interferes with yours.
I suspect you really meant to criticize those who fail to grow up and take responsibility for their lives and sort of remain in a child like state and were using an obsessive love of comic books and Sci-Fi as a proxy for this, I would just argue that this is nowhere near accurate especially since many current comics/Sci Fi series are decidedly targetted towards adults with complex themes and challenging ideas.
What’s even sillier is that you crossed out the stereotypically male pursuits (Star Trek and comic books) but left in NKOTB because that’s a group of boys that girls liked.
Come on. There are men old enough to have chronic prostate conditions who still sigh over Barbara Eden (Jeannie in “I Dream of Jeannie”) or Barbara Feldon (99 on “Get Smart”). And then there’s the eternal question, Ginger or Mary Ann?
And these obsessions inform their daily lives, who they hire, how they treat women, what they expect women to be like.
Adolescent crushes imprint just as strongly as adolescent morality tales. I think they’re both Fi in MBTI terms — often underdeveloped, sometimes embarrassing.
The problem comes when the development stops there. It’s not just that an obsessive love of comics and SF becomes a proxy for taking responsibility — it’s that comics and SF tend to be painfully thin in meaning. While there is definitely good stuff, tons of it in fact, it’s drowned out by megatons of the bad stuff, the cheesy stuff, the obsessive collector stuff, the merchandise, my god the merchandise, the movie tie-ins, the obsession with detail and retcon and Han shot first and painful levels of identification with one character.
There are so many opportunities not to grow, or to advance only from a childlike “they all lived happily ever after” stage into a nihilistic antisocial head. This all is reasonable and in fact necessary in art for adolescents, but not so much for adults.
That could describe Rand by the way — self-centered, idealistic but severely disappointed by the world’s failures to be ideal.
When a person only wants what s/he wanted as an adolescent, there is a problem. One can look back and see the good in a Star Trek episode without thinking that it tells you everything you need to know about right and wrong.
One can find the youthful stylings of Donnie Wahlberg still a little thrilling without thinking that no one’s ever danced or rapped any better; one can find Mark Wahlberg a charming rebel without thinking quitting is your best choice in life.
To be honest, I know very little about NKOTB because I’m too old for them. I just used Wikipedia to figure out what might be parallel to sf and comics. But I recognize a dichotomy in the way boys’ and girls’ toys are being treated when I see it.
Argh. My least favorite thing about blogging — a throwaway line in the piece, utterly unnecessary for the case being made, attracts all the attention. I’m striking through the whole bloody thing, begging forgiveness, and ask that we turn to the topic that is the main thrust of the post, which is Randianism as adolescent developmental milestone!
Lots of people have remarked upon the comic book but, but I’m afraid that I have to dispute something else in this article - that JK Rowling is “a far more interesting and talented writer”. The very thought of Book 7 (not just it’s treatment of women - ALL of it!) makes me grimace!
Hugo, you’re killin me here! Please don’t link introversion with liking Ayn Rand! :)
Good post! (But can I send you some comic books, please? Neil Gaiman is a good place to start.)
What a funny coincidence, I just wrote about Ayn Rand as well. I started reading her when I was past 30, so it’s not just the adolescents who like her books. :-) I detest her chauvinism, her politics and many of her convictions and I understand that sometimes it’s hard to get through all the offensive stuff and concentrate just on the parts that are good.
But there is a lot that can be gained from her books and it really doesn’t have much to do with adolescence. The only connection between Rand’s ideas and adolescence is that many people never manage to retain the idealism and the high goals of their youth later on in life.
Okay, Hugo, I have a perspective to add to your Ayn Rand screed. I am, of course, your esteemed Mom’s generation. And my response to you at 16 would have been much like hers was. She and I tend to vibrate on a similar plane. However my experience with Rand would have been different from hers and over the years rather more threatening as I’ve watched, albeit at a distance, the appalling evolution of the Rand Cult.
For starters I read The Fountain Head when it was first published and found it an interesting and intriguing novel. I judged Rand to be a slick writer of page-turning fiction, the more fool I. During those years, my early 20s, I was Sales Manager of the University of Chicago Press and as such traveled all over the country to conventions etc. In fact I worked conventions for all of the University Presses. When one travels like that one encounters other traveling salesmen in large numbers. Accent on “men.” There were not many women sales persons. I, naturally, tended to be a great deal more “intellectual” than most male salesmen I met. What I discovered was that in such encounters sooner or later the subject of books would come up (that being MY profession). Inevitably the other salesman would say proudly even bragingly and I quote quite exactly, “I read a book!” I came to know precisely what the next line would be. “The Fountain Head!” I’m talking about the late 1940s post WWII. At the time I found this remarkable. What the heck was it about that book that captured people who obviously were not great readers?
Later when Atlas came out I immediately read that. I found the same slick story telling (akin I would say to pulp fiction)but then it began to sink in how dangerous this lady was. I don’t have to tell you the lurid history of Objectivism culminating in Alan Greenspan.
Nonetheless I think you do have a small point having to do with feminism. But I contend that it relates to her skill as a writer of pulp fiction and definitely not her philosphy. Besides she was surely trying to bolster her own probably damaged ego.
SAD. SAD. SAD!
I read The Fountainhead sometime after being forcibly groped in my dorm’s shower by a visiting non-student who was a fan of the book (and whom I’d told “No” three different times before I went to the shower, and whom I’d physically pushed away when he came at me). This colored my view of the book considerably; I can’t stand the part about Howard and Dominique’s first sexual encounter.
I wasn’t particularly fond of anything else about the book, either.
I don’t know if I’m on board with this. I mean, sure, Ayn Rand challenges girls to think about what they want rather than what everyone else wants. But there really has to be some way of doing that besides an abhorrent philosophy that basically tells girls that being extremely selfish, looking down on the less fortunate (because it’s their fault), and that nice guys finish last (didn’t the bleeding heart character die a gruesome death?). I mean, comparing Randian “philosophy” (the my degree cringes) and traditional female roles is about as fun as comparing Stalin and Mao. It’s a rock and a hard place.
Besides, there’s that disgusting scene that basically conflates sex with rape and has the female protagonist glorify her own rape because the dude is the epitome of Objectivism or something. Or how Rand may be more of a misogynist than O’Reilly. It’s a close call.
Girls do need books that speak to them and ask them to ask themselves what they want. But dear God, if Rand is the only thing that really fits the bill, we’re in deep trouble.
I might commiserate a bit more if the people who were fond of Rand grew out of it by the time they’re 20. However, her ideas remain oh so popular amongst my peers, who are happy to detest the poor and think that they are special snowflakes.
Let me add that when I read TFH I assumed it to be about Frank Lloyd Wright whom I had met several times because we published one of his books. I found Wright disgustingly arrogant and did not believe he merited heroic treatment.
looking down on the less fortunate (because it’s their fault)
That was the other thing I really disliked about The Fountainhead. Nothing wrong, in itself, with having your social worker character essentially wind up as one of the villains of the piece; after all, I don’t have a problem with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest making a villain of a nurse. But the way it was done suggested that getting satisfaction out of helping the less fortunate was in itself contemptible. I remember one passage sneering at a small triumph when one of the social workers helped some disabled or mentally retarded child to a new accomplishment - but an accomplishment that wasn’t worth caring about, because the kid would never be up to snuff compared to heroes like Roark.
I do sort of get what Hugo’s saying about the reasons a young woman might like the book. If you haven’t yourself dealt with sexual assault, and you like the characters, you might interpret the rape scene as some rough sex fantasy, and special snowflakeness is more excusable in the young. But there are definitely major flaws in Rand’s philosophy.
glad i missed the derision of geekdom, but i’ll sign onto this. i read atlas shrugged when i was in high school and, matching the description fairly well, had a similar feeling of “ah HA! so THIS is it!” for a brief period. thankfully, all it took was a little reflection on you know, the liberal values i had grown up with to realize that ultimately, objectivism is a steaming pile of crap.
i have not read the fountainhead, because atlas was enough to sustain my “ayn rand is cool” phase, but i’ll also add that the sexual component of atlas was compelling to a girl growing up in a town full of right-wing evangelical “true love can wait” types. it resonated to me that dagny taggart was not only the head of a major corporation, but was in the habit of banging all the hot, smart men of the world on the side. i wouldn’t say it was a gateway to feminism for me, but i see how these books could be for someone if it helped them legitimize their own needs, desires and aspirations. it’s slick, page-turning material rife with sex scenes and it plays to the ego of the reader, who invariably considers him or herself like the protagonists–it isn’t a coincidence that many people pick up ayn rand at some time during the years where they’re figuring out who they are and what they want and i see nothing particularly wrong with that. as long as they put it down when they come down.
I remember one passage sneering at a small triumph when one of the social workers helped some disabled or mentally retarded child to a new accomplishment - but an accomplishment that wasn’t worth caring about, because the kid would never be up to snuff compared to heroes like Roark.
When I read The Fountainhead at age 16 for an essay contest, that was the precise passage that made me think, “Wow, this shit is repellent.” The book wasn’t all bad — there were bits that for me perfectly captured the drive to see one’s artistic creation through to the conclusion it demands — but I always found myself returning to that passage, and the philosophy it embodied, and once again would think, “Wow, this shit is repellent.”
Seconding Chareth, as I had an experience like hers and like the one you describe. Ayn Rand had a clarifying effect on my sexuality as well as my philosophy, though. The rest of this may be rather tmi, and was also colored very much by my personal experiences.
I read Atlas Shrugged at fourteen, before reading The Fountainhead. Dagny Taggart as a woman with power and romantic activity was glorious and refreshing. Prior to Ms. Taggart, the protagonists I’d identified with had been totally asexual - like Susan Calvin in Asimov’s book I, Robot. The idea that I could be intellectual, commanding and *desirable* was intoxicating. This, I think, may have been because I was such an isolated and angry girl, and finding ways of being less brash and less demanding was nigh impossible for me then. Ayn Rand told me I could be as outspoken and as information-oriented as I’ve always been and still be loved and lusted after, and that completely blew my mind. The idea that everyone else doesn’t matter and is less than you appealed greatly then, and in those circumstances it made sense. I still think I’m a smarter, more emotionally stable, and more caring person than my screwed-up parents, and that I’m less likely to ostracize people who don’t fit in than the average high school student. Ayn Rand let me tell myself “people don’t like you because they suck.” Believing that was better for me than worrying that people didn’t like me because I was no good. I now generally assume people don’t like me because I often come across as a confident, talkative woman, and this is read as “bitchy” by many members of our culture. But just the ideas that a) I was actually capable of love and affection and b) maybe my environment was broken and *I* wasn’t were tremendously helpful and I owe Atlas Shrugged for that.
I got my hands on The Fountainhead at fifteen and found it somewhat less awe-inspiring. I’d had some exposure to feminism and abandoned a lot of the selfishness-is-awesome memes in Atlas Shrugged. I will, however, admit to finding the rape scene between Howard and Dominique simultaneously creepy and arousing. This too was a really useful lesson as it was one of the many things that precipitated my self-identification as submissive with tendencies towards very dark erotic fantasies. At the time, I jumped through a great many mental hoops to define that situation as “okay” or “safe,” or to try to figure out a way to make it be safe it it had happened a little differently. A few years later, the internet would teach me the acronym BDSM and the concepts of scenes and safewords. It would also help me distinguish my actual desires from my frequently extreme and highly unrealistic fantasy life.
This may sound weird, but the first fictional character whose sexual choices I can remember identifying with (as a young, never even kissed teenager, way before I had sex myself) was Dorothy in The Group. She starts the book as a devout Episcopalian back in the days before the Episcopal Church got liberal about sex, who is uncomfortable with the fact that one of her friends lived together first before getting married, later has sex with a man she thinks she loves, then realizes he’s not for her and there’s no way she’s marrying him, and by the end of the book has let her mother know both that she’s had sex and that no, she’s not going to marry the guy, and yes, she’s glad she’s not marrying him.
It’s not being super hot and having sex with all the sexiest men, but it appealed to me for the element of being able to figure out who wasn’t right for her, despite her starting assumption that she should expect to love forever any guy she had sex with.
It sounds like I might benefit psychologically from being able to buy into Ayn Rand’s philosophy (I can’t tell myself people don’t like me because they suck, a la lemonade’s comment) but unfortunately I already think she’s hopelessly arrogant and selfish and am far more likely to relate to the people she deems worthless losers than her protagonists. It is too bad I missed the window for being offended by the anti-geek line, because I am a complete failure to launch. Or maybe you don’t like me because you suck, and Trekkies are the shining epitome of humankind?
@meerkat: I no longer think people don’t like me because they suck. I think high school students are often immature and cruel, and those are ways of sucking. I think I was a very aggressive and unhappy teenager, and was tremendously difficult to like. I get along much better with far more people now than I did then, but concluding that I wasn’t inherently terrible did wonders for my self esteem and ability to interact sanely with others.
My current thought process would be more that outspoken and intellectual women are people deserving of equal treatment like everyone else, and that sexism affects others’ perception of assertive or “threatening” women. I do not think Trekkies are necessarily good or bad, really - though unfortunate and negative stereotypes about them persist. I do think many other classes of young people (queer or geeky teenagers, for example) could benefit from telling themselves their peers are unkind because those peers are being discriminatory and unfair - or failing that, telling themselves those peers are just inferior people. Either path gives isolated/vulnerable kids a way to stop internalizing as much self-loathing as I know I had at one point, and that’s valuable.
Hugo (summing up the “typical” Rand fan: “She vacillates between feelings of intense superiority — and feelings of equally intense guilt for the way in which she looks down on so many of those around her…She picks up Rand, and suddenly it all makes sense. She is superior, one of the elect.”
Do you see an interesting juxtaposition here…when you accuse Rand fans of having feelings of superiority and then place it really close to the following?
“So yes, I think an infatuation with Ayn Rand is developmentally appropriate for adolescents. She flatters and inspires the bright and the isolated and the uncertain; she’s useful for helping some young people, girls in particular, break the deadly people-pleasing habit. So if reading ‘Atlas’ or ‘Fountainhead’ is what it takes to inspire the lonely, the introverted, and the insecure — then may the God that she rejected bestow blessings upon that poor unhappy soul that was Ayn Rand.”
…and thereby you dismiss Rand fans as immature readers who somehow failed to outgrow such an “adolescent” writer?
B: “Well-adjusted, happily married adults who have children and successful jobs and their own homes where they sleep on the top floor, not in the basement.”
It seems as though B stereotypes while trying to refute another stereotype. There are well-adjusted people out there who don’t happen to own their own homes.
bmmg39, n’ah I was just flipping to the furthest opposite of the stereotype of a mouthbreathing geek living in his (in reality, this could be a her, but the stereotype never seems to go there) parents’ basement. I’m a well-adjusted adult nerd who’s only ever rented.
@lemonade I didn’t mean to imply that you think that now, but it sounded like it was a stage that you went through that helped you cope with high school at the time.