Well written but very verbose and philosophical book about individuality and freedom. ( )

5/10-6/10

I have to say that I liked this quite a bit more than The Fountainhead (which I did not enjoy for the most part).

The characters were actually those you could get somewhat invested in, the dystopian world it created, while overly simple and unrealistic, was at least interesting to read about. The epistolary format was done well. The prose and general writing quality seemed vastly better than The Fountainhead. The themes and general ideas that Rand was trying to convey were executed much better here.

Don't get me wrong, I still think her themes are absolute garbage, and she's an absolute garbage human being, and nobody should take her seriously. But the themes and messages were communicated fairly well in this book, in a way that was much easier and interesting to digest. I think the brevity of it is one of its strengths, at only like 90 pages, it can be read in an hour or two. Most of the patented Ayn Rand ridiculously heavy handed diatribes were kept to a minimum, or just the last few chapters. And it was still full of offensively simple propagandic proselytizing to push her nonsensical views, just a bit less overt than usual for 90% of the book. Still annoying when they come up, but it's easier to grit your teeth through 3 pages than 30 pages.

Would I recommend it to someone looking for a book to understand what Ayn Rand is about? Definitely, it's a perfect intro to her. Would I recommend it to literally anyone else? Eh. But it's an easy read, that can be knocked out in an afternoon, so it gets bonus points for that. ( )

Ugh. Rand's simplistic allegory paints the world in black and white - there is the individual vs. the collective, a struggle which ultimately stands for freedom vs. totalitarianism. If she had read Freud or Darwin, she would know that human beings are a communal species - while it is true that individual rights should be protected and genius should be nurtured, you can not completely take a person out of the context of the community. This novel, and indeed all of her writing, is based on a false dichotomy, which was probably her reaction to seeing the results of the Russian Revolution - a reactionary response to a reactionary period in history. Unfortunately for Rand and the Soviets she despised, the world is much more nuanced than their respective dogmas will admit. I might have given this book two stars for the coherence of its philosophy, but a star was deducted for packaging the brief story with a sycophantic introduction by Rand disciple Leonard Peikoff, along with additional materials tailored to the Randroid cult of personality. ( )

"He dared..." ( )

This book is stupid. ( )