Well, of all the books I bought last weekend (all being five I bought in two trips to ABC Books, so its not like an all at dollar day at a book sale), I jumped into this relatively short treatment of Ayn Rand’s works written/finished not long after her death–well, two years, I guess, but, boy howdy, she (Rand) was quite the thing for a while. You don’t see her mentioned much on Substacks these days, so she has fallen out of favor with the young crowd, and apparently I have been remiss in reading her–in all the years of this blog’s book reports, I’ve only re-read The Fountainhead in 2005 and listened to the address “Philosophy: Who Needs It?” (not even re-reading the book) in 2023.
This book is designed to be an introduction to the academic study of Rand and her works. It has five chapters:
- Biographical Data, a rough sketch of her life.
- The Fiction, an overview of her four novels, one short story, and one play.
- A Compendium of Characters, an encyclopedia of her characters broken down on whether they’re heroes, villains, respectable characters, or morally neutral characters (the last category being the smallest given how Rand portrayed characters as very black or white).
- The Nonfiction, which discusses her later books and articles for the various official Objectivist organs.
- Criticism of Rand’s Works, a survey of some of the contemporary reactions to her work and reviews of her publications.
At 130 pages (including introduction and index), it was a three-night read amongst other grazing. It didn’t present a lot of new material, and its biography comes mostly from news accounts and Who Is Ayn Rand?, but it’s not quite a homer take, acknowledging that she had a penchant for excommunicating members of her circle and being vituperative and, well, petty at times. I guess Nathaniel Branden aired his dirty laundry later.
But, still, it makes me want to re-read The Fountainhead and maybe get copies for my boys as they’re in the age range where it can inspire (and/or damage). No worse than what they get on the Internet anyway.
