poo: ayn ran vs. vladimir nabokov

outstare the stars

ayn rand was as lazy a writer as she was a thinker, obv

The thread for posting your new libertarian insults

#teamrand

Lol

rand's writing is so stunningly clunky, sentence by sentence, that she really might be the anti-nabokov.

still voted for her.

Rand's novels seem impossibly boring; having never read one, my impression is they're like 900 pages of architects ranting at committee members

i'm going for rand too, even though i hate her and love nabokov, just in honor of this GREAT poll

what of hers have you read, iago?

thread bookmarked

think these two were actually kinda similarly traumatized, except all it made nabokov do was hate anyone with a plan whereas ayn rand it made think that the problem w humanity was a surfeit of compassion

altho the fact that nabokov's confiscated childhood was all lying around in libraries learning various languages from governesses in between the ritualized murder of butterflies while rand's was all being proud of her modestly successful pharmacist dad probably helps explain why rand's vision of utopia is one where the worthy ones use the mighty power of ingenuity and business to smash the petty and tyrannical state whereas nabokov's is just lying around in a library not being bothered (and killing butterflies)

itt i presume to know everything about literary figures based on how they spent their 8th birthdays

This is the first time i have ever seen these two names coupled in any way. ayn rand has absolutely no redeeming qualities, not even her hatred of christianity, which has been done much better by untold numbers of less objectionable people. otoh, vladimir was a strange, often bitter, man who could write beautifully and cogently, if not always humanly.

poor ayn will only get ironic votes, or none at all if there is perfect justice in ilx.

w/t question, Nabokov was both a better writer and thinker than Rand. the worst thing that Nabokov did was to largely abandon his gay brother (who ended up getting killed by the Nazis).

if he didn't actually denounce his brother to the nazis, i'd be inclined to not get too huffy about his connection to a crime that the nazis bear 100% of the blame for.

the worst thing that nabokov did was write ada

or none at all if there is perfect justice in ilx

sorry homie, life goes on

Man, it just occurred to me...is Rand Paul named after Ayn? Because ew.

no he claims very often it's just a coincidence

tho i don't know if randal chooses to go by rand for that reason

Considering his dad is a gold bug, maybe he was named for south african krugerrands?

hurricane lolita swept from florida to maine. hot rape scene too in 'the fountainhead'

what of hers have you read, iago?
― reggie (qualmsley), Saturday, December 8, 2012 5:33 PM

ah, i should have known this was a trick question--filter-the-rubes by making it LOOK like a no duh poll, when it is actually a deeply nuanced secret pleasure isle for comp lit folks....my mistake, reggie. i've only read VN, you were right....carry on!

But can I at least still hate Rand, Reggie? It's one of the tenets of my faith!

i agree with difficult listening hour that ayn rand and vladimir nabokov were both produced, as writers and thinkers, by the trauma of the russian revolution. nabokov's insistence on "aesthetic values" over ideology of any sort -- his disgust with both the New Left and psychoanalysis; systems of any kind -- was as much of an attempt to flee the mental atmosphere of the soviet union as rand's hypercapitalist ideology was. this poll makes more sense than it at first seems to. i obviously voted nabokov -- he was a great writer -- but i think that his anti-politics was almost as ridiculous as rand's evil politics. less dangerous though.

basically what difficult listening hour said. i thought i was saying new things but now i'm not sure. while i'm typing though i want to put in a plug for Nabokov's monograph on Gogol, which is my favorite work of literary biography ever written. his lectures too are almost as enjoyable as his novels imo.

rand's writing is so stunningly clunky, sentence by sentence, that she really might be the anti-nabokov.

nuff said, otm, lock thread, etc

the gnostical turpitude of cincinnatus c and the neil peart-inspiring individualism of equality 7-2521 share a lot in common. the fall never named a novel after a rush song though

pnin's contempt for academics is probably something a would agree with

nabokov's contempt for things can be pretty gross at times

although if you're gonna be contemptuous of stuff better it be dostoevsky and freud than love

Both share this: better read young.

like you know when you and a friend are talking shit and then the friend takes it to the next-level, or like starts hating on something you are indifferent to, and your whole perspective shifts and you see in them how evil and contemptuous you had just been a moment ago

At 38 I have no interest in reading Vlad.

Rereading

but the only true readers are rereaders

aristocratic contempt, not unlike indifference > merciless contempt for all forms of weakness

like you know when you and a friend are talking shit and then the friend takes it to the next-level, or like starts hating on something you are indifferent to, and your whole perspective shifts and you see in them how evil and contemptuous you had just been a moment ago

haha i had breakfast w someone yesterday and was hating on santa claus and she went along w it for a while but eventually i said too many nasty things about santa claus and i think she had this epiphany

frazen

Rand's novels seem impossibly boring; having never read one, my impression is they're like 900 pages of architects ranting at committee members

― send Lawyers (Drugs A. Money), Saturday, 8 December 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Anthem is a novella... :)

Anthem is the worst thing I've ever read

poo is right

The premise of anthem is hilarious.

Actually everything about ayn rand's books is hilarious except the actual experience of reading them.

and the fact that her ideas have had actual influence on the course of american history. (arguably)

At 38 I have no interest in reading Vlad.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, December 9, 2012 3:46 PM (6 hours ago)

wow this makes me sad - i think i'll be rereading Lo until i'm old & grey

(haven't read any other nabokov!)

oh man, who's going to break the bad news to difficult listening hour...

lol

its weird. rand seems more hazardous but at least her capitalist rape porn produces this obvious moment of dissent. at least its obvious why its dangerous. nabokov only obliquely illustrates why art is terrible. they are both obviously dreadful people but at least nabokov is fucking readable but maybe that is why he should be voted against. everything is terrible.

have you read richard rorty's "contingency, irony, and solidarity"? i don't quite remember everything about the chapter on nabokov, but i think he argues that nabokov's elitist posturing was mostly a ruse, and that Lolita in particular is a novel about the unsustainability of a life bereft of compassion. or something. he said that moral themes are of central concern to nabokov's work, even if he disavowed their importance in his public statements. i think this is my position. lolita, in particular, is a cold, heartless, but enjoyable novel on the first reading, but when you read it again, and are more attentive to subtle cues in the other characters' behavior, it really isn't funny anymore. it becomes something else. at least for me.

Pat, plz consider I Love Books as a second ilx home.

thanks Aimless. I will definitely try to jump into the discussions over there as well.

yeah def there's nothing fundamentally "cold" or "cruel" about nabokov; he just hides his compassion at the end of mazes. in pnin (and lots of the short stories) he doesn't even do that. i do think he had a fascination w human cruelty (i also think he was into little girls despite his scoffs to the contrary) but there's a good line somewhere in strong opinions where he says that people like humbert and albus rex and etc are like church gargoyles, "placed there only to show they have been booted out." if only that's what ayn rand was.

No, he's not cold. Pnin strikes the right balance between pathos and amused contempt for the professor.

he's also way affecting on the rare-but-not-as-rare-as-you'd-think occasions that he writes about the wrecked century, like the aunt in "signs and symbols" who was "a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about," or the "brown wigs of tragic old women who had just been gassed" in humbert's cluttered creepy dreams ("a cesspoolful of rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile"), or even in a weird echoed way in the structure of lolita where every single character is dead before the book begins, even lolita and her baby, who expire in "gray star, a settlement in the remotest northwest" and leave behind a story that's a perfect closed system of total self-consumption. lots (and lots) of messages from the dead in nabokov.

(which on the one hand helps build up the impression of him as someone showing you pinned butterflies but on the other is so intensely and constantly mournful)

Having just read Bend Sinister (© Pseuds Corner passim), I think it would be very difficult to maintain that Nabokov was uninterested in either personal or political morality.

When I used to use "Signs and Symbols" in class, the bit about the rope of saliva or whatever connecting the old man's dentures moved a girl enough to look for other stories that dealt compassionately with the aged for the purpose of a final essay (she also chose Munro's "The Bear Went Over The Mountain" iirc).

this match is actually kinda perfect. if you turn either of them inside-out, you get the other one -- vlad's surface nastiness and mandarin contempt for the rest of the world hides a deep anguished compassion and a very sharp understanding of what turns some people into tyrants; rand's carapace of cheerful, confident self-actualization and professed love for the 'greatness' of man barely disguises the bloodthirsty totalitarian and ignorant dullard within.

perfect but lopsided. but a great challops stress test.

but I mean, the only thing I've ever read from either is Laughter in the Dark (I have started Lolita and hope someday to get the chance to finish it)

lolita is dazzling. hard to imagine quilty as anyone but peter sellers but he's not in the novel much

Jim Henson, Ayn Rand, Sidney Nolan & Yoko Ono

http://www.arpanetdialogues.net/vol-iv/

You can see why she is so well-loved in the political spectrum. She doesn't engage in a discussion so much as use every opportunity to squeeze in pre-arranged talking points.

the ARPANET dialogues are fictional fwiw.

They are? Pooh.

don't tell tumblr that

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

hehe, poo

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ayn ran
ayn ran so far awaaaaay