This reads like it's straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
I was more subtle in my comment, hoping that someone would pick up the thread and point it out.
In Atlas Shrugged, the characters do come across as ideological extremes and not real people, if you go into the book expecting them to be that way. The book has a lot of depth that is missed by people who go into it for the philosophy.
Within philosophy, Rand was least concerned about politics and the economy, and most concerned about man's mind and emotions and man's relationship to reality and to other men. Sure, you can read Atlas as some kind of political treatise, and the characters will come across as flat, because you are missing the point entirely and not picking up on 95% of what's in the book.
In The Fountainhead, the characters don't come across as representing ideological extremes regardless of your approach to the book, IMHO. Anyway I'd recommend The Fountainhead over Atlas for someone new to Rand.
Agreed that Rand is not a libertarian.
My view of the characters has evolved into considering them ideological extremes because of how common it is for people to dismiss her on the basis that the characters do things no normal person would do.
So I've just given up on considering the characters people you can _be_. Like you said, the characters are people at their best. IMO that means the characters are meant to be perfect and by accepting the characters are perfect people, and that nobody is perfect, I'm ok considering the characters are extremes of their ideologies their meant to represent. So when the "not real people!!" arguments come out it's just "they're not supposed to be, they're ideologies and a person can't be an ideology".
btw I think we mostly agree and I'm enjoying reading your other comments in this thread. I also recommend The Fountainhead and then using the Ayn Rand Lexicon or her non-fiction to learn more. The nice thing about those is there's quotes from Atlas Shrugged and as long as you know the characters and overall story you don't need the entire book.
I also don't believe someone can get a good understanding of Rand's philosophy without reading Atlas. Atlas paints a picture of the kind of things Rand saw in the world that she used to induce (derive) her philosophy. Without that context, you lose too much.
Anyway, I'm happy we're getting to chat about Atlas, and I'm glad you've enjoyed some of my comments.
I feel like the characters are not "paragons of virtue" because they are not meant to be imitated. That is a common mistake by both fans and detractors of Rand. Nor are the characters meant to be representations of abstract ideas. They are just characters, complex ones. But like any good writer---say Hugo or Dostoevsky---the author is putting part of himself or herself into the characters and thus the characters have a morality to them that reflects the views of the author.
I feel like calling the characters "problematic examples" may be overstating it a bit. For example, Jean Valjean in Les Miserables is a heroic character who has a character arc where he learns from his mistakes and his character becomes more heroic over time. Rand's "good" characters are like that. Her "neutral" or "bad" characters don't learn from their mistakes. (edit: Well, some of the relatively neutral ones actually do, and have positive arcs.)
FYI, Rand hated libertarians and rejected libertarianism.
Still, a lot of libertarians claim to like her, and don't understand that their political views resemble only a small subset of her overall philosophy---and even then, it's more of a resemblance than actual agreement.
>The book depicts a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations. Railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, struggle against "looters" who want to exploit their productivity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged
Prodigious nationalization and planned labor is the entire premise for Rand's arguments in the book.
Lots of people love her books and don't view reading them as self-flaggelation, including myself.
On the other hand, lots of people view reading a basic calculus textbook as self-flaggelation, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
If you are actually interested in learning more about the ideas presented in the book, I suggest you get a copy of the audio book. You might be able to find it at your local library ... thought I can't imagine how many CDs that would be. It's on Audible too, and other less official online sources.
For me, it's was sort of eye opening to read the book. It smoothed out some chips on my shoulder that drove my cynical view in life. Even though it was fiction, I still empathized with the character's struggles. I could connect it to real world events and human behavior that I had observed.
There are some books that help you see the world through different eyes. For me, Atlas Shrugged was an effective one.
The Fountainhead was similar. I connected with the frustration of young Wynand's attempts at grade school, only to find himself surrounded by dumb children and incompetent adults.
I don't understand why HNers sometimes are so anti Ayn Rand, it seems to me that Dagny and Hank are true entrepreneurs. And if you ask me, very ethical because they absolutely abhor influencing the government to get what they want and they are ruthlessly honest with very transparent intentions. Very refreshing. I really would have liked to learn Ayn's opinion on modern surveillance capitalism, I bet it would match the prevailing opinions here.
Moreover, her take on female sexuality must have been revolutionaire at the time, I mean in the 60s Kirk was considered progressive while looking a female medical dokter up and down and remarking that he could not get used to women on the bridge. And here is Ayn presenting Dagny Taggart, with modern (well almost, don’t quote out of context) views on female sexuality even in 2022.
That's a common experience. It's like some people are reading the books in low resolution. That's why they think the characters are simplistic. If you re-read, you start realizing that all the little details matter and are part of the story.
> Moreover, her take on female sexuality must have been revolutionaire at the time
It was. What other work of art published in the 1950s or earlier has a female protagonist, a businesswoman, with multiple lovers?