Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

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I must admit that I have, in fact, actually read Gravity's Rainbow.

On the other hand, I do think it's likely to be high on the list of books most admired by people that read about it instead of reading it...

(Atlas Shrugged is another. In certain business and political circles, the book about the business leaders going on strike to prove how much value they really create sounds like the one you want to cite as your inspiration, but whenever you open it, it just seems like 1000 pages of weirdness about trains, philosopher pirates and genius scions of self-made conquistadors peddling stock scams as an unlikely act of heroism, with drive-by digs at Christianity, marital fidelity and nuclear weapons and an 80 page speech in which the world is inoculated against socialism by the revelation that 'A is A'.

Bet there's lots of high fantasy lovers that loved works influenced by LOTR but never quite got past Tom Bombadil in the actual book too, but then there's others that will know the appendices off by heart!)

Having read about half of LOTR when I was a kid, then seeing the movie trilogy, to reading it now to my son, I have to say I actually enjoy it more having seen the movie already.

Knowing the general plot from the movie makes reading everything that happens in between the major story beats much more interesting since I have a sense of where in the story we are. It’s also fun to notice the differences when they adapted the story for the screen.

I’ve also told my son the general plot several times beforehand (when he wanted me to tell him a story and I couldn’t think of any other) and I think he’s much more into it because of that as well. He knows where we are overall and what generally comes next.

Patience really is a virtue huh.

The value of patience is context-dependent.

I always find it interesting when Ayn Rand is discussed. I'm not from the US and I got The Fountainhead as a present and without any knowledge of who she was or what her books were about. I quite enjoyed it. There is something appealing about the idea of people who are excellent at what they are doing and stick to their ideals no matter what life throws at them. I then bought and read Atlas Shrugged but it wasn't a great read as it drifted off into the rambly and preachy. But again the idea of someone starting a society somewhere remote where things are right is appealing in some daydreaming romantic kind of way.

It then boggled my mind when I learned that people take this seriously. And it means something. Rather than it just being a work of fiction.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this comment. But if you haven't read The Fountainhead and you can mentally distance yourself from the political side of everything around it, it's worth a read.

(Saying that as someone who read The Lord Of The Rings and thought it was okay but couldn't get through The Simarillion because it was just a bit too odd)

Any Rand was a Russian expat Jew whose family fled the Bolsheviks. She wanted to create a kind of anti-Marxism to inoculate America and succeeded I think to a very limited extent.

In the end I often compare her to Marx. Both were great critics but their work breaks down when you get to the “and then what” part. And then… magic happens and utopia! You just need the enough unicorns.

Followers of these two tend to criticize a lot. Marxists can pen deep critiques of capitalism and Randians of socialism. But they start sounding magical when it comes to solutions.

I’ve come to be skeptical of criticism and its value. Doing things is way harder than criticizing them.

Thanks for nanopond it was hugely inspirational to young me.

The way I think of it is that The Fountainhead is a novel that was informed by Rand's philosophy. Atlas Shrugged is Rand's philosophy in the form of a novel.

One of my professors in grad school was extremely liberal but loved Fountainhead and would defend it on the rare occasions that it came up.

> The way I think of it is that The Fountainhead is a novel that was informed by Rand's philosophy. Atlas Shrugged is Rand's philosophy in the form of a novel.

Oh yes, that describes it perfectly! Thanks for mentioning it, for some reason that makes me feel much better about the whole thing.

Tip to help you get through Rand's works: When the characters start making speeches, skip ahead about 50 pages. She tended to beat subjects into the ground, with her characters repeating the same concepts again and again, until it was time for her to change the ribbon on her typewriter (I'm joking .. but maybe?)

better tip. skip rand and read something good.

i've read both gravity's rainbow and atlas shrugged, and found both to be worth reading, but gravity's rainbow was immensely denser and commensurately more intriguing, if also frustrating. atlas shrugged is as straightforward as to kill a mockingbird or the handmaid's tale in its plot and messaging, and worth the read in for similarly straightforward reasons. gravity's rainbow seems like it was strained through the multiverse of everything, everywhere, all at once and spit out linearly fractalized. it's challenging to say the least.

tolkien, on the other hand, i found so boring as to never have been able to finish even a fraction of any of his books.

Yeah you're describing me. I found Tom bombadill incredibly cheesy and just could not get past it.

I can appreciate the Lotr film trilogy as a fun war epic. And the cavalry charge was filled to the brim, with a kind of grace.

Opened Atlas Shrugged and a couple pages in, instantly knew I would intensely 'unenjoy' that book. There is a sharp, weaponized dryness to her style of writing. I watched a documentary about her life later on and her troubled love life made an equal amount of sense.

The Fountainhead made a good film though. The emphasis on excellence and images of skeletal verticality were fun. I am guessing cutting down her books to fit a film length helped to make a more friendly viewing experience.

I think the other thing about Tom Bombadil apart from the character himself being a but cheesy is that you've actually had to read quite a long way into a book supposedly about heroism and a final reckoning between good and evil to get to the point where they've just left home and are now being rescued from a tree by a singing spirit!

(I think it's probably less disconcerting to people whose introduction to Tolkein was the tweeness of the Hobbit rather than Peter Jackson's films and high fantasy in general)

Well to be fair, when I first read LOTR I was young and was still in the social semiotics hang over of the 60s-80s. Any emotions that did not strike an easy balance with my pre-existing senses, was a tough sell.

Now I can appreciate it a bit more, knowing something about Tolkein's 'faith' and the connections he was making. The cheesy, soppy-and-sternness is not so bad with a deeper understanding.

I should probably go finish it.

Atlas shrugged even contains a part where it complains of rentier capitalism, and only paints people that are truly genius deserving of their fruits of labour.

It’s a horribly written book that also I didn’t finish, but at least it’s ideology also goes a bit against the people that think it’s about them not getting enough.

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