Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Feeling Rand-y

Critic's Notebook: Considering the Last Romantic, Ayn Rand, at 100

The interesting article linked above is merely the impetus for this post, not its subject. Before clicking on it today, I hadn't thought about Ayn Rand at all for at least two years. This despite being quite obsessed with her work for a year during college, during which I read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and Anthem, thereby becoming quite convinced of the Virtue of Selfishness. This obsession followed quite quickly on the heels of a similar obsession with Kurt Vonnegut, every one of whose published novels I have read, and whose philosophy can be summed up with a line from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: "God damn it, you've got to be kind." Why was I so deeply in thrall to each writer, and why, despite Rand's later influence, am I philosophically so much closer to Vonnegut?

I'm not about to answer these questions here; I know better than to think that I even know the answer, though the smart-ass in me says the simple answer is that Vonnegut is closer to being correct than Rand about what it means to live a good life and be a good person. Despite being largely dismissed as a writer of fiction for very young adults, I suspect that Kurt's are the characters who prove more sympathetic to us as we grow older. Rand's self-assured heroes may thrill a college student, but the real world is more of a muddle, involves more inner questioning and more concern for how to relate with others. In short, it's more like the world, cracked though it is, that Vonnegut regularly created.

This post is really a question: Did anyone else go through similar fascinations with Rand and/or Vonnegut? What do you think of these two writers today?

2 comments:

Paul V. Allen said...

I haven't read Rand, but I did have an obsession with Vonnegut wherein I read everything by him between my senior year of high school and sophomore year of college.

I disagree with calling Vonnegut a writer for "very young adults" though I suppose one's definition of that term changes based on current age. I think he's got a cynicism that appeals to someone who has come out of that childhood reality and has entered the adult one. But as you point out, there's a good heart behind most of his stuff, and that's reassuring.

Also, his experiments with tone and plot and language are very accessible, but also clever to someone of a certain age. Sort of like the music of They Might Be Giants.

So I think he is a writer that a person grows out of, but it has to be a certain kind of person in the first place.

Richard said...

Thanks for the insightful comment, Paul. Allow me to clarify what I meant by "very young adult," as I now realize that in library parlance, I'd be referring to people aged 11-13 or so. I ment people who are actually adults--18 or over--but not by much. He's a writer for the 18-23 set, perhaps. I realize I'm just barely out of that designation, but everyone I know who read Vonnegut read him during that time, read him voraciously, and has since stopped. I suspect the same is true of Rand readers.

In any case, I'm glad to be the kind of person who can grow into and out of Vonnegut. You make it sound like a badge of honor, and perhaps it is.