RoR: Forum

I had to vote other, because a former friend with whom I had had a public falling out in high school had tried to insult me by throwing a copy of The Virtue of Selfishness at me. He was a fan of Rush and had looked up Rand out of curiosity due to their dedication to her on their Anthem-inspired rock album 2112. And I saw Noi Vivi before I saw The Fountainhead.

Ted

Post 1

Saturday, April 21, 2007 - 8:21pm

I guess we could say that Rand found you, huh Ted? LOL!

I had to vote "Other" as well. My mother turned me on to a popular radio talk show personality in the Detroit area, Mark Scott (sadly deceased). He was a huge Rand fan, and is probably personally responsible for the large Objectivist population here.

Scott would start his show by reading something of Rand, and then parallel the quote with current events in the Detroit area. He was brilliant, and the show was utterly addictive.

Post 2

Saturday, April 21, 2007 - 8:34pm

Well, it did seem quite bizarre to me at the time that I had never heard of her before I was sixteen. I had always been a freethinking libertarian/conservative. I was extremely well read. It was almost as if there was some sort of conspiracy to hide her existence. And from what I later learned about such people as William F. Buckley, I guess there was. When I asked my parents about her, my father didn't recognize her and my mother remarked, oh, wasn't she that communist? LOL.

When I was in elementary school, I had had a recurring dream that my best friend and I found a book in his basement that explained why all the adults around us seemed like they were lying and didn't even know it. When I read her, I had found that book.

Ted

Post 3

Saturday, April 21, 2007 - 11:02pm

At the beginning of the 11th grade, a fellow YAFer in my high school handed me a copy of Anthem. That was 1966. I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. (Between them, FNI and VOS.) I then took the Basic Principles course and at the end of that CUI came out. And here I am today.

My girlfriend also read them. We lived Dagny and Frisco. My family had just moved to the "Gold Coast" of Cleveland and we had a 10th floor apartment on the Lake. I could see it all strung out in lights from downtown. Before we lived there, we had spent two generations so close to the steel mills that in the summer, with the windows open, I could hear the yard engines working.

Western Reserve University was Patrick Henry, though Case Tech was where the Michaelson-Morley Experiment was performed. We had Bertram Scudder in the radio personality Harv Morgan.

Saturday mornings, I was at the Terminal Tower where the Rapid Transit and the trains came in and out and when you looked down the dark tunnels, you could see John Galt holding a lantern or see the panel that was the door behind which was the Motor.

Post 4

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 9:51am

My freshman year in college the socialist across the hall gave (lent? I don't remember) a book, saying "I think you'll like this."

It was For The New Intellectual.

He was right.

In short order I had read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and subscribed to The Objectivist Newsletter.

Post 5

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 11:06am

We had a copy of Anthem lying around the house, that my older brother had read. I read it in high school, and quickly gobbled up Fountainhead, Atlas, and We the Living, followed by all the non-fiction after that.

Post 6

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 11:09am

The first encounter with anything Rand I remember was seeing a copy of The Fountainhead in Dirty Dancing. From how the characters treated the book, I thought it was some kind of a pulp or romance novel.

Years later I read a message board where somebody dismissed an article because it had been "written for the Ayn Rand Institute." So I decided to investigate and picked up a copy of The Fountainhead. The rest is history, as the saying goes. I guess that qualifies as, "Someone badmouthed her to me."

Post 7

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 11:37am

I kept reading in comics trade publications that my favorite comics creator since childhood, Steve Ditko (best known as the co-creator of Spider-man), was very influenced by Ayn Rand.

Of course, Ditko is an Objectivist and he remains my favorite comics creator.

Post 8

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 11:57am

I got a job in a bookstore right after graduating from high school in 1966. I was a big fan of Sci-Fi, especially Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark. Anything future oriented and speculative caught my interest. Interestingly enough, I had already run across Henry Hazlitt's "The Great Idea" in our local library and liked it very much. I picked up Atlas Shrugged and was hooked on the first page. I had never heard of Ayn Rand before.

Post 9

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 7:29am

Hello! My 1st post here :)

I 1st came across Ayn Rand's name in a bodybuilding magazine.
(The late)Mike Mentzer, a former Mr. Universe, was an objectivist and credited Ayn Rand's philosophy for his training methods- among other things.

Post 10

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 1:37pm

Wow, such great anecdotes! I am glad I posted the poll. And I had forgotten the gratuitous slimy defamation of Rand in Dirty Dancing. I remember Rand in Heinlein of course, but read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress after I had found her. Had I not, I think his mentioning her might have drawn me to her, although there would have been no internet for me to look up the reference back in the mid-eighties. I was wondering what would be the best way to introduce Objectivism, and thought that finding out how it actually happened would be a good question to ask.

Let's hear some more anecdotes!

Ted

Post 11

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 1:53pm

I remember my father and brother-in-law talking about Atlas Shrugged in about 1958 while I was still studying engineering. I had no time for such reading as I was concentrating on my studies. I think they just dismissed the whole subject as not worthy of further discussion. I heard nothing more of Rand until the mid-seventies when my boss kept going on about AS. Finally I read it and was hooked.

Sam

Post 12

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 2:25pm

Well then Ted...

I was in my friend's basement suite in 2003, a year getting my B.A., and saw a copy of The Fountainhead on his kitchen table amongst his other crap. I think my friend enjoyed living in his smoky filth. Anyway, what immediately struck me was the cover art:

I immediately assumed it was an uplifting and positive novel because of the non-guilty look of the subject on the cover. But then I looked at the author and thought "Oh... Ayn Rand, isn't she that eccentric fascist?" So I probed my friend- wondering what the hell he was getting himself mixed up in. All he really said though was that it was a good book. But I really respected (and still respect) his opinion: he, in my opinion, is my smartest friend, amongst my Ph.D-getting, M.D.-being group of friends that is a big complement. He is one those guys that has swallowed two books a week since he was twelve.

I was conflicted. I was already basically a libertarian (although I didn't know it) but I had only heard Rand's name used along side that of Stalin and Hitler... misinformation.

So, long story short... I told myself that I'd read the book one day. A year later, although hesitant because in doing so I was labeling myself as a fascist in training, I purchased it at the bookstore.

Now here is where I confess something idiotic... I thought Peter Keating was the protagonist for the first hundred pages. But I soon realized my misapprehension about Keating and Rand as a fascist, thus revealing the level of indoctrination of my college classmates.

I went on to have one of the best reading experiences of my life. It was a great couple weeks. I would read about 50 pages a night after work and a hundred on the weekend.

Those two weeks were transformational. I realized that Rand and I, especially in terms of sense of life, have parallel outlooks on what makes a good life. And although it gave me new insights, I loved how The Fountainhead gave me a wonderful backing for many aspects of what I considered to be peculiar aspects of my personal philosophy.

That is why I will never, ever call myself an objectivist, because I was always and will forever be me, with my own ideas. The remainder of Rand's fiction and non-fiction are pretty good but much of it was just concretization of ideas I held. Of course, she went into greater depth than I ever care to.

In sum, cover art attracted me to Rand, I agreed with her, and I realized I was not crazy.

All the best,

Tyson

(Edited by Tyson Russell on 4/22, 8:58pm)

Post 13

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 3:24pm

Shortly after joining the Libertarian Party in 1992 I subscribed to Liberty magazine. There were several articles pro and con about Ayn Rand and Objectivism. After nearly a year of reading those articles I bought Atlas Shrugged. When I finished the book I vowed to never live my life for another person.

Post 14

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 4:08pm

Saturday Evening Post profile in 1961. In her letters she (not very seriously) threatened a libel action after the article came out. If she'd known she was getting me she might have had a case.

Post 15

Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 4:40pm

I was 18 years old and living in an ancient milk truck I'd converted into an RV. I had dropped out of high school and been on my own for two years - traveling and working odd jobs. I was parked was just off the Haight-Ashbury section of San Fransciso and just living just outside of the hippie movement. I was starting to feel the lack of education and had been reading the Harvard five foot shelf of classics. Not serious study, but curious browsing. I was getting hooked on ideas but was without a direction or any sense of the boundaries of that world. Then someone gave me a copy of Atlas Shrugged. That beautiful integration of passion and logic rebelling against the status quo seduced me immediately. From then on my heros were intellectuals and I couldn't read fast enough to consume everything she had written. I sold the truck, got an apartment, passed a GED test (high school equivalency diploma), and started college.

Post 16

Monday, April 23, 2007 - 3:32pm

My eighth grade teacher had Atlas on the classroom bookshelf. I remember her mentioning Rand a few times, but it's been so long, I can't remember the context (but I do remember she called her Ann Rand). The book appealed to me because it was thick, and I was ambitious. Not long after that I spotted a used copy on a rack of books for sale at the local library, and I snagged it for a mere quarter (yes, $0.25). What a bargain. When I brought it home, my dad mentioned that he had read it and some of her other novels. I also found out after I was finished that my next door neighbors (he was a middle-school principal, she was an English teacher) had read it as well. The next time I was at their house I noticed a hardcover copy displayed prominently. Anyhow, it took me about two months to read the book, and eight years to "get it".

Post 17

Monday, April 23, 2007 - 5:21pm

Many people had recommended her books to me, but I thought they were Sci-Fi...not philosophy. I specifically remember seeing Atlas Shrugged on Trey Parker and Matt Stone's non-P.C. cartoon South Park. On the show Atlas Shrugged was read to 4th graders in one sitting and if they couldn't remember specific events they were diagnosed as A.D.D.. Shortly after that my whole family believed my brother had gone nutty from reading the book, but strangely I felt he radiated with some mystery knowledge. My brother gave me Intro to Obj-Ep and after that I immediately read The Fountainhead and then A.S....the rest is history.

Post 18

Monday, April 23, 2007 - 6:39pm

Hi Amit! You should post more!

Audrey, please thank your brother for me.

These stories are really cool. This is such a vicarious thrill.

Ted

Post 19

Monday, April 23, 2007 - 8:49pm