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jfm comments on "Manna" by Marshall Brain - Less Wrong
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It's odd; I've heard these kinds of swipes a lot, and yet I really like Rand's fiction. It raises an interesting question: do tastes in literature vary so much such that whether someone is a great writer or unskilled (!) is wholly in the eye of the beholder? Or is there an anti-halo effect going on, where people think, "Rand's philosophy is wrong, therefore she must be bad at writing, too"?
Eh, her main literary flaws are the Author Filibuster and the use of Strawman Political villains and Mary Sue heroes. The definitive takedown was by Whittaker Chambers in the National Review in 1957.
Of course, other writers surely have written worse books than Atlas Shrugged, and not been so universally slagged, so there may be an anti-halo effect going on. That doesn't change the fact that Atlas Shrugged is terribly written.
Can we reduce terribly written into testable empirical statements? Without necessarily calling them flaws, I agree about the use of author filibusters, straw villains, and Sues. I also agree that the philosophy is wrong, and that many people hated the book, including Whittaker Chambers.
All this having been said, I expect you will agree that writing a thousand-page novel that sells millions of copies is a rare feat that requires no small amount of writing skill. I find it hard to believe that millions of people would buy a book for no reason whatsoever. If the claim is merely that Rand fans have bad taste and questionable morals, then we do not really disagree in the rationalist's sense; I can only shrug and say, "De gustibus non est disputandum." I merely wish to emphasize that even catering to people with bad taste and questionable morals requires what we would call writing skill; not everyone can do it.
Beware this piece of cached wisdom.
True, but there may be a low-hanging-fruit effect: it could be that Rand's literary skill is much less of a factor in her success than the fact that she was in the right place at the right time to meet the thitherto-unmet needs of a certain audience.
This is the review that says (page 3):