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Laddar... Ayn Rand and the World She Made (2009)av Anne Conover Heller
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. ספר ארוך, מפורט (מדי) ומרתק על חייה של הסופרת והפילוסופית. סיפור מרתק ומדכא כאחד על גולברית מוקפת גמדים שכולם דוחים ולא נורמלים באותה מידה. ( ) A very well-researched biography of this writer and philosopher. I listened to it as an audiobook (did not see the listing here on LT at this time), and discovered an author willing to tackle the myth of Ayn Rand. Heller digs right in with Rand's growing up as a Jewish merchant-class girl, different from her sisters right from the start, in Russia before the Revolution. Details about her family's life under Soviet occupation are documented, as are the difficulties faced by many of their class during this time. Her ability to immigrate to family in the US is fortunate for her; she lives with cousins in NY and Chicago, and it is in NY that she becomes infatuated with skyscrapers. Unfortunately for her family in the US and still in the Soviet Union, she neither pays her debts that she accumulated in the US, nor does she seek to get her family out of their own hell. Heller is quite comfortable calling Rand out on her narcissism and on her re-writing of her own history; Rand wrote that it is every man for himself and no one should help another while living quite a different reality. She also manages to outstay her visa, causing her to be an illegal immigrant until she marries an American and is able to live in the US as a legal citizen. I read The Fountainhead a number of years back, and liked the idea of sticking to one's dreams and visions even if it makes you an outsider. The rape scene was horrible to read, and Heller does articulate the passage as an example of Rand's infatuation with her strong male characters, and I was also struck in Fountainhead with the radio host who does not believe his own schtick of ugliness countered by the "everyman" architect who thinks that the host's word is gospel. Quite a precursor to modern alt-right radio. Good, well-researched biography, lots of good information, and worth borrowing a copy. This biography attempts to explain the intriguing character of Ayn Rand, to place her person as separate to her ideas, as much as such a thing is possible. Heller's own feelings or opinions of Rand's ideas and behavior only come through occasionally, but just often enough to remind the reader that there is in fact a person behind all these words, and peering in on a life that doesn't stand up quite so well to scrutiny as the person living it would have liked. Still, Ayn Rand's ideas, especially early in her life, are the stuff of legend, and worth revisiting in the context that created her.
I confess that enthusiasm for [Ayn Rand] is to me utterly mysterious, and the excellent new biography by Ann C. Heller does not clear up the mystery but, rather, deepens it. Able and gifted people (not the least of them Alan Greenspan) were captivated both by her writings and her person, but the picture of Rand that emerges from Ms. Heller’s book is all the more damning because the biographer is obviously fair-minded and, indeed, something of an admirer of her subject. In Heller's admirably evenhanded portrait, Rand appears as having been single-minded, ruthless, and beyond either modesty or embarrassment in her determination to succeed. So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon? Two new biographies of Rand—Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller—try to puzzle out this question, showing how her arguments found an echo in the darkest corners of American political life. But the books work best, for me, on a level I didn't expect. They are thrilling psychological portraits of a horribly damaged woman who deserves the one thing she spent her life raging against: compassion. While it’s not hard to understand Rand’s revenge-fantasy appeal to those on the right, would-be Galts ought to hear the story Anne C. Heller has to tell in her dramatic and very timely biography, “Ayn Rand and the World She Made.” For one thing, it is far more interesting than anything in Rand’s novels. Ms. Heller has delivered a thoughtful, flesh-and-blood portrait of an extremely complicated and self-contradictory woman, coupling this character study with literary analysis and plumbing the quirkier depths of Rand’s prodigious imagination. PriserPrestigefyllda urvalUppmärksammade listor
Hänvisningar till detta verk hos externa resurser. Wikipedia på engelska (21)A comprehensive and eye-opening portrait of one of the most significant and improbable figures of the twentieth century--from her childhood in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution to her years as a screenwriter in Hollywood, the publication of her blockbuster novels, and the rise and fall of the cult that formed around her in the 1950s and 1960s. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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