ansh
2007-09-02 06:07:30 UTC
Coming out of a long hibernator-y lurking period to post this.
I belong to the discworld community on livejournal and one of the
members (http://pathwriter.livejournal.com/) came up with a very
intellectually interesting post.
x-x-x-x
Post copied in full:
Pratchett &... Rand?!
I spent the past couple months reading off and on (I've been generally
only reading before bedtime) Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The
Fountainhead. Since I'd felt like doing some research on the works
themselves, I decided to do some poking around online. Among other
things, I wandered across the wikipedia article for Atlas Shrugged and
it stated that Terry Pratchett's Going Postal is a response to and
satire of Rand's novel.
My next step was obvious, then. I picked up my copy of Going Postal
and read through it like a good literature major trying to spot the
allusions, similarities, and differences. And that's where I hit a
brick wall because... I don't know, I think I missed it.
I think part of my problem was that whomever wrote the wikipedia
article claims that Reacher Gilt is the Discworld's John Galt. The
only attribute I can find to support that assertion, though, is that
their surnames are very similar. Beyond that, though, for all that I
saw a host of sideways allusions to Rand's work, particularly in Adora
Belle Dearheart (she's the typical Rand heroine), I really couldn't
quite catch the gist of the rebuttal. It took a main character who was
utterly unscrupulous and he managed to make a profit from it by
tricking people but, in the end, it was alright because it worked out
to everyone's benefit. That doesn't exactly sound like a rebuttal to
Objectivism.
I did see, however, support of Rand's ideas in the particulars of the
Grand Trunk Company and how its Board of Directors operated. It was
pretty much perfectly in tune with the likes of Associated Steel and
James Taggart. In fact, if anything, Reacher Gilt put me more in mind
of Orren Boyle than John Galt.
Well, anyhow, my point is, to those familiar with these novels, am I
just missing something critical or am I just reading too much into
someone's opinion posted on wikipedia?
x-x-x-x
My thoughts (and a request for permission to re-post) are:
Like a number of the above posters I haven't read any Rand. I got
gifted Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead for a birthday but I hated
the characters and underlying philosophy (whatever I got of it) so
much, that I gave up after about 5 pages.
As far as I know, the central idea behind objectivism is that you try
to maximise "personal happiness" or personal utility. As opposed to
this, in Going Postal, instead of working to maximise his personal
happiness Von Lipwig tries to work for the "greater good" and succeeds
pretty well. I wouldn't argue that the fact that he did this by
thinking on his own (which is, IMO, not a characteristic unique to
objectivists) all that central to what he got done. I think in this
case it was the end result versus methodology that was the difference
between AS and GP. I haven't read AS so I can't comment on plot
similarities but I would compare the over-arching themes in the books
on a purely philosophical basis.
By the way, this is a great post. Have you thought of posting it on
alt.books.pratchett? There's a lot more (very erudite) people on the
newsgroup who might be able to shed light on the topic and usually
when its this interesting pTerry posts too. If you don't want to,
would you mind if I took the liberty? I am really interested in seeing
what other people come up with as well.
x-x-x-x
You can see the post along with all the comments various people made
here: http://community.livejournal.com/discworld/752163.html
I thought it would be a good idea to post this topic here and see what
people on abp make of it. What do you think?
[BTW, sorry if this is too long].
I belong to the discworld community on livejournal and one of the
members (http://pathwriter.livejournal.com/) came up with a very
intellectually interesting post.
x-x-x-x
Post copied in full:
Pratchett &... Rand?!
I spent the past couple months reading off and on (I've been generally
only reading before bedtime) Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The
Fountainhead. Since I'd felt like doing some research on the works
themselves, I decided to do some poking around online. Among other
things, I wandered across the wikipedia article for Atlas Shrugged and
it stated that Terry Pratchett's Going Postal is a response to and
satire of Rand's novel.
My next step was obvious, then. I picked up my copy of Going Postal
and read through it like a good literature major trying to spot the
allusions, similarities, and differences. And that's where I hit a
brick wall because... I don't know, I think I missed it.
I think part of my problem was that whomever wrote the wikipedia
article claims that Reacher Gilt is the Discworld's John Galt. The
only attribute I can find to support that assertion, though, is that
their surnames are very similar. Beyond that, though, for all that I
saw a host of sideways allusions to Rand's work, particularly in Adora
Belle Dearheart (she's the typical Rand heroine), I really couldn't
quite catch the gist of the rebuttal. It took a main character who was
utterly unscrupulous and he managed to make a profit from it by
tricking people but, in the end, it was alright because it worked out
to everyone's benefit. That doesn't exactly sound like a rebuttal to
Objectivism.
I did see, however, support of Rand's ideas in the particulars of the
Grand Trunk Company and how its Board of Directors operated. It was
pretty much perfectly in tune with the likes of Associated Steel and
James Taggart. In fact, if anything, Reacher Gilt put me more in mind
of Orren Boyle than John Galt.
Well, anyhow, my point is, to those familiar with these novels, am I
just missing something critical or am I just reading too much into
someone's opinion posted on wikipedia?
x-x-x-x
My thoughts (and a request for permission to re-post) are:
Like a number of the above posters I haven't read any Rand. I got
gifted Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead for a birthday but I hated
the characters and underlying philosophy (whatever I got of it) so
much, that I gave up after about 5 pages.
As far as I know, the central idea behind objectivism is that you try
to maximise "personal happiness" or personal utility. As opposed to
this, in Going Postal, instead of working to maximise his personal
happiness Von Lipwig tries to work for the "greater good" and succeeds
pretty well. I wouldn't argue that the fact that he did this by
thinking on his own (which is, IMO, not a characteristic unique to
objectivists) all that central to what he got done. I think in this
case it was the end result versus methodology that was the difference
between AS and GP. I haven't read AS so I can't comment on plot
similarities but I would compare the over-arching themes in the books
on a purely philosophical basis.
By the way, this is a great post. Have you thought of posting it on
alt.books.pratchett? There's a lot more (very erudite) people on the
newsgroup who might be able to shed light on the topic and usually
when its this interesting pTerry posts too. If you don't want to,
would you mind if I took the liberty? I am really interested in seeing
what other people come up with as well.
x-x-x-x
You can see the post along with all the comments various people made
here: http://community.livejournal.com/discworld/752163.html
I thought it would be a good idea to post this topic here and see what
people on abp make of it. What do you think?
[BTW, sorry if this is too long].