Ayn Rand's Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors [Paperback]

Ayn Rand (Author), Robert Mayhew (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 231 pages
• Publisher: Second Renaissance Pr; 1ST edition (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561142506
• ISBN-13: 978-1561142507
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,167,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, was published in 1936. With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943, she achieved spectacular and enduring success. Through her novels and nonfiction writings, which express her unique philosophy, Objectivism, Rand maintains a lasting influence on popular thought.

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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astute comments from a titan, March 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ayn Rand's Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors (Paperback)

I had read a number of the books before I read Miss Rand's comments on them. What struck me most was how dead on she was. I remember recoiling in horror at the same places in Hayek's _Road to Serfdom_ that Rand did. Ayn Rand's Marginalia is an excellent book. It brilliantly shows her mind at work as a _reader_. It serves as an wonderful companion to both her Journals and Letters books.

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Only for Rand-completists who are fixed on her personality, July 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Ayn Rand's Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors (Paperback)

The source and title of this book belie too much, unfortunately. These comments are strictly a marginal reflection of Ayn Rand as philosopher and social commentator. The point seems to have been to demonstrate how cogently Rand could describe -- with an uninhibited pencil in hand under her reading lamp -- the unadmitted philosophic essentials of many other writers' works.

Where this falls short, and it should be obvious, is in these being her marginalia. This isn't sustained critical comment that comes to its own point of view. And as the editor admits, the preponderance of negative comments is to be expected, for why would anyone bother to constantly show agreement? Especially when such marginal notes were never intended for others' eyes?

Beyond this lack of critical distance is the frequent lack of even any attempt at a connected argument on her part. The major exceptions to this are found with Ludwig von Mises' influential economic treatise, "Human Action," and a philosophic textbook by her one-time friend and longtime libertarian activist John Hospers.

Although Rand's lengthy comments are often pithy and penetrating, her depth of analysis depends too often upon the quality of her literary targets. To tear apart the campaign writing of Barry Goldwater's "The Conscience of a Conservative" is almost laughably easy, and Rand has a free and spirited (though not at all denigrating) time with doing so. The analysis of Mises, by contrast, shows up her particular distinctions far more clearly, though it isn't her doing. It's due more to Mises making an intricate economic argument, rather than his engaging in propagandistic persuasion.

This last example, sadly, shows how one of Rand's own foibles tripped her up, for she becomes fixated on how Mises uses the concept of "subjective." His usage is closer to that of "personal judgment," apart from -- though not opposed to -- objective analysis or comparison to external fact. Rand persists, as she did elsewhere, ! in assuming that it is used as a synonym for "the arbitrary."

Such a shortcoming as a commentator is far less pronounced in Rand's own essays and polemics -- and *these* are cogent and often brilliant, in her collections of essays with titles ranging from "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" to "Philosophy: Who Needs It."

Where Rand is shown to fall short -- in an arena that she thought would remain private -- is in circling back on the errors of others who could not keep their own points as clear as she kept her own. She is putting her analytical stamp on the creations of others, here, but is following *their* leads as to what is important and what is not.

It'd be better by far to have had her concise eye placed upon others' writings, or on news events, with more sustained philosophic attention. Aside from her collected magazine/newsletter essays, in "The Ayn Rand Letter" and "The Ayn Rand Column," she created very little of such work. She did even less work comparing her own extensive philosophic integrations with those of others -- except, briefly, Immanuel Kant.

By dredging up these "Marginalia," one evident motive is to fill this gap and to promote Rand as more of a commentator than she was, and with more of a grasp of the culture around her than she possessed. It's an admirable attempt. But it fails to keep one's attention for the same reason that Peter Keating's architectural mishmashes failed to work in her novel "The Fountainhead": the reactive effort is against and bound up with others' work, not against the objective challenges of life.

Newcomers to Rand are advised to begin, after trying her masterful and provocative fiction, with any of the essay collections she created between 1964 and 1982.

This collection of marginal notes is only for those who have been thoroughly exposed to her viewpoint and choose to focus on her persona and strength of mind. It shows many sparks of both these parts of her life, but only by thei! r being chipped off of authors that rarely rise to her own level of luminous wordcraft.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Watch Rand cut through the philosophical blather, March 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ayn Rand's Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors (Paperback)

Good book. Catch a glimpse of Ayn Rand's mind at work. Note her talent for reducing a page of philosopher speak down to a couple sentences and pick out their contradictions (sometimes within the same sentence!).