[net.religion] selfishness

gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith) (02/23/86)

In article <78@oucs.UUCP> joe@oucs.UUCP (Joseph Judge) writes:

>	Books:
>	The Virtue of Selfishness, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and
>	Anthem. ( + others)
>	By:
>	Ayn Rand.

   By all means read these books! Ayn Rand, posing as a serious philosopher
and novelist, wrote these wonderfully ironic phantasy novels in the tradition
of Swift. Of course, the unenlightened took her seriously, which adds to the
fun. Ellsworth Tooey is a wonderful comic character among many others;
her protagionists and their actions are deliciously idiotic. If you compare
her work with Iris Murdoch, for instance, it is easily seen who is a 
better philosopher-novelist and who a better humorist.


 (Oh all right, if you insist -- :-) . There -- that better?).

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
ucbvax!weyl!gsmith      The Angry Number Theorist