 Hello everybody, welcome back to Roman's Book Report. Over the holiday I finished reading Anthem by the legendary Ein Rand. Anthem was published in 1938. That means it was after Zamiatin's Wii, after August Huxley's Brave New World, but before George Orwell's 1984. It is, as you may have guessed, a dystopian novel. Huge kudos to Ein Rand for getting something right that those other three authors, Zamiatin, Huxley, George Orwell, all got wrong. They all portrayed the tyranny as the place of new technology and innovation and general wealth. So they assumed that a strong government will bring all those good things, but it will also be a tyranny. And that's the problem that they bring out in their writing. Ein Rand understood something that it seems to me those others did not. She understood that the tyranny will be the place of poverty. That's very much the case in Anthem. He's a guy reading by candlelight. And from here on in I'm going to be revealing a few spoilers. He's reading by candlelight and he discovers electricity on his own and then he tries to show it to the representatives of knowledge in this imaginary world. And of course they don't want anything to do with it, they condemn him as a heretic. So huge kudos to Ein Rand for that. And that's about the best thing I'll say about this book is getting it right, understanding socialism brings poverty, unlike Orwell Huxley or Zamiatin. It's not great literature. The word cloying comes to mind. Like in most of her writings she's just very forceful. One of my writing teachers, the great Marilyn Robinson, told me a piece of advice, told us a class, a piece of advice that I think is very true. When a writer has a very strong idea of what they want to say, when they think they understand something completely they might write crappy literature. Good philosophy, important philosophy, but crappy literature because they think they understand it completely and they do not do justice to the richness and complexity of the human condition. Again, Marilyn Robinson's words or paraphrased a great way to go about writing a novel is to think of something that you don't quite understand. An example from the book of how Ein Rand correctly saw tyranny as the producer of poverty. In those unmentionable times of the wagons which moved without horses, of the lights which burned without flame, but those times were evil and those times passed away when men saw the great truth which is this, that all men are one and there is no, and that there is no will save the will of all men together. I think that demonstrates both the cloying nature of her writing and the fact that she understood socialism better than some of her contemporary authors who were writing in this genre. More examples, we said all together with the three teachers at the head quote, this is a chant, we are nothing mankind is all by the grace of our brothers we are allowed to live we are allowed our lives we exist through by and for our brothers who are the state amen it was not that learning was too hard for us it was that learning was too easy this is a great sin to be born with a head which is too quick it is not good to be different from our brothers but it is able to be superior to them the teachers told us so and they frown when they looked upon us. So I was going to recommend that anyone who wants a taste for this novella anthem should instead read Harrison Bergeron which I thought was Ayn Rand's short story and is in the very same simple style of just demonstrating this idea the flaws of this egalitarian ethic but then I discovered that Harrison Bergeron was not written by Ayn Rand it was written by Kurt Vonnegut and nevertheless if you're familiar with that I think that's a good comparison to this novella I think this could be a first draft Ayn Rand maybe would have been capable of rewriting it but she moved on to bigger and better things Atlas shrugged which is a better I think more developed philosophy and also better writing another thing that I didn't like about Anthem she like spends the whole first third of the book just setting up this world she describes how the world works from a great distance I think in the hands of a more skilled writer you're kind of traveling through the world with a character and learning about it at the same time take for example the first sentence of Atlas shrugged who is John Galt some homeless guy calls out to to another man walking down the street right there you're in the action but in Anthem the action doesn't come from for quite a long time so that's that's mostly it you can see some tendencies in Anthem that becomes characteristic of Ayn Rand's later writing the characters who believe in Liberty are taller more beautiful better looking they have just everything going for them it also ends with a similar image that Fountainhead ends which is the the main character up on him up in a high place with the sky behind him looking down at all the the silly mortals below him one thing that I'm becoming very interested in is whether libertarianism is for everybody or whether it's more of a aristocratic philosophy whether the path to salvation lies more in just tearing down the institutions of the state or if it lies in people separating themselves from the masses I'm going to be talking more about this in my upcoming book reviews but I'm Rand I was a little bit surprised to discover seems to be in the latter category when she describes freedom let me see if I can find it here when she describes freedom she mostly talks about freedom from the masses from from Anthem I'm reading but what is freedom freedom from what there is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him save other men to be free a man must be free of his brothers that is free the freedom that and nothing else she goes down the list at first the man was enslaved by the gods but he broke their chains then he was enslaved by kings but he broke their chains enslaved by his birth his kin his race and so on and and he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had spilled but then he gave up all he had won and fell lower than his savage being what brought it to pass what disaster took their reason away from men what whipped lash them to their knees in shame and submission the worship of the word we I guess I'm a little surprised that I would put that I end up putting and Rand in the latter category that libertarianism is aristocratic philosophy because she's so hostile to religion and to as you saw here to our monarchy and I guess what I know of libertarianism as an aristocratic philosophy comes mostly from hop up the things highly of both those things just as Atlas shrugs copies from Garrett Garrett's The Driver I'm Rand's anthem copies from Zamyatine's we part of me likes pointing that out because I'm Rand and objectivists generally are huge proponents of intellectual property so I like pointing out that that she copied in anthem as in Zamyatine's we which I reviewed earlier the characters have numbers instead of names and there are a few other similarities I think that the way the world is formed as a whole seems quite similar to we which was published I think about 15 years ahead of anthem so that's that for this book review stay tuned pretty soon I'm gonna review the hell out of Albert J. Knox memoirs of a superfluous man it's gonna be great hope you enjoyed it bye