Jon,
What you said about that reader's poll of top 100 English novels since
1900 got me wondering. It struck me as odd that two of Ayn Rand's books
would finish #1 & #2, and even stranger that a silly sci-fi book by L. Ron
Hubbard made #3. So I went to the randomhouse website, where the poll was
taken, and found the list. The top 10 vote getters for novels were:
1. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
8. WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
9. MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
10. FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard
So 7 of the top 10 novels are either by Ayn Rand or L. Ron Hubbard. Isn't
that a bit peculiar? I noticed there was an email forum on the randomhouse
website where people can discuss books. So I looked at posts in the
archive at around the time of the voting to see if anybody had a theory as
to why these two authors were so popular. I found none, but I noticed
there was somebody in the forum who liked Ayn Rand a lot, in a kind of
zealous, cultish way. Then I hit pay dirt:
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/forums.cgi?page=352&messages_per_page=20
On Thursday, April 8, 1999, Small Atlas ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said:
Time to put the Kantian mindkillers in their place. and get ready for the fight to
put
Ayn Rand at the top of the non-fiction poll. No room for hippie commies (Marx and
his good body Lennon) or dirty old men (Freud the fraud). It's time to take back the
intellectual might of this forum, so that we can talk about literature and
non-fiction in a rational, objective manner.
Voting for the top 100 on the NON-FICTION reader's poll began on April 29,
1999 and ended on Sept. 30, 1999. The top 6 were:
1. THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS by AYN RAND
2. DIANETICS:THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH by L. RON HUBBARD
3. OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND by LEONARD PEIKOFF
4. 101 THINGS TO DO TIL THE REVOLUTION by CLAIRE WOLFE
5. THE GOD OF THE MACHINE by ISABEL PATERSON
6. AYN RAND: A SENSE OF LIFE by MICHAEL PAXTON
So apparently this nut, by himself or in collaboration with other Ayn
Rand nuts, voted thousands of times for the books of Ayn Rand. And
presumably so did someone else for the L. Ron Hubbard entries.
Personally, I haven't read Rand or Hubbard. I've heard quite a bit about
Dianetics and the Church of Scientology though and if what I've heard is
true (or even half true), then it's a bad scene. I've heard less about
Rand, but when I went to their website, I was a bit sickened, not just
about their racist, militant politics and egoist ethics, but also because
they purportedly base all this around objectivity - something I admire.
So now I have MOQ, on the one hand, that has taken quality as its own and
mixed it up with other kinds of nonsense that have nothing to do with
quality, and on the other I have Objectivism, which has taken objectivity
as its own and mixed it up with other kinds of nonsense that have nothing
to do with objectivity. But I suppose all cults have to have some sort of
hook, otherwise no one would fall for them.
Glenn
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