Saw COMM and had to come join the RAH-hate. Just kidding. Not.
I think I would be far more able to live-and-let-live with Heinlein's oddball/provocative ideas if he actually gave flesh to anything more than the idea. He gets more points than Isaac Asimov, because he can actually construct a sentence with a subordinate clause, but Heinlein's characters don't tend to have anything but what the plot/ideology demands of them. There's a particular character moment near the end of
Starship Troopers
that made me absolutely HOWL with laughter in its ludicrous stupidity.
Ideology is like medicine -- a lot easier to take when hidden in the literary equivalent of ice cream. (Or cheese, if you're a dog.)
I gather that this weakness of Heinlein's, and possibly his complete inability not to summarize action rather than depict it, is also a symptom of his genre at that time. All I can say to that is, All Hail New Wave! As annoying as a in-genre "movement" can occasionally be, I can't complain when the end-result is fiction I can read and actually call fiction.
I think the timing is key for liking Heinlein/finding him profound.
I have this same response to Ayn Rand. I just think there are author's you read and you think "Oh. Yeah. Deep. Model for my life." and then you grow up and realize, "Huh. Crappy."
I worry about rereading Hermann Hesse for just this reason.
I have this same response to Ayn Rand.
Man. If I had a nickel for every meat head in a Co-ed Naked Wrestling t-shirt who had some life-changing epiphany after reading The Fountainhead, I could take a year off of work.
I worry about rereading Hermann Hesse for just this reason.
Be grateful you aren't rereading Fu Manchu. It didn't start out great, and man, is it worse when you aren't an adolescent.
I think my Ayn Rand issue (and Tim, frankly, I don't give a shit if you think she's brilliant. You're wrong.) rests around the idea that her whole philosophy was justification for behavior that was juvenile and selfish, unnecessarily self-important and self-indulgent and just generally crappy.
Betsy, huh? Fu Manchu?
Agreed, Kat re: Rand.
She would have made a good third wife to Heinlen.
I think my Ayn Rand issue... rests around the idea that her whole philosophy was justification for behavior that was juvenile and selfish, unnecessarily self-important and self-indulgent and just generally crappy.
I agree, and I don't like her writing either. Objectionable content + unappealing style = I think I'll read something else. Such as Elvis Shrugged.
