Loads of Learned Lumber

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Lisa Duggan, _Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed_

WE CERTAINLY NEED a short, smart book demystifying Ayn Rand...I'm not sure this is it, though. The title is extremely promising--witty and on target--but Mean Girl is somewhat less incisive (in my judgement) than the short chapters on Rand in Corey Robin's The Conservative Mind and Thomas Franks' Pity the Billionaire, while also being short on detail compared to Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market and Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made. For a quick, discriminating analysis of Rand's thinking and her impact, I would recommend Robin or Frank; if you are ready for the full meal, both the Burns book and the Heller book are excellent.

As an example of what feels missing, consider pp. 80-86, on the damage done by neoliberalism. These are the book's most passionate, committed pages, but the explanation of what Rand has to do with neoliberalism feels thin. It seems to boil down to her influence on Alan Greenspan. Fair enough, but we could go further than that, surely.

I may not be the book's intended audience, though. Duggan (or her publisher?) included a "Glossary" in the back, which defines such terms as "Bolshevik Revolution" and "Fascism," and a list of "Key Figures" that explains who Friedrich Nietzsche and William Buckley are. So the book (which is part of a series, "American Studies Now") may be aimed at undergraduates. If so, that choice of title is all the better--Mean Girls is canonical for young women now in their twenties.


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