Randian Style Redux

by Peter Saint-Andre

2006-11-03

John Enright, in his usual observant way, draws attention to a descriptive passage from Ayn Rand's Anthem that I missed when I wrote my essay Image and Integration in Ayn Rand's Descriptive Style:

The fields are black and ploughed, and they lie like a great fan before us, with their furrows gathered in some hand beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, opening wide apart as they come toward us, like black pleats that sparkle with thin, green spangles.

It's a shame that so many commentators are fixated on Rand's ideas, because the purely literary aspects of her novels are fascinating in their own right.


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