Ayn Rand, during one of her Q&A’s, made the following remark about Joseph Conrad, the Polish born English novelist: Joseph Conrad also c...

Harry Binswanger has come out with a video on Ayn Rand's break-up with philosopher John Hospers. Binswanger attended the notorious meet...

Anthem is a dystopian novella written in 1937. It is unique in Rand's ouvre in a number of ways. It is largely plotless (as Rand herself...

Of all of Ayn Rand's published fiction — and, indeed, of nearly all her writing, published or otherwise — We the Living is the easiest ...

Art as "fuel." For Rand, one of the primary objectives of art was to serve as a kind of spiritual sustenance or "fuel":...

Rand on rock music. While Rand was well known for being outspoken to the point of palpable rudeness, she could become, when she wanted to, ...

Rand on "modern music." Ayn Rand's most extended published take on "modern music" appears in her "Art and Cogn...

Rand's aesthetic judgments about music. We get the full sense of the subjective and arbitrary character of Rand's aesthetics when w...

Rand's theory of music. Rand's views on music reveal far more about her basic modus operandi than they do about music. Her theory ...

Style and "psycho-epistemology." With her over-emphasis on selectivity, her sense of life construct, and her invidious distinctio...

Style in literature. Rand's remarks on literary style begin rather innocuous and vague, but quickly take on more sinister connotations ...

Plot-theme. Rand introduces yet another poorly thought out aesthetic construct. She explains "plot-theme" as follows: A cardinal ...

Plot and character. When asked to name the three most important elements in fiction, Rand replied, "Plot, plot, plot." For Rand, ...

Naturalistic Romanticism. Rand introduces one other category of hybrid Romanticism in addition to Byronism, as explained in the following p...

"Byronic" Romanticism. With Rand's division of free will into two parts, one pertaining to consciousness and the other to exi...

Volition, consciousness, and existence. Rand's contention that Romanticism is a "volition-orientated" school of art offers a ...

"Volition" in art. With her selectivity principle well in hand, Rand proceeds to make yet another invidious distinction: An arti...

Selectivity in art. In Rand's aesthetics, there is a strong tendency to over-interpret artistic works, reading into them all kinds of i...

The Tragic Vision (or sense) of Life. By declaring that people tend either toward a benevolent or malevolent sense of life, Rand implied th...

Malevolent sense of life. For Objectivists, a malevolent sense of life stems from an acceptance of the malevolent universe premise (MUP), w...