Jack London, the socialist Ayn Rand

Barrett Brown

I am the founder of the distributed think-tank Project PM and a regular inactive to Vanity Fair and Skeptical Inquirer. My work has also appeared in The Onion, National Lampoon, New York Press, D Magazine, Skeptic, McSweeney's, American Atheist, and a couple of newspapers in the U.S. and Mexico as well as a few policy journals. I'm the author of two books and serve as a consultant to various political entities and private clients.

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15 Responses

  1. I think this begs for a follow-up pop quiz post in which you quote from London and Rand and ask us to figure out who wrote what. There’d have to be some alterations to account for the differences between first-person and third-person narrative, but I’m quite certain it could produce most amusing results.Report

  2. Aaron W says:

    Ernest Everhard? Really? Wow, I think I’ve seen erotic Harry Potter fanfiction with more subtle character names.Report

  3. James Hanley says:

    I think I’ve seen erotic Harry Potter fanfiction

    Is that really the kind of thing you want to admit in public?Report

  4. MFarmer says:

    He wrote much better prose when he wrote about what he knew — John BarleycornReport

  5. James K says:

    At any rate, London has the balls to suddenly deploy outside the window of the house in which the scene is set a character who not only worked at the Sierra Mills, but who in fact had his arm chewed off by a machine in an effort to save the company a few dollars and was afterwards fired, his damage claims defeated in court by company lawyers. Ernest explains all of this in perfect detail to his reluctant sexual admirer, having total knowledge of a literary universe in which London is God and he London’s prophet and mouthpiece.

    It is this that makes me deeply suspicious of fiction as a source of political or social commentary, or for that matter as a source of any insight into the human condition. Fiction is manufactured evidence, and it cannot offer a true insight into how things work because the author sets all the rules.Report

  6. Will says:

    I hope London doesn’t mind that I appropriated a few of these excerpts for my Facebook “about me” section.Report

  7. Oleg Volk says:

    London does fine with short stories. His characters are mostly rational, decent people who aren’t caricatures. His novels are entirely inferior.Report