How Bad Writing Destroyed the World

Zusatztext Weiner's key insight is connecting Rand's ideas and the Russian literary intellectual lineage she emerged from with the 2008 financial collapse ... Most historical changes have some kind of intellectual root, for better and worse; kudos to Weiner for tracing how a series of bad ideas and clumsy prose led the nation to the Great Recession. But Weiner, a scholar of Russian literature, appears to be far more interested in one of Rand's antecedents than Rand herself. Nikolai Chernyshevsky, the revolutionary socialist best known for his 1863 novel What Is To Be Done? , written while its author was imprisoned in a St. Petersburg fortress, is his true subject ... Weiner deftly handle[s] the contradiction here: a bad novel could not only become ideologically potent, but it could also inspire people who would not recognize each other as fellow travelers. Informationen zum Autor Adam Weiner is Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Wellesley College, USA. His first book was By Authors Possessed: The Demonic Novel in Russia (2000). Klappentext Literature can be used to disseminate ideas with devastating real-life consequences. In How Bad Writing Destroyed the World , Adam Weiner spans decades and continents to reveal the surprising connections between the 2008-2009 financial crisis and a relatively unknown nineteenth-century Russian author. A congressional investigation placed the blame for the financial crisis on Alan Greenspan and his deregulatory policies-his attempts, in essence, to put Ayn Rand's Objectivism into practice. Though developed most famously in Rand's Atlas Shrugged , Objectivism sprouted from the Rational Egoism of Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is to be Done? (1863), an enormously influential Russian novel decried by the likes of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Nabokov for its destructive radical ethics. In tracing the origins of Greenspan's ruinous ideology, How Bad Writing Destroyed the World combines literary and intellectual history to uncover the danger of hawking "the virtues of selfishness," even in fiction.Literary history meets economic policy in this entertaining polemic on the ethical and potentially destructive power of terrible literature. Zusammenfassung Literature can be used to disseminate ideas with devastating real-life consequences. In How Bad Writing Destroyed the World , Adam Weiner spans decades and continents to reveal the surprising connections between the 2008-2009 financial crisis and a relatively unknown nineteenth-century Russian author. A congressional investigation placed the blame for the financial crisis on Alan Greenspan and his deregulatory policieshis attempts, in essence, to put Ayn Rand's Objectivism into practice. Though developed most famously in Rand's Atlas Shrugged , Objectivism sprouted from the Rational Egoism of Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is to be Done? (1863), an enormously influential Russian novel decried by the likes of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Nabokov for its destructive radical ethics. In tracing the origins of Greenspan's ruinous ideology, How Bad Writing Destroyed the World combines literary and intellectual history to uncover the danger of hawking the virtues of selfishness, even in fiction. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgments Introduction: On the Dubious Virtue of Selfishness Chapter One: Radicalizing Dostoevsky Chapter Two: "The Most Atrocious Work of Russian Literature" Chapter Three: Dostoevsky Reborn Chapter Four: Rigor "Mortus" or Waiting for Rakhmetov Chapter Five: Fire in the Minds of Men Chapter Six: Rakhmetov Lives! Chapter Seven: The Vengeance of the Muse Chapter Eight: In the Graveyard of Bad Ideas Notes Works Cited Index ...

Vorwort
Literary history meets economic policy in this entertaining polemic on the ethical and potentially destructive power of terrible literature.

Autorentext
Adam Weiner is Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Wellesley College, USA. His first book was By Authors Possessed: The Demonic Novel in Russia (2000).

Klappentext

Literature can be used to disseminate ideas with devastating real-life consequences. In How Bad Writing Destroyed the World, Adam Weiner spans decades and continents to reveal the surprising connections between the 2008-2009 financial crisis and a relatively unknown nineteenth-century Russian author. A congressional investigation placed the blame for the financial crisis on Alan Greenspan and his deregulatory policies-his attempts, in essence, to put Ayn Rand's Objectivism into practice. Though developed most famously in Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Objectivism sprouted from the Rational Egoism of Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is to be Done? (1863), an enormously influential Russian novel decried by the likes of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Nabokov for its destructive radical ethics. In tracing the origins of Greenspan's ruinous ideology, How Bad Writing Destroyed the World combines literary and intellectual history to uncover the danger of hawking "the virtues of selfishness," even in fiction.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments
Introduction: On the Dubious Virtue of Selfishness
Chapter One: Radicalizing Dostoevsky
Chapter Two: "The Most Atrocious Work of Russian Literature"
Chapter Three: Dostoevsky Reborn
Chapter Four: Rigor "Mortus" or Waiting for Rakhmetov
Chapter Five: Fire in the Minds of Men
Chapter Six: Rakhmetov Lives!
Chapter Seven: The Vengeance of the Muse
Chapter Eight: In the Graveyard of Bad Ideas
Notes
Works Cited
Index