Book Review: We the Living by Ayn Rand · 8:29am Dec 21st, 2012
Premise: The Red Army is victorious, and the Soviet Union has just been established; and a young woman in Petrograd struggles to protect her individualism, her virtues, her desires, in a society that condemns to death—quite literally, in some cases—those like her. She finds love, a man whom she believes uncorrupted, unconquered; and with him, she tries to fight—but we all know how hard and how iron was the presence of the Soviet Union, and even the harsh circumstances drove the most moral of individuals to lives of depravity.
I thought We the Living was very interesting, in the sense that it was written by a Russian, and it's about Russians speaking Russian in Russia—and it was written entirely in English. Why? Well, I can only assume: because 'Murica, that's why.
Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersberg (or Petrograd, or Leningrad, depending on whom you ask), and she witnessed first-hand, while almost starving to death, the Russian Civil War and the early years of the Soviet Union. After moving to America, she did arguably her best work while taking amphetamines, but We the Living was written before she was prescribed them, so one might find this novel of hers slightly more down-to-earth—and more depressing. While she did not write an autobiography, she said that We the Living was the closest thing she would ever write to it.
In terms of Ayn Rand's fiction writing, I had only read Atlas Shrugged and Anthem (the former, despite having thoroughly enjoyed it, I do not recommend lightly or transiently for a number of reasons, while the latter, being incredibly short, easy to read, and a very interesting example how the Queen of the Show-Don't-Tell Empire can also tell beautifully when she wants, which I recommend very strongly, especially to Americans, to whom the book is out of copyright and free on the internet), but the problem that many people take with these books is that they're not very realistic. The characters and scenarios in both of those books, while romantically appropriate—in the sense that, in the style of a romantic, such as Ayn Rand, the heroes are portrayed as how people ought to be, rather than how they actually are—can be seen as uninteresting, unengaging, and not easily sympathized with. The stories of both those books are set up to display these heroes as the ones above all and can feel quite contrived at times. But they still are interesting in themselves, so I like them.
So, let's put our totalitarian society survival hats and dive into We the Living!
THE GOOD
If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a fan of Ayn Rand, and for a lot of reasons. When I think that English was her second language, it fills me with awe.
Sometimes, after reading a Dan Brown novel, I'm tempted to start writing myself, seeing how easy it is. Dan Brown's books made me want to become a novelist. It was only until I started reading Ayn Rand that I realized how hard writing and started scratching my head when writing individual sentences for fan fictions. Philosophy and characters aside, the writing per se is absolutely beautiful. Ayn Rand is the Queen of the Show-Don't-Tell Empire, and when I see that some people in the comment sections of my pony fan fictions saying that my writing in reminiscent of her writing, I take this as the highest of compliments; if I've shown you the scene as well as Ayn Rand would have done, if I've painted the picture in your mind as well as she would have, then I truly believe that I could've done no better. The chapter "The John Galt Line" from Atlas Shrugged is the epitome of her descriptive writing, and it's a chapter I reference occasionally if I'm trying to understand the technique to describing a scene, complete with emotions.
And the writing in We the Living is no exception. The city of Petrograd was a dirty, dank place to begin with; and as the communists tighten their control on the city, you really do feel as if you're in the middle of this city, watching the old buildings you've always known slowly start to grow red pieces of bunting, adorned with iron hammers and sickles. The red banner brings no dryness to your socks after marching down the slush-filled Nevsky Prospect, nor do they fill your spine with warmth while you watch the large chunks of ice on the Neva float past. And no amount of red will be able to fill the large, gaping hole in your stomach, your stomach which is always promised food but never seems to get any. I recommend having some snacks on hand while reading this book; though it may make you feel like an asshole, chowing down on chips while the people of the Soviet Union are starving, the continual promises of a better day from the communists bringing little comfort to them.
Remember when I was talking about Rand's stories and characters earlier? We the Living took all my preconceptions of romantics, and romantic writing, and threw them out the window. The characters, the setting, and the story felt brutally realistic. Unlike of lot of Randian heroes, there's a lot not to like about Kira Arguonova, and I think that's one of the major reasons why she is not usually the first that comes to mind when someone says "Randian hero." She's quite duplicitous and bitter to her family at times; tolerates and excuses her boyfriend's caustic, offensive, and abusive behavior; cheats on her boyfriend with a Communist, i.e., a member of a party whose ideology she despises on principle—and she even takes advantage of him for his money, at times.
But all this makes her even more interesting, especially when you consider that she's a Randian hero, i.e., a group of people who Rand typically compares to marble Greek statues, who withstand torture without screaming, who burn oil fields with impunity, who break out of prison effortlessly, who have people listen to them rant for three hours over the radio without getting bored, who carry the world; who make fortunes and destroy them in the blink of an eye, shoving those aside who would dare try and stop them—and who, above all, are profoundly moral. I was incredibly amazed by Andrei Taganov, the Communist who Kira falls in love with. The man is a communist, and just that description is enough for you to think that Rand would demonize him—and so I was amazed when he was painted in an extremely good light, as good as the light Kira was painted in. He goes out of her way to help her, the woman he loves deeply, and you feel really bad for him when you see Kira lie to him about her first boyfriend.
Leo, Kira's first boyfriend, even though I eventually grew to dislike him as the book progressed, is also a very interesting character. It was disheartening to see this guy, who starts off as this man who loves his life and would do anything to protect it, turn into a self-destructive being, not caring if he dies or if his death breaks the heart of the woman he loves. Leo, I really thought, really showed how pernicious the Soviet Union was to an individual, more so than any textbook could depict.
The characters were unlike anything I've ever read before in an Ayn Rand novel, in a good way. The prose, as is typical of Ayn Rand, was amazing. It was, on a purely technical level, flawless. I experienced the Soviet Union in a way that no history textbook would ever allow me.
THE BAD
That being said, I did not like this novel.
I'm going to start off with the petty first: the way Kira met and fell in love with Leo required a massive suspension of disbelief on my part. In a nutshell, he grabs her on the street, thinking that she's a prostitute, and he talks to her really enigmatically—in the way that guys try to talk when they're trying to impress girls—and she can't get him out of her head for months. I got over this, but the whole scene struck me as oddly out of place.
If you're looking for an expansive epic, a tale with characters larger than life, working to stop some force that's acting on a massive scale, look elsewhere. This is an individual story, a "one against all" kind of thing; and while this concept isn't bad per se—on the contrary, these stories can be my favorites—the story goes very few places. The individual is chronically tired. The individual is chronically hungry. The individual is chronically upset. The individual's family is overbearing. The individual's boyfriend is overbearing. Communism sucks.
And that's really about it. The story really is the struggle of an individual against the collective, but that's just it—all she does is struggle. The entire book is about how unhappy she is, how unhappy they all are, how she just barely manages to survive day-to-day life. Every day, some new, life-destroying maxim from the communists comes to wreck havoc on the city, and the book is basically how she deals with it. She doesn't go on big adventures; she doesn't make huge changes to the world on a massive-scale. The Soviet Union chokes the life out of people, and she suffers, like everyone else.
Going from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas to We the Living was like a kick to the stomach by the boot of reality: I went from this fantastical, amazing world, where the human thirst for knowledge propels a man to the sights of the majesties of the world, to the iron curtain of the Soviet Union, where the individuals of ambition, talent, and ability were persecuted by the communists. And it's depressing. It's depressing because, like every citizen in the Soviet Union, all she can really do is just sit there and take it. There's one scene in particular where she goes to see a foreign opera—colorful, gay, upbeat—and when it's over, she just sits in her seat, her head in her hands, crying. She's crying because everything had been taken away from her, and there's nothing she can do about it.
And the ending. Fuck, man, the ending. I haven't been this depressed at the end of an individual-versus-totalitarianism novel since the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four—but I did enjoy Nineteen Eighty-Four. I enjoyed Nineteen Eighty-Four because it's was very futuristic and had a nice sci-fi feel to it; moreover, the world felt very fictional, fantastical, and Orwell had put a lot of care into creating this world and its philosophy.
But We the Living felt extremely real. I know that people starved to death in the Soviet Union; I know that they struggled to survive; I know that it was cold; I know that people were sad; I know that they locked people up in Gulags and worked them to death; I know that the closest remnant of the Soviet Union exists in North Korea; and I know that in North Korea and the Soviet Union, people who are trying to find better lives for themselves get shot trying to escape to other countries, countries whose wonders they can only dream about.
We the Living depicted this so accurately that it was unsettling. But, like in a video game, "realism" doesn't really translate into "enjoyability." It's realistic if a video game made the player spend four months in brutal basic military training and then get shipped to Iraq, whereupon he loses both his legs to an IED and has to be wheel-chaired around for the rest of his life, but this would not be a very fun game. Likewise, it's realistic to write a book about people starving to death; going about their miserable, day-to-day life in the Soviet Union; and getting shot, but it's not very enjoyable.
We the Living was dark, depressing, realistic, and unsettling. It was written beautifully, no question about that; but, despite its technical merits and virtues, it was still unsettling. And I did not feel good after reading this book. It made me feel kind of empty.
So, after reading your pleasantly thorough and interesting little review. I am curious, what were you expecting from the book? Specifically I mean you stated what you disliked about it. (Hyper-realism does not make for good escapism, I'd imagine.) But I'm curious about the specifics of what you were expecting and wanting.
634501
Wow, you read it? Thanks! You've made my insane ramblings seem less insane to me.
I was expecting the same thing that I was expecting, and got, out of Anthem: an escapist story of a remarkable individual in a suffocating society, an individual above all, who finds something revolutionary, unheard of in the world, society-shattering, and dangerous to the status quo. Winston Smith found forbidden love; Equality 7-2521 found a lightbulb; Kira found . . . nothing particularly dangerous to the Soviet Union. She found love, but she was unfaithful, and though she was above all, a remarkable individual, all that was squandered, and she was cast into the dust like everyone else.
Realistic? Absolutely. Do I regret reading it? Not at all. Should it have been written? No doubt.
Entertaining? Not especially. Did it leave a unsettling and unpleasant hole in my stomach? Yes.
634538
Psh, it's not insane, I really like reading your reviews. (Even if I disagreed about the fish thing on your 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' review.) In any case, I think I understand where you are coming from now. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
634538
I'm pretty sure it's supposed to leave a hole in your gut. Being confronted by the banal evil of the tyranny of the many is like seeing the Smooze: it washes over everything, consuming everything, singing merrily all the way, and the only thing that can make it go away is magic flutterpony dust -- and magic flutterponies don't exist.
The only thing that can stand against a collective with one motivation is a unity of individuals with a single purpose, and getting individuals to do that nowadays is like herding cats.