In Ayn Rand, the Russian-American Victor Hugo, Bryan Caplan describes Rand’s work as a combination of two styles:
Ayn Rand’s novels blend two distinct genres. She fits squarely into the tradition of the Russian philosophical novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. But she is also a plot-rich Romantic in the tradition of Victor Hugo.Some standard features of the Russian approach:
- Characters embody philosophical positions.
- The plot explores the implications of these philosophies on the characters’ lives
- The conclusion of the novel vindicates the current philosophical position of the author.
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Some standard features of the Romantic approach:
- The characters are larger-than-life.
- The plots are imaginative.
- The plots are carefully crafted puzzles, unpredictable in advance, but cleanly logical in hindsight.