The Book of Ayn
A Novel
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3.5 • 12 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
An original and hilarious satire of both our political culture and those who rage against it, The Book of Ayn follows a writer from New York to Los Angeles to Lesbos as she searches for artistic and spiritual fulfillment in radical selfishness, altruism, and ego-death
After writing a satirical novel that The New York Times calls classist, Anna is shunned by the literary establishment and, in her hurt, radicalized by the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Determined to follow Rand’s theory of rational selfishness, Anna alienates herself from the scene and eventually her friends and family. Finally, in true Randian style, she abandons everyone for the boundless horizons of Los Angeles, hoping to make a TV show about her beloved muse.
Things look better in Hollywood—until the money starts running out, and with it Anna’s faith in the virtue of selfishness. When a death in the family sends her running back to New York and then spiraling at her mother’s house, Anna is offered a different kind of opportunity. A chance to kill the ego causing her pain at a mysterious commune on the island of Lesbos. The second half of Anna’s odyssey finds her exploring a very different kind of freedom – communal love, communal toilets – and a new perspective on Ayn Rand that could bring Anna back home to herself.
"A gimlet-eyed satirist of the cultural morasses and political impasses of our times" (Alexandra Kleeman), Lexi Freiman speaks in The Book of Ayn not only to a particular millennial loneliness, but also to a timeless existential predicament: the strangeness, absurdity, and hilarity of seeking meaning in the modern world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Freiman follows up Inappropriation with more mischievous satire in this acerbic and affecting story of a canceled novelist who struggles to reinvent herself. After Anne's novel of the opioid epidemic is labeled "classist" by the New York Times, given her relative privilege compared to the book's characters, the criticisms spike online ("Twitter wanted to kill me," she claims). As a result, she can no longer get published and loses her friends. After reading some of Ayn Rand's objectivist writings, she embraces Rand's philosophy of radical individualism and abandons the hostile New York City literary scene for Hollywood, determined to write a TV script. She meets a gorgeous young influencer who designs an animal avatar for her called Ayn Ram, and though the avatar goes viral, Anne can't figure out how to create her Randian TV satire. Disillusioned, she joins an ego-killing meditation commune on a Greek island. Though long explanations of Rand's ideologies grow wearisome, Freiman makes up for them with a slew of sly passages ("no one wanted to read Eat Pray Love narrated by Humbert Humbert," Anne laments, torpedoing her idea for another book). There's also depth to Anne, who wants to be a serious writer. Freiman's portrait of a hapless artist is provocative and surprisingly moving. Susan Golomb at Writers House.
Customer Reviews
A woman & her paradox
A writer feels broken by criticism of her criticism of the underclass and becomes infatuated with Ayn Rand just long enough to see the truth of Rand’s hypocrisy and adjust her own writer’s life accordingly. A first person contrarian journey through the intellectual B.S. that is contemporary culture.