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The Return of the Novel of Ideas

Monday, September 8th, 2003

I recently finished Iain Pears’ novel . This is something special, folks– a modern masterpiece. Furthermore, it ought to be of considerable interest to libertarians of a philosophical bent.

It is much, much better than Pears’ earlier , which I thought was merely a great historical adventure. Dream is quite possibly the best overall novel of ideas I’ve ever read. It has Eco’s richness without his pedantry. It has Rand’s fierce romantic devotion to values without her rigid preachiness.

The themes of Dream should be very familiar to liberty lovers: how much compromise can a good person make with the evil system in which he lives? What is the best way to stand up for the right when the world is against you? Where does virtue lie, in action or in contemplation? I’d be very, very interested to see what certain other bloggers think of it.

Plus, there are lines like these, which you just gotta love:

“My contribution is… to persuade people that politics is the waste product of the ferment of human civilization, unavoidable but dangerous if not properly contained.”

“They have the great merit of disagreeing with nearly everything I say. In fact, they disagree with nearly everything they say themselves. And most importantly, they don’t think that shouting strengthens their argument. They just talk loudly out of habit.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2003 at 9:26 pm by Mystery Man and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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