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The Book of Ayn
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.
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.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 14, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 138 reviews
April 28, 2024
so. much. fucking. fun.
November 14, 2023
Tons of fun! Imagine
Aesthetica
or
The Odyssey
but actually sharp and funny, with a sprinkling of the anarchic energy possessed by something like Come Join Our Disease. A good balance of humour that can bite, and not always by punching up, but also has a soft core. At times feels like an experiment in letting a female character behave like male characters once did (benefitting from the status of ‘artist’ despite repeatedly failing to create anything meaningful, chasing a succession of younger partners) – and you could argue the impact of that trope is blunted by the sheer amount of books about ‘messy women’ we’re drowning in nowadays but this is more acute I think, maybe because its concept (washed-up novelist gets obsessed with the work and philosophy of Ayn Rand, tries to apply it to her life and art) is hyperspecific, so there’s a hook to hang things on that doesn’t relate to a relationship/sex/being single/having or not having kids. Or... at least not entirely. Also endlessly quotable; Freiman can write an observation that cuts like a knife.
I received an advance review copy of The Book of Ayn from the publisher through Edelweiss.
I received an advance review copy of The Book of Ayn from the publisher through Edelweiss.
September 7, 2023
"No one lives at the edge of calamity without secretly wishing to be destroyed."
"I had written two books of over eighty thousand words each, and yet it was the single minute of ranting with the head of a sheep that had given me all the love and attention I’d ever craved."
The Book of Ayn is a very funny, very self-aware and VERY niche satire that will probably only resonate as something "real" to those who dwell in a particular corner of the Internet. The experience of interacting with someone who sees Ayn Rand as someone worth having feelings about AND as a figure who is a legitimate threat to civility and progressivism, is not as common as this novel's narrator assumes it to be. Your ability to connect with this book will probably depend on your exposure to certain online phenomena: TikTok, deepfakes, Red Scare & their flankers, online critics being more famous than artists, Twitter microcelebrities.
The emotional center of the story-- whether it pays to be self-serving rather than self-sacrificing as we live through a very sacrificial moment in history-- can sometimes feel like a fake problem, a big "who cares." I adored Freiman's sense of humor and pacing, and The Book of Ayn is strongest when looking outward and diagnosing the culture. There are a lot of really outstanding lines in here about generational divides, the boringness of modernity, the stupid feedback loop of pop culture. Freiman's narrator serves as a stand-in for a lot of familiar "edgy" Internet personalities-- people who can't help kicking hornets' nests then acting incredulous when they get stung. It's very satisfying to see this impulse explored so plainly, and in such a funny way. Freiman's weird, scatological imagery is so memorable in the first half of the book.
Unfortunately, for me, once this book loses Ayn (and a fondness for her ideas), it loses momentum. The narrator abandons her research and creative process developing a Bojack-Horseman-style Ayn-Rand-inspired TV show after what I thought were some pretty tame negative responses from acquaintances; and flees to a culty, spiritual commune where the goal is ego death. This makes The Book of Ayn feel like a different book entirely, like I was starting from scratch with a brand new character I knew almost nothing about. It was hard to maintain interest in this narrator who seemed defined only by petty grievances and a self-destructive streak. It doesn't help that the tone of the book seems to shift pretty dramatically once the commune is introduced-- introspective and vague, and not especially funny. Nothing nearly as concretely expressed in the book's first half.
The narrator's pettiness and self-destructiveness is sort of the point of the entire novel-- and as the narrator makes more and more transparently stupid choices, you do feel that subconscious death drive that so many millennials/Gen Z's seem to have. I just wish this very human idea was assigned to a character that felt more perceptive-- more Randian. There's no real judgement on Rand's ideas by the end, and essentially a return to self-interested form for the narrator. The second half of the book feels like a long, unnecessary diversion in this sense-- I found myself wishing she'd stuck to her guns and just MADE something, whether people liked it (or her) or not.
Still very much worth a read if you run in these circles or have felt worried about how nihilistic and "unreal" things are becoming.
Thanks to Catapult for the ARC <3
"I had written two books of over eighty thousand words each, and yet it was the single minute of ranting with the head of a sheep that had given me all the love and attention I’d ever craved."
The Book of Ayn is a very funny, very self-aware and VERY niche satire that will probably only resonate as something "real" to those who dwell in a particular corner of the Internet. The experience of interacting with someone who sees Ayn Rand as someone worth having feelings about AND as a figure who is a legitimate threat to civility and progressivism, is not as common as this novel's narrator assumes it to be. Your ability to connect with this book will probably depend on your exposure to certain online phenomena: TikTok, deepfakes, Red Scare & their flankers, online critics being more famous than artists, Twitter microcelebrities.
The emotional center of the story-- whether it pays to be self-serving rather than self-sacrificing as we live through a very sacrificial moment in history-- can sometimes feel like a fake problem, a big "who cares." I adored Freiman's sense of humor and pacing, and The Book of Ayn is strongest when looking outward and diagnosing the culture. There are a lot of really outstanding lines in here about generational divides, the boringness of modernity, the stupid feedback loop of pop culture. Freiman's narrator serves as a stand-in for a lot of familiar "edgy" Internet personalities-- people who can't help kicking hornets' nests then acting incredulous when they get stung. It's very satisfying to see this impulse explored so plainly, and in such a funny way. Freiman's weird, scatological imagery is so memorable in the first half of the book.
Unfortunately, for me, once this book loses Ayn (and a fondness for her ideas), it loses momentum. The narrator abandons her research and creative process developing a Bojack-Horseman-style Ayn-Rand-inspired TV show after what I thought were some pretty tame negative responses from acquaintances; and flees to a culty, spiritual commune where the goal is ego death. This makes The Book of Ayn feel like a different book entirely, like I was starting from scratch with a brand new character I knew almost nothing about. It was hard to maintain interest in this narrator who seemed defined only by petty grievances and a self-destructive streak. It doesn't help that the tone of the book seems to shift pretty dramatically once the commune is introduced-- introspective and vague, and not especially funny. Nothing nearly as concretely expressed in the book's first half.
The narrator's pettiness and self-destructiveness is sort of the point of the entire novel-- and as the narrator makes more and more transparently stupid choices, you do feel that subconscious death drive that so many millennials/Gen Z's seem to have. I just wish this very human idea was assigned to a character that felt more perceptive-- more Randian. There's no real judgement on Rand's ideas by the end, and essentially a return to self-interested form for the narrator. The second half of the book feels like a long, unnecessary diversion in this sense-- I found myself wishing she'd stuck to her guns and just MADE something, whether people liked it (or her) or not.
Still very much worth a read if you run in these circles or have felt worried about how nihilistic and "unreal" things are becoming.
Thanks to Catapult for the ARC <3
November 20, 2023
Jokes on me for thinking this would be interesting
July 16, 2023
I really enjoyed this book! It's funny and dark and wry and really smart. The depressed and cool and vaguely alt girl who really wants to be accepted feels very in line with writers like Halle Butler and Mona Awad in a great way. I think a basic familiarity with Ayn Rand's politics will help readers understand the humor/irony from the start, but the book does a really solid job of contextualizing so don't pass on the book if you aren't already familiar. Ironically (or not??) I can see this being made into an A24 film. Definitely a sad gross hot girl book in the best ways.
November 24, 2023
Eat Pray Love for cancelled millennials. Started off well but then meandered until the end. Couldn't help picturing Julia Roberts eating her gelato in Italy throughout, especially the 2nd half.
Read
May 10, 2024I’m obsessed with this book. She really eviscerated all of us
December 18, 2023
Strong start, gets lost, goes nowhere
December 23, 2023
DNF. Boring and overwritten. With about 60 pages left, I can't bring myself to finish. Nothing grabbed me, everyone is terrible and uninteresting. Anna and Lexi are BOTH trying so hard! So many adverbs in these dialog tags, and from an Ivy League MFA? Traveling to a remote island for ego death? Somebody get these women some LSD, stat!
November 25, 2023
Narrator gets cancelled, gets paid to get cancelled again by celebrating her newly acquired Randian values in a Hollywood project and then goes to an OSHO retreat in Lesvos to retire her ego - although whether that’s possible is a critical question in the novel. As soon as you’re satisfied with your ego work, your ego becomes strong, and then you have to let it die again, repeat forever…
The narrator’s struggle with Rand is fun - cleverly, it becomes our struggle too. Like, yes Ayn’s mad but isn’t the belief that nothing is real/it’s all fated also likely to have the same outcomes as completely unfettered capitalism (environmental destruction being one of them)? To be clear, I don’t think this and the novel doesn’t make a case for this, it’s just a story with enough weirdness and comedy for us to go along with that idea. If you think Red Scare is cool, then maybe it’ll feel more personal.
The Book of Ayn is genuinely very funny and there are so many excellent lines. It has that very contemporary chewy first person prose (see Melissa Broder, Jen Beagin) and the same tendency towards surrealism. Recommended if you enjoyed their books/love or hate ‘discourse’!
The narrator’s struggle with Rand is fun - cleverly, it becomes our struggle too. Like, yes Ayn’s mad but isn’t the belief that nothing is real/it’s all fated also likely to have the same outcomes as completely unfettered capitalism (environmental destruction being one of them)? To be clear, I don’t think this and the novel doesn’t make a case for this, it’s just a story with enough weirdness and comedy for us to go along with that idea. If you think Red Scare is cool, then maybe it’ll feel more personal.
The Book of Ayn is genuinely very funny and there are so many excellent lines. It has that very contemporary chewy first person prose (see Melissa Broder, Jen Beagin) and the same tendency towards surrealism. Recommended if you enjoyed their books/love or hate ‘discourse’!
January 22, 2024
I adored this! I wish, in fact, that it had lasted a bit longer. Weird, hilarious and impossible to predict, this is a great book to choose if you are in a reading rut or feel like you have been reading the same kinds of books over and over. You haven't read this one! Can't wait to see what Freiman does next.
January 19, 2024
2.5 because I enjoyed half of it. The premise was interesting and funny - egotistic writer gets canceled online and develops a fixation on Ayn Rand, whereupon her life starts mirroring Rand’s - and the prose was really entertaining. Then, halfway through, the main character has an epiphany wherein she decides that she actually hates Ayn Rand and blames her for all her problems; which could have led into an interesting last act if it had led the main character into a further downward spiral or upward trajectory, but it just kind of wandered around aimlessly for the rest of the page count. It was repetitive and felt aimless, a retread of the same scatological commentary, sexual fixation on teenage boys, and inability to connect equally and sincerely with anything. I didn’t feel like I was really left with a deliberate takeaway.
March 17, 2024
After a fun start, this satire of just about everything in contemporary life loses focus in the second half and gets repetitive. Still, there’s some laughs to be found here.
February 26, 2024
I was a fan of Ayn Rand way back in my misbegotten and much-regretted youth, so I was very interested in reading this novel. It didn’t work very well for me as a story, but from the perspective of character and social commentary I found it so interesting that this will be a pretty lengthy review.
Anna, a writer about to turn forty, finds herself cancelled for being an upper-class woman who wrote a satire on working-class drug addiction. The New York Times calls her narcissistic. Her publisher drops her, friends distance themselves, and she can’t find work in her field. By chance, she meets up with a group of Rand devotees, and Rand’s philosophy appeals to her. In a vulnerable moment when she desperately needs self-justification, she finds it in Rand’s Objectivist philosophy of living for yourself alone, by your own work alone, by your standards alone.
Again by chance, she harangues a man at a party about Objectivism and he assumes she must be writing about Rand and connects Anna with his son, who is a TV producer in Hollywood.
Anna is broke, and has to persuade her father to lend her the money to go to Hollywood (so much for living by your own work alone). He won’t lend her much, and the only living situation she can afford is on the futon of a small apartment where her roommate exercises loudly at random hours of the day or night and never flushes the toilet.
I didn’t feel too sorry for her. Anna is a thoroughly unlikeable character. At forty, she is still obsessed with how she looks and chasing after men in their teens and twenties. Also, all her friendships are transactional. It’s all about who can give her a place to crash, who can take her to parties where she will meet important people, who can advance her career, who can get her attention on social media. And everyone she knows is exactly like her. They are always bailing on each other if they get a better offer or just don’t feel good. They are all trying to use each other, or climb on top of each other to advance their careers. They throw around terms like “intersectionality” and claim to care deeply about things like female genital mutilation, but their social consciences are mostly performative.
The young people she meets in LA are even worse. They seemed to me to have no sense of self whatsoever. They are only their social media avatars. Their fad is to put an animal-face filter over their own faces on the internet. So, you literally can’t see them, much less see into them. And there’s nothing to see anyway. Anna’s barely-postpubescent boyfriend is so undeveloped that he can neither sleep with nor have a meal with another human being.
These people will do literally anything for attention. Anna’s friend Vivian, who has a mysterious illness (Or claims to. Who knows?), has contracted with her neighbors to present all of her symptoms on a vlog. The young folks have a site where followers can offer them money to complete ridiculous challenges. It’s a digital version of Rand’s ideal of completely unregulated capitalism, where the currency is attention.
Before long, Anna is in trouble again, for reading Ayn Rand at a party. In a rare moment of self-awareness, she realizes that she is always a sucker for contrarians, and suddenly she’s turned off by Rand.
She heads for a commune on the island of Lesvos in Greece with Vivian, so they can take training on “how to kill your ego.” But does Anna change? Take a wild guess.
The reason this novel didn’t work well for me as a story is because, towards the end, Anna tries to explain away her neurotic behavior by referring to the death of her baby brother when she was a very little girl. But she doesn’t change. At all. I think she thinks she’s changed. But she’s still sponging off other people. And she’s still selfish, self-deluded, and, yes, narcissistic.
But Freiman has sketched some dead-on characters and used them to illustrate the amoral emptiness of many internet-age lives. She has illustrated the vacuum at the heart of our Randian worship of the self – or, in this case, not even the self, but the IMAGE. Without love, without connection or community, without commitment to anything or anyone but themselves, the characters in this book are nothing but pitiful, ephemeral avatars.
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Anna, a writer about to turn forty, finds herself cancelled for being an upper-class woman who wrote a satire on working-class drug addiction. The New York Times calls her narcissistic. Her publisher drops her, friends distance themselves, and she can’t find work in her field. By chance, she meets up with a group of Rand devotees, and Rand’s philosophy appeals to her. In a vulnerable moment when she desperately needs self-justification, she finds it in Rand’s Objectivist philosophy of living for yourself alone, by your own work alone, by your standards alone.
Again by chance, she harangues a man at a party about Objectivism and he assumes she must be writing about Rand and connects Anna with his son, who is a TV producer in Hollywood.
Anna is broke, and has to persuade her father to lend her the money to go to Hollywood (so much for living by your own work alone). He won’t lend her much, and the only living situation she can afford is on the futon of a small apartment where her roommate exercises loudly at random hours of the day or night and never flushes the toilet.
I didn’t feel too sorry for her. Anna is a thoroughly unlikeable character. At forty, she is still obsessed with how she looks and chasing after men in their teens and twenties. Also, all her friendships are transactional. It’s all about who can give her a place to crash, who can take her to parties where she will meet important people, who can advance her career, who can get her attention on social media. And everyone she knows is exactly like her. They are always bailing on each other if they get a better offer or just don’t feel good. They are all trying to use each other, or climb on top of each other to advance their careers. They throw around terms like “intersectionality” and claim to care deeply about things like female genital mutilation, but their social consciences are mostly performative.
The young people she meets in LA are even worse. They seemed to me to have no sense of self whatsoever. They are only their social media avatars. Their fad is to put an animal-face filter over their own faces on the internet. So, you literally can’t see them, much less see into them. And there’s nothing to see anyway. Anna’s barely-postpubescent boyfriend is so undeveloped that he can neither sleep with nor have a meal with another human being.
These people will do literally anything for attention. Anna’s friend Vivian, who has a mysterious illness (Or claims to. Who knows?), has contracted with her neighbors to present all of her symptoms on a vlog. The young folks have a site where followers can offer them money to complete ridiculous challenges. It’s a digital version of Rand’s ideal of completely unregulated capitalism, where the currency is attention.
Before long, Anna is in trouble again, for reading Ayn Rand at a party. In a rare moment of self-awareness, she realizes that she is always a sucker for contrarians, and suddenly she’s turned off by Rand.
She heads for a commune on the island of Lesvos in Greece with Vivian, so they can take training on “how to kill your ego.” But does Anna change? Take a wild guess.
The reason this novel didn’t work well for me as a story is because, towards the end, Anna tries to explain away her neurotic behavior by referring to the death of her baby brother when she was a very little girl. But she doesn’t change. At all. I think she thinks she’s changed. But she’s still sponging off other people. And she’s still selfish, self-deluded, and, yes, narcissistic.
But Freiman has sketched some dead-on characters and used them to illustrate the amoral emptiness of many internet-age lives. She has illustrated the vacuum at the heart of our Randian worship of the self – or, in this case, not even the self, but the IMAGE. Without love, without connection or community, without commitment to anything or anyone but themselves, the characters in this book are nothing but pitiful, ephemeral avatars.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog
Author of The Saint's Mistress
December 19, 2023
The first part of the book had some interesting commentary on cancel culture, but a lot of the rest reminded me of a female, neurotic, not-as-funny Woody Allen, including the attraction to underage members of the opposite sex. Meh.
Shelved as 'dnf'
December 21, 2023DNF at around 20%. This has a funny start, but it’s hard to maintain the joke over a whole book. Even a 200 page one. I also felt like I’m not politically or philosophically aware enough to fully appreciate the themes here.
June 15, 2024
the beginning of this started out intriguing and ridiculous and then it just got… so boring. i had to force myself to read the last 50 pages and also listen to a sex and the city podcast at the same time to get through it
November 16, 2023
I really enjoyed reading THE BOOK OF AYN by Lexi Freiman! Right away the first line made me LOL! This novel is funny!! It’s about a thirty-something cancelled writer, Anna, who turns to the philosophy of Ayn Rand and leaves New York to go to Los Angeles to write a tv show based on Ayn. I was drawn into this novel immediately and read it quickly in three days. It was the perfect book to read in between some heavier books. I enjoyed following Anna on her journey to exciting locations and meeting interesting characters. It’s fun how she nicknamed all her lovers. There were several hilarious lines including this insult “I’m going to give your book one star on Amazon.” I loved the humour in this book that touches on cancel culture, the literary world, social media, political culture, selfishness and loneliness.
Thank you to Catapult for my gifted review copy!
Thank you to Catapult for my gifted review copy!
December 5, 2023
Had some good philosophy tidbits and thinking about the world.. but for me the whole plot was so convoluted and far out there and Gen Z/Late Millennial feeling it didn't click with me at all.
June 22, 2024
A few preliminaries that have nothing to do with the star rating but are more general observations on how this fits with contemporary trends:
- Here’s another woman narrator obsessed with scat, a fact that, like I said above, is really neither here nor there but does seem to represent the extreme end of a generation of women writers obsessed with the grosser aspects of embodiment (Moshfegh being the most obsessed and the trend’s leading figure)
- is the NY literati novel poised to merge into the cancel culture novel? I’m guessing publishing is too ironwall woke (lol) to allow a full “vibe shift” to occur, and therefore satires like this one about the endless circuits of selfishness in our culture seem to be what will be published on the topic for the foreseeable future. Also, Freiman’s “Red Scare” stand-ins are only on two pages, but it’s a worrying sign.
- Like a lot of MFA writers, she loves to coin a cute verb. It’s something I wish I could do.
This was pretty good. Freiman threads a delicate needle in giving her narrator just the right amount of self-awareness to still be completely clueless, and Rand is a fantastic avatar for exploring the paradoxes of selfishness. Last section kinda trails off.
- Here’s another woman narrator obsessed with scat, a fact that, like I said above, is really neither here nor there but does seem to represent the extreme end of a generation of women writers obsessed with the grosser aspects of embodiment (Moshfegh being the most obsessed and the trend’s leading figure)
- is the NY literati novel poised to merge into the cancel culture novel? I’m guessing publishing is too ironwall woke (lol) to allow a full “vibe shift” to occur, and therefore satires like this one about the endless circuits of selfishness in our culture seem to be what will be published on the topic for the foreseeable future. Also, Freiman’s “Red Scare” stand-ins are only on two pages, but it’s a worrying sign.
- Like a lot of MFA writers, she loves to coin a cute verb. It’s something I wish I could do.
This was pretty good. Freiman threads a delicate needle in giving her narrator just the right amount of self-awareness to still be completely clueless, and Rand is a fantastic avatar for exploring the paradoxes of selfishness. Last section kinda trails off.
Read
October 31, 2023“It’s called being an edgelord,” podcaster Dasha Nekrasova wrote in 2019, “and it’s the most honourable thing you can do with your life.”
Nekrasova’s post-ironic call to arms reverberates through Lexi Freiman’s satirical novel The Book of Ayn, about a contrarian writer lost in the culture wars. Who is the more honourable figure—the self-serving contrarian or the self-sacrificing puritan?
The novel describes a woman’s witty journey 'Against the Grain', as she explores the antithesis to the dominant Equity and Inclusion-mythos of our time: Ayn Rand’s rational egoism. After the novelist Anna gets cancelled for being rich and classist, she finds herself socially adrift, and embarks on an ideological journey that pits selfishness against altruism. Anna’s comical explorations take her and the reader to Los Angeles, where she attempts to write an animated tv-show starring “Ayn Ram”, while she spends her dad’s money and seduces guileless men half her age.
The wicked and provocative figure Freiman describes in The Book of Ayn—the shameless, nihilistic, post-ironic woman—has become one of the main characters in post-pandemic American culture. As the edgy foil to a dominant Millennial culture that is consensus-seeking, and often vengeful of anyone who breaks the moral code, the femtroll, or the female edgelord, is mischievous, provocative, and takes joy in transgressing social taboos.
As a cultural trickster figure, the contemporary edgelord has many parallels to the decadent dandy of the late 19th century. They both rebell against a hypocritical, intolerant and often sanctimonious moral code, and like the decadent heroes Oscar Wilde and Joris-Karl Huysman, the heroine of The Book of Ayn also turns towards spirituality when her contrarian excesses fail her.
In the final section of the The Book of Ayn, broke and ideologically lost, Anna joins a commune on Lesbos that supposedly practices self-sacrificing ego-death. “The only choice left is between the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the cross,” Barbey d’Aurevilly wrote in response to Huysman’s contrarian decadence in 'Against the Grain'. With The Book of Ayn, Freiman calls for a middle path—not the way of the puritan, not the way of the edgelord, not the gun, not the cross. But a recentered shrug, a “lol no”, a rejection of all extreme discourses.
Nekrasova’s post-ironic call to arms reverberates through Lexi Freiman’s satirical novel The Book of Ayn, about a contrarian writer lost in the culture wars. Who is the more honourable figure—the self-serving contrarian or the self-sacrificing puritan?
The novel describes a woman’s witty journey 'Against the Grain', as she explores the antithesis to the dominant Equity and Inclusion-mythos of our time: Ayn Rand’s rational egoism. After the novelist Anna gets cancelled for being rich and classist, she finds herself socially adrift, and embarks on an ideological journey that pits selfishness against altruism. Anna’s comical explorations take her and the reader to Los Angeles, where she attempts to write an animated tv-show starring “Ayn Ram”, while she spends her dad’s money and seduces guileless men half her age.
The wicked and provocative figure Freiman describes in The Book of Ayn—the shameless, nihilistic, post-ironic woman—has become one of the main characters in post-pandemic American culture. As the edgy foil to a dominant Millennial culture that is consensus-seeking, and often vengeful of anyone who breaks the moral code, the femtroll, or the female edgelord, is mischievous, provocative, and takes joy in transgressing social taboos.
As a cultural trickster figure, the contemporary edgelord has many parallels to the decadent dandy of the late 19th century. They both rebell against a hypocritical, intolerant and often sanctimonious moral code, and like the decadent heroes Oscar Wilde and Joris-Karl Huysman, the heroine of The Book of Ayn also turns towards spirituality when her contrarian excesses fail her.
In the final section of the The Book of Ayn, broke and ideologically lost, Anna joins a commune on Lesbos that supposedly practices self-sacrificing ego-death. “The only choice left is between the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the cross,” Barbey d’Aurevilly wrote in response to Huysman’s contrarian decadence in 'Against the Grain'. With The Book of Ayn, Freiman calls for a middle path—not the way of the puritan, not the way of the edgelord, not the gun, not the cross. But a recentered shrug, a “lol no”, a rejection of all extreme discourses.
June 26, 2024
As others say this book starts out great but the second half sucks. the first half was the funniest thing ive read in a long time. by itself it is worth 5 stars but the second half (in greece) was so dull.
there were some other issues too, like characters werent quite introduced correctly leading to some name confusion and there is some sort of editing problem on page 70 where its clear something important got cut by mistake.
the prose in the first half was phenomenal. and full of good words, one word (dogoir) wasnt in wiktionary and i had to look it up and created a new entry.
Characters - 4/5
Writing quality - 6/5 then 3/5
Story/plot - 4/5
Ending - 3/5
logophilic* - very! lots of great words here
Unputdownable - no
Deeper meaning - maybe?
Suspense - no
Humor - yes!!
Memorability - high
Originality - high
readability - high
audio book? - i would not reccomend this as an audiobook
I would recommend this book to: anyone who reads lit fic or comedy.
*logophilic, word loving
there were some other issues too, like characters werent quite introduced correctly leading to some name confusion and there is some sort of editing problem on page 70 where its clear something important got cut by mistake.
the prose in the first half was phenomenal. and full of good words, one word (dogoir) wasnt in wiktionary and i had to look it up and created a new entry.
Characters - 4/5
Writing quality - 6/5 then 3/5
Story/plot - 4/5
Ending - 3/5
logophilic* - very! lots of great words here
Unputdownable - no
Deeper meaning - maybe?
Suspense - no
Humor - yes!!
Memorability - high
Originality - high
readability - high
audio book? - i would not reccomend this as an audiobook
I would recommend this book to: anyone who reads lit fic or comedy.
*logophilic, word loving
December 14, 2023
Read this in three sittings; pool-side with a cocktail in hand. It’s an oddly compelling book, full of hilarious one-liners about our current age of ‘cancellations’ and also what it means to be a person and exist in the same space as others. Not sure it’ll remain in my brain for too long but it’s quick and entertaining enough. 3/5
July 5, 2024
This book is funny, and definitely clever, but also felt like a chore to get through. The protagonist was an unsympathetic “artist” who slept with people younger than themselves and is constantly looking to blame their failures on anything but themselves: idolizing Ayn Rand and constantly running from problems instead of owning up to them. No introspection. But instead of your typical man it was a woman! And that did not make it any easier to get through.
Yes it was a biting social commentary but also…ugh.
Yes it was a biting social commentary but also…ugh.
January 19, 2024
ugh. had me in the first half and completely lost me/its momentum in the second. literally didn't even bother reading the last 15 pages. might be a 2.5 rounded up tbh
July 24, 2024
super fun
December 1, 2023
I adored part one and thought it was smart and hilarious but didn't really like part two at all. Still, very happy to have read this.
June 16, 2024
I read this book after reading a glowing review. It sounded like it would be very interesting and relevant as it was based off the idea of being “cancelled.” I was expecting a protagonist that works through this psychological dilemma; however, this aspect of the story is barely touched upon and, instead, the reader is given a somewhat unlikable character who thinks she is very smart and has a weird obsession with younger men. The author is a good writer and I kept hoping that the ending would somehow tie it all together, but it was as vague and disappointing as all the previous pages.
January 24, 2024
This started out well, but it started to fall apart in the middle, and the wheels completely came off in the final section.
Or, to break it up differently, the opening New York section was good, with some nice, sharply drawn characterizations and observations. The LA section started well, but then collapsed at pretty much the same pace as the narrator's plans for success. The Greek section started off weakly and completed the collapse.
It seemed, in some ways, as though the author had an idea—a modern, liberal writer who sees herself as a contrarian gets "canceled," and decides to restore her fortunes by contrarily championing the libertarian heroine Ayn Rand—but then, rather like her narrator, didn't know what to do with it, past page 50 or so.
Which was in some ways, unsurprising. Evidently our narrator didn't know much about Rand, a real drawback for someone trying to write about her (for a book or a TV show). She did seem to know a bit about New York, and if the story had stopped there, it would have been fine.
But no, the action moves to LA—except that there was no action, no character development, nada. There are few more tries to gloss Rand's work that don't go anywhere, and after some boring attempts to hang out with younger men our narrator realizes things aren't working out, runs out of money, and goes home to live with her mom.
Okay, but then after a few days she goes off to a meditation center in Greece with a friend. Suddenly, her money issues just disappear: On p.125 she has to leave LA because she can't cover her share of the rent, but four pages later she can afford to book an immediate flight back home to NY and a dozen pages later she can afford to fly to Greece and stay there, apparently indefinitely.
There is no mention of how she could afford any of this, or how she pays for anything there—and she's specifically described as having money to lavish on her new young boyfriend. But unfortunately, that sort of fit, because nothing about the time in Greece made any real sense.
I kept reading, waiting for a point, or an idea, or...something... to emerge from the descriptions of the meditation center, the people, the boy—but it didn't. There was one brief moment of realization, when someone points out to the narrator that everyone else had pitched in to help with chores, but she hadn't; but again, there was no actual impact, other than a sort of "D'oh, silly me!"
Which was sort of how I felt when I finished, and thought, "Why did I just do that? D'oh!"
Or, to break it up differently, the opening New York section was good, with some nice, sharply drawn characterizations and observations. The LA section started well, but then collapsed at pretty much the same pace as the narrator's plans for success. The Greek section started off weakly and completed the collapse.
It seemed, in some ways, as though the author had an idea—a modern, liberal writer who sees herself as a contrarian gets "canceled," and decides to restore her fortunes by contrarily championing the libertarian heroine Ayn Rand—but then, rather like her narrator, didn't know what to do with it, past page 50 or so.
Which was in some ways, unsurprising. Evidently our narrator didn't know much about Rand, a real drawback for someone trying to write about her (for a book or a TV show). She did seem to know a bit about New York, and if the story had stopped there, it would have been fine.
But no, the action moves to LA—except that there was no action, no character development, nada. There are few more tries to gloss Rand's work that don't go anywhere, and after some boring attempts to hang out with younger men our narrator realizes things aren't working out, runs out of money, and goes home to live with her mom.
Okay, but then after a few days she goes off to a meditation center in Greece with a friend. Suddenly, her money issues just disappear: On p.125 she has to leave LA because she can't cover her share of the rent, but four pages later she can afford to book an immediate flight back home to NY and a dozen pages later she can afford to fly to Greece and stay there, apparently indefinitely.
There is no mention of how she could afford any of this, or how she pays for anything there—and she's specifically described as having money to lavish on her new young boyfriend. But unfortunately, that sort of fit, because nothing about the time in Greece made any real sense.
I kept reading, waiting for a point, or an idea, or...something... to emerge from the descriptions of the meditation center, the people, the boy—but it didn't. There was one brief moment of realization, when someone points out to the narrator that everyone else had pitched in to help with chores, but she hadn't; but again, there was no actual impact, other than a sort of "D'oh, silly me!"
Which was sort of how I felt when I finished, and thought, "Why did I just do that? D'oh!"
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