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Beck, Rand, Orwell Top Amazon Bestseller List: Americans Have An Appetite For Dystopia

by Frances Martel | 7:27 pm, June 1st, 2010

» 16 comments

The tenth longest novel ever is the second best selling political fiction book on Amazon.com right now, second only to Glenn Beck’s reinterpretation of the #10 longest novel ever written. George Orwell’s version of Dystopia clocks in at #3. The absolute sales numbers, which show that Atlas Shrugged has sold more than 500,000 more in the past two years than when it was first released, are even more astounding. Are Americans worried about something?

According to Slate (and Nick Gillespie at Reason agrees), it’s all Barack Obama‘s fault. In fact, the change in sales of Atlas Shrugged can be directly traced back to November 2008. From Slate:

Sales of Atlas Shrugged have tripled since Obama took office. From 2000 through 2008, the 50-year-old 1,088-page tome sold about 166,000 copies a year. Since Obama was sworn in, more than 600,000 copies have been sold. That’s 530,000 more than it sold in its first year of publication, when it was reviewed by more than 100 literary outlets. It’s the second-best selling political book on Amazon, ahead of trashy political thrillers and behind only Glenn Beck’s forthcoming opus The Overton Window.

Not to mention that Glenn Beck himself was barely a household name before his Fox News show was born a month after our last Inauguration Day, and the Overton Window plot, as described in early press teasers sure sounds like a 2010 remake of the Rand classic. So has President Obama “fundamentally transformed” America into a nation of rebellious industrialists with shrines to John Galt on their bedsides? Sales of 1984 would beg to differ.

What the focus on a rebirth of Ayn Rand enthusiasts overlooks is that Orwell, a self-described socialist, is among the “trashy political thrillers” on the list for his anti-authoritarian masterpiece 1984, also a favorite among the left. Sure, it isn’t selling quite as well as the top two, and many could argue that the anti-Obama crowd could reinterpret the book to get a right-wing message out of it, but it proves that ultimately the thread that holds these top three books together is not ideology– it’s a sense of siege. It’s a dire view of a future ruined by lies, no matter what breed of politician is telling them. It just so happens that our current leader supports the expansion of some aspects of government to help the underprivileged, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that the same fears driving the anti-Bush movement on the left are partly responsible for the surge in popularity of dystopian novels (think of the neverending Eurasian wars in 1984, or the massive corporate bailouts in Atlas Shrugged). It can’t just be the Tea Partiers buying up thousands of pages of anti-corruption nightmare fodder, as simple of an explanation as that would be for these sales.

[Photo via]

1984, Amazon.com, Atlas Shrugged, barack obama, Reason, Slate, The Overton Window

http://www.facebook.com/people/Phil-Bourekas/1538058627 Phil Bourekas

Both 1984 and Atlas Shrugged deal with “too much government”…even if the author’s philosophies were different…
http://thedailybarb.com Burnnotice

If Dystopia is what you crave. Here is a list of everything a doomsday-er or Apocalyptic-ion could want…

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/dystopia
mproust

Frances Martel probably wishes Americans had an appetite for his writings (yawn). But I did look up the longest novels ever written and was surprised to find that “A la recherche du temps perdu” only came in third.
felixw

Barack Obama is clearly responsible for the big boost in sales of Atlas Shrugged. He is making Ayn Rand look like a prophet. You couldn’t find a novel from the 20th Century that anticipated the current situation with more accuracy.
MrGlennBovineKoldys

Felix

You ignorant cat turd, how many times do you have to be reminded “the current situation” is the direct result of 8 years of the Chimperor Bush and gNOpig’s regime?

Take a look at ANY, ANY economic indicator and compare it to Nov 2008, when President Obama was elected.
Things are BETTER NOW.

But of course, reality won’t stop you teabagging turds from swallowing every single doomsday hallucination from the sht flinging Baboon.

Let me clue you in a little secret. gNOpig strategists are scared shtless of this coming November.
The teabaggers FAILED at stopping Health Care Reform while using their most vile and incendiary tactics to incite their mob. THEY FAILED.

The teabaggers/gNOpigs HAVE NO POLITICAL PLATFORM. NO CLEAR VISION. NO DEFINED LEADER. NO COHERENT ARGUMENT. Put it simply:

YOU TEABAGGERS/ SORE gNOpigs HAVE NOTHING!

Now, go count your “survival seeds,” you teabaggers!
TROLLING4LIBS

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THE REAL ROYAL KING ^^^^^^^^^

Using one of his many user names.(glennbovine)
Liberty – Not Redistribution

“It just so happens that our current leader supports the expansion of some aspects of government to help the underprivileged,”

Are you serious Frances? I guess AIG, Wall Street, and GM are just poor under privileged peasants. Come on dude, you’re better than that. Both the Bu$h admin and Obama’$ admin have increased the size of the government, expanded entitlement programs and chipped away at our personal liberties. It really doesn’t matter what knuckle-head is in the WH. They are the same coin, just slightly different sides.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Stephen-Hogan/179500970 Stephen Hogan

@mproust

In Search of Time Lost would have been longer if Proust had lived longer. So, you can blame pneumonia for that.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Stephen-Hogan/179500970 Stephen Hogan

@Felix

Actually, it isn’t very accurate.

For one, the heroes in Rand’s work were manufacturers and innovators. That means they actually made stuff. Their modern-day equivalent would be the financial tycoons of Goldman Sachs et al.

I also find it ironic that you claim that she essentially predicted our current state, yet it was years of Randian economic policy that brought us to this point.
AndyZNYer

I agree with the basic thesis of this article but I would like to add that Orwell, although an admitted socialist, he was suspicious of all Stalinists and a fervent anti-Communist (as shown by his portrayl of such in ANIMAL FARM, as well as his own comments), and some believe that his politics had moved slightly to the right in the late 40′s (to the right of where he was, not to the right of center) and defended Labour-party reform.
slickerwick

The name of the dystopia in 1984 in Newspeak was IngSoc (English Socialism). Orwell was anti-Stalinist and anti-Communist. I’m surprised the left likes the book.

Ayn Rand foresaw the collusion between big govt. and big business. Some of her worst villains were the corporatists who were hand in glove with the government.
Integr8d

Take a look at ANY, ANY economic indicator and compare it to Nov 2008, when President Obama was elected.
Things are BETTER NOW.

Price of gold when Bush took office $265/oz., when Obama took office $800/oz, now over $1200/oz.

Yeah, I’d say that things are BETTER NOW. Waaaay better.
http://thedailybarb.com Burnnotice

Gold is only up that high because Glen Beck is Hawking it like Billy Mays on Coke! R. I.P….
http://none pyrope

When currency is in trouble, precious metals become more in demand. When Reagan was in office, silver got down to about $2.30/ounce. Why? The dollar was strong. Things are better now? Hardly!
http://none pyrope

“Atlas Shrugged” is the most important novel I’ve ever read. I would recommend it for any mature adult–in fact, it should be required reading for all college freshmen. In case you think I’m the only person who feels this way about Ms. Rand’s crowning work, you might be interested to know that the Harvard Literary Society named “Atlas Shrugged” as the most important book of the 20th Century! Too bad so few have read it.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jack-Crawford/614816374 Jack Crawford

Don’t let anyone tell you that we have Capitalism in America. It isn’t true. For starters, we haven’t had a gold standard in almost 100 years, when the Fed and the Income tax were instituted. Why do you think Ayn Rand wrote a book called “Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal?” Almost no one understands what Capitalism is, or how it works.