Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition) by Ayn Rand
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Book Reviews of Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition)
Book Review: Night's Splender Studded in Diamonds. More Stars, Please!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read this novel three times. I'll read it again.
Each time it seems to live in my mind on a grander, higher scale.
In interviews and in some of her nonfiction books, Rand has said that the purpose of a novel is to entertain, to tell a good story. In ATLAS SHRUGGED she has accomplished this purpose, possibly better than any other novel. I haven't read every other novel; I don't want to read every other novel, so I won't attempt to say or prove this with certainty. I will say with certainty that ATLAS SHRUGGED is not a good story; it's a great story.
Reportedly, Rand's intellectual friends were continually asking her to write her ideals into nonfiction (maybe so they could digest them better); yet her soul lived in stories painting the heroic in life. She believed we live in a beneficent universe and that human beings were meant to achieve great joy, and to feel that joy in every moment.
In ATLAS SHRUGGED, Rand proceeded to dramatize (not to intellectualize) her concept of why we have thoughtlessly allowed ourselves to pervert this beneficence, and how to get back on track.
Many would say that a 50 page speech, given to the world by John Galt over secured radio waves, is more intellectualization than dramatization. I read that clear radio voice as drama perfectly staged within a well executed plot; I saw it as well earned, actually necessitated, by the complex weaving of multiple mysteries building unequivocally to the dramatic enlightenment presented in that speech.
The first time I read Atlas, in 1986, it took me a few months to get through it. It had taken me years prior to that to get past the first scenes of Eddie's "causeless uneasiness." I would read carefully to the point of him recalling the magnificent oak tree which was rotten inside, and I'd put down the book. Eddie's gestalt was so depressing and confusing, I couldn't push forward, couldn't go beyond this budding and painful awareness in Eddie, a seeding of consciousness which felt as if it had nowhere, no way to blossom.
Maybe I sensed the plot would move slowly, complexly, mysteriously, dramatically ... backward ... into the darkest night of the soul of the human race, before it would be ready to lift into any type of healing light.
It took me a while, a bit of growing, to be ready for that backwards, downward soul drop.
Yet, when Atlas lifted the reader into Galt's Gulch, I soared.
I soared higher than I've been taken by any work of fiction.
Is it a great story when an author takes a reader into the bowels of human culture, into the primal, absolute absence of true thought, paints that dank sewer-of-a-world brilliantly with the deepest, richest, most frightening and heart-wrenching color and clarity, then surges the reader suddenly upward on the strongest wings available to an embodied human form? Is that a great story, or what??
I'm speaking beyond the airplane ride Dagney piloted to break through to a small setting where a tiny, almost toy-like railroad was a more true-to-life example of that industry than the ugly, gritty, dark world beyond Galt's location.
When I say, simply, that there are true CHARACTERS in this book, I might have to set that statement against a contrast which would have to consider that there may be no true characters in any other novel. But, I don't want to say that, exactly. I merely want to exalt as it deserves, Rand's executed skill as a novelist.
I love stories. I love characters. I consistently read books I'm able to unfailingly and honestly give 5 Star reviews.
But to read ATLAS SHRUGGED is to be temporarily diminished in ability to fully enjoy other novels. This is why I hesitate to read it again right away. The contrast in the depth of characters, the complexity of plot and subplot machinations, the beauty of the mystery which unfolds in pacing so perfect it cannot be called pacing, it must be described as a natural, living sequence of cause and effect, all this honoring of the true form of the story, of a saga, is almost too rich to exist in the same time frame of other examples of human art.
Even as I exalt Atlas, however, this time I will be able to return immediately to my culinary cozies and love the heck out of them. Why? That's for me to know and you to find out, if you're interested.
For a placement of my customer review of ATLAS SHRUGGED on Amazon.com, I chose the cover of this novel which was taken from a painting by Ayn Rand's husband, Frank O'Conner. He was an artist; he gave a worthy image for his wife's novel.
I admire and appreciate every artistic version of this book, every exquisite cover presentation; the book's gestalt has the capacity to draw greatness from anyone who attempts to capture any nuance of it. But, I wanted to honor Rand's husband's contribution to her career as a novelist, a contribution which went beyond what most of her readers would be able to imagine. And I love O'Conner's red sun setting, his glowing, straight steel rails heading toward that day's end. I love the deep greens and iron-rust-red of the sun ball, and more.
I will stand, spine straight as possible with arthritis, and salute Ayn Rand and Frank O'Conner. They lived. They suffered. As all of us, possibly they suffered unnecessarily, as a matter of maturing as a race, as a matter of growing in consciousness about cause and effect. In their art, Ayn and Frank transcended the pain and left us gifted.
Live enthralled within this book as a story, as a novel, first. Then begin thinking your own thoughts, making your own living, one you're able to enjoy as who you are, not as Ayn Rand, not as Frank O'conner. As you. A simple person rich in capacity to enjoy the most basic of moments, to feel the grandness of human life in every breath.
Remember the perfect flavor of that cheeseburger Dagney relished in the small diner which almost magically appeared on her hardrock route to nirvana. (And you wonder why I love culinaries?)
Maybe that's what Rand wanted to accomplish all along. She wanted to give each of us that unique individual inside, terrified of shining, filled with shame (afraid to eat, even). Maybe she wanted to tell us, no, to show us that we have made no Original Sin. We were born free.
Now we must each live free, in our own way. And, to be a hero might not mean to conquer impossible dreams which we honestly don't want to reach. Maybe it means to enjoy each day and do what we can to live as who we are, to know who we are. Inside and out. As unique individuals, each unlike any other, yet coexisting with other individuals who are interesting to know in their variety of faces, not masks.
Who is John Galt?
Who are YOU?
I know who I am. Sort of. I'm gaining on the concept daily.
Rest assured that life was meant to be abundantly benefic, not a pain in the patootie.
For attempting to paint this awareness in words and oils, I thank you Ayn Rand and Frank O'Conner. Wherever you are (somewhat against your precepts, I believe your consciousness still exists), "live long and prosper,"
Linda G. Shelnutt
Author of several Kindle books, including:
Molasses Moon
Book Review: A book which you will ignore at your peril
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book when I was a freshman at St. John's College in Annapolis (yes, that's the "Great Books" college). So, while I was inhaling Homer, Plato, Aristotle and the rest, I was often to be found in the student union with this huge paperback written by Ayn Rand.
I found the book to be enthralling, and in many ways it turned my view of the world completely upside-down. Just as interesting was the reaction of the other people who "caught me" reading this "awful book."
The main "problem" with this book is that it attempts a complete destruction of the philosophical foundations of modern leftist thinking (and I am using the word "leftist" quite consciously, being a "liberal" myself --- in the original sense).
I can illustrate one of the main ideas in this book with a homely anecdote concerning two different people I hired to work. One was dedicated, hard-working, and persistent; the other was lazy, incompetent, and a drunkard to boot. In my own estimation, the first man was worth a thousand a day, while the second was barely worth one or two hundred.
The point where all the fighting usually starts is that some people think that paying the first person a thousand and the second person a hundred or two is ALREADY "economic justice." Some other people think that this is "unfair," and want to reach into the pocket of the hard-working man, remove some of his money, and give it to the lazybones. This represents something other than plain old "justice" and is generally called "social justice" or some such. It may even get dressed up as "robbing from the rich to give to the poor," because, just between you and me, "robbing from the workers and giving to the idle" would not attract many minds or many votes.
This may be a political point, but "Atlas Shrugged" is a profoundly political book. I hear that new hires at the Cato Institute are referred to as "virgins" if they have not yet read "Atlas Shrugged."
Another interesting fact is this: Ayn Rand was one of the most famous & independent women of the 20th century. She thought for herself --- and, come to think of it --- may be the most able female philosopher in history. But, to put it very mildly indeed, feminists do not like her. It's one of those strange things, like feminists not caring about the mutilation of Muslim girls in Africa.
This is one of those books you really must read for yourself. It's a monument of the human intellect, and (strange?) it has reached #128 on the Amazon best-seller list as I write this review.
-----Updated review------
I just read another opinion that said: although Ayn Rand had a fine insight into the workings of economic systems, she basically didn't "get" how people work. I would agree to the extent that I find the dialogue between her "lovers" to be the worst things she ever wrote. (And I have NOT read it all! :-) )
---- Review updated again------
In the time since I posted my original review, it has become clear that the "anti-Rand" contingent basically regards her as a tool of the wealthy classes. This view is mistaken, and I can show you why with a simple example.
If you look at our current economic mess, two things seem clear: tax revenues are falling because business is stagnant, whereas government spending is increasing because of current administration policy.
Now, how could we get out of this mess? Imagine that a group of clever men create a new source of energy: let's call it "NewSteam." This new source of energy does not depend on fossil fuels and is a lot cheaper than fossil fuels as well. Imagine one step further: "NewSteam" relies on manipulating the force of gravity, and provides an energy source wherever there is a "NewSteam Engine," which costs $999.
Almost overnight, a new industry starts to grow up around this original design, and it mushrooms. It is difficult to meet global demand. Revenues --- for all the companies in the "NewSteam" chain --- first quickly reach $100 billion, and then $1 trillion in the first three years. Within a decade or two, hundreds of thousands of Americans find good jobs in these industries. In the meantime, government tax revenues soar, and a huge amount of government spending becomes completely unnecessary --- for example, "Cap and Trade" is by now completely unnecessary. The government is happy because unemployment is way down, and taxes are flowing in -- not just from the corporations, but also from the employees of those corporations.
And, needless to say, the original inventors become extremely wealthy men.
I should point out, as an aside, that something very much like this did in fact happen in America, in the Silicon Valley, with the invention of the microprocessor and the personal computer.
What Ayn Rand is pointing out is that these innovators are not evil men. They are the benefactors of mankind. Certainly the last thing Ayn Rand ever imagined herself as being was a "tool of the wealthy classes." She was trying to show us (a) the ways in which a society can become productive and wealthy (b) the ways in which a corrupt government can actually destroy the real path to wealth and personal fulfillment.
If the "looter mentality" eventually rules America, the country is doomed. The personal computer industry will leave. The "NewSteam" industries will go elsewhere. In fact, I can stop here, and recommend that you read "Atlas Shrugged" for the full picture.
----- review updated 2/3/11
I have just had a new question about Ayn Rand pop into my mind.
It occurs to me to ask, "Did she confuse the proper economic policy for a country with the proper way for a human being to live his life?"
This arises from her producing such a weird essay as "The Virtue of Selfishness."
You know, and I know, that this simply does not work in any known culture. Calling someone selfish is the same as calling him evil, or wicked. I will go further, and claim that selfishness will never, ever be regarded as a personal virtue among humankind.
But, paradoxically, it IS the proper course for a business to pursue in a free market. A successful business may well contribute to charity, but in its main economic activity it must be relentlessly "selfish" and relentlessly competitive. This leads automagically to a dynamic free-market economy, where miracles occur on a daily basis --- where cell phones cost a thousand bucks fifteen years ago, and were laughably large, while nowadays they can cost as little as $25, and be lost in the cracks between sofa cushions.
This probably means that people have to switch modes of thought between work and home, but that's not exactly news, is it?
Book Review: It's odd, but the negative and positive reviews are both mostly right
Summary: 5 Stars
It is easy to review this book negatively. I cannot think of another novel that employs a similar format--it devotes far too much time to what turn out to be minor characters, it is overtly didactic in the extreme, the plot devices and revelations are extremely easy to foresee, and secrets are often needlessly kept from the reader. The narrative is divided somewhat arbitrarily into what I came to think of as two parts, which seemed to have little to do with each other. The book itself is as much an exposition of a philosophy as a novel, and the novel aspect suffers accordingly. The philosophical posturing can at times be burdensome and repetitive. It takes too long at the beginning to involve the reader in the central conflict or in what turn out to be the main characters.
Then is it a terrible book or a good one? Certainly the philosophy alone couldn't be good enough to overcome the book's many storytelling faux pas, could it? Again, Rand's central philosophy (later termed Objectivism, of which this book is the defining manifesto) has its flaws, which are indeed numerous.
So why the 5-star rating? It may sound trite, but this book is the best example I could offer of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
Yes, the characters can in many ways be considered two-dimensional, but they do change in subtle ways. Their struggles are wholly believable; their triumphs are real ones. And the world, society itself, is raised almost to a level of "character-hood" by the way the story unfolds. And this character undergoes a profound transformation indeed.
Yes, the philosophy is rammed down your throat a bit ham-handedly. But the author has made no effort to disguise it; it is not as if, quietly and by degrees, one is made to believe something abhorrent simply by reading; as you read, you learn what she believes and why, and you either take it or leave it. Either way, it is a singular accomplishment. There are many philosophies that are simple, original, or profound. Rand's is all three. I offer specifically Francisco's "money" speech, or Jeff Allen's description of the decline and fall of the Twentieth Century Motor Company.
I found myself caught up in this book far more than perhaps I would have thought it deserved, had I merely had it described to me. It swallowed me whole for two weeks. I knew the philosophy was being presented with all the subtlety of a firehose; I let it wash over me. In points, I agreed with it completely; in others, I found it repulsive. But I could not ignore it. The book has something to say about love, sex, politics, economics, history, human nature, happiness, greed, shame, courage, selfishness, art, and exceptionalism. Every idea presented may or may not be true, but each is worthy of consideration.
Perhaps most importantly, the book is timely beyond almost anyone's ability to predict. I read it while traveling, and hearing the occasional newscast in an airport left me thinking "haven't they read Ayn Rand?" I have thought this many times since. Reading the book in the 80's or 90's might have left a reader feeling like the author set up a straw man and then let Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden (among others) knock him down. Today we see that, as deeply contradictory and dishonest as the antagonists' credo seemed, it holds an incredible amount of sway over our own world. But only after reading Atlas Shrugged do I fully recognize it.
As a novel, this book does in fact overcome its flaws in above average fashion. As a philosophical treatise, it is interesting and well worth reading. As a warning, it is nothing short of fascinating, frightening, and motivating. In a word: indispensable.
Book Review: Like an excellent wine, savor but do not overimbibe.
Summary: 5 Stars
A sprawling novel of nearly 1200 pages, this book was first published in 1957 by the Russian immigrant, Ayn Rand, writing in English, a second language she had to learn. It has continued to be read, explained, interpreted, memorialized, and frequently reprinted over the last 50 years for its unapologetic defense of capitalism and its often overembellished, overdramatized lectures about Ms. Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. While very stilted and repetitive in the frequent monologues of its main characters, its profuse examples and unflinching conviction embolden it to worship the accumulation of wealth through the pursuit of capitalist ideals.
The book is divided into three sections, each with a concise, inarguable statement of logic as its title. Part I, "Non-Contradiction", shows a world in turmoil in which the opposing forces of selfishness and selflessness are colliding. In Part II, "Either-Or", she explains why the profiteers - the "movers" of the world, as she calls them - are withdrawing their knowledge and refusing to participate in the system that the rule-makers - the "looters" of the world, as she calls them - have created. In Part III, "A Is A", Ms. Rand unveils her Utopian ideals, buffered with an uninterrupted speech of 43 pages by John Galt, to show why Atlas has shrugged only to once again take a strong grip on the world which he then holds in balance.
The beauty of this book is in the clarity of its ideals and the certainty of its characters as they commit themselves to the necessity of living by Ms. Rand's objectivist philosophy. However, when reading it, you must also be prepared to skim parts because the same messages are continuously pounded into your head like a throbbing headache - greed is good, need is bad; self-reliance is good, self-dependence is bad; individualism will triumph, collectivism will fail.
Ms. Rand is certainly guilty of an excessive amount of simplification as she draws distinctions between ideas as large and somewhat nebulous as those of capitalism and socialism and, at her most insistent, seems oblivious to the essential role of government in providing roads, bridges, highways, courts, prisons, schools, libraries, parks, water and sewage systems, street lights, airports, harbors, tunnels, as well as the military, police, fire, postal, and hospital workers. Surely without that core of essential products and services provided by a collectivist, profitless government there could be no economic system of any kind, let alone the one she blesses so reverently. It also seems overly presumptive, I believe, to ignore the government created and enforced role of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and property ownership that play such an important role in a system of profiteering. Surely the abolition of these would topple a system of capitalism as quickly as it would take mobsters and racketeers to take over the role of adjudicating justice.
Nonetheless, this is an important book for anyone trying to grasp the big issues which confront our world economically. But, like an excellent wine, if you drink it too fast, you will lose some of its finer points, and if you drink too much, you will be numbed by its inebriating qualities. While Atlas Shrugged is certainly a book to be savored, it is also one not to be overimbibed.
Book Review: A celebration of human normalcy
Summary: 5 Stars
It is difficult to find a book of fiction that has caused so much controversy as this one, and its critics have a degree of zeal that is matched by its defenders. It is a gigantic philosophical tome, with characters that many have scoffed at as being larger than life, as representing a sterile view of the human psyche, and as being naïve and sophomoric in its world view. Hated in general by both conservatives and liberals, those who love the book envy those who are approaching it for the first time. It is a book for optimists; a book for those who love and celebrate life. But above all it is a book for normal people, because in the final analysis, even though its author may have viewed its characters as representing statistical outliers, as rare and distinctive visionaries who epitomize high intelligence and creativity, it represents what it means for a human to be normal.
It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to want to organize themselves in a socialist state with no personal rights and no freedom to make their own way. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to wage war and destruction against themselves and others. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to avoid responsibility for their actions and blame others for their failures. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to hypothesize an imaginary deity and prostrate themselves in contemplation of it. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to serve others without question and with no mutual respect. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to sit still, to lose their kinetic energy, both physical and mental, and not overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.
Humans are in a state of normalcy when they create, build, think, and prosper, and unashamed when they are doing so. This novel, now appearing in print for fifty years, asks the reader to contemplate what would happen if the most creative and industrious of humans were to withdraw from society and leave it to those who took on the grotesqueness of inaction, envy, and sterile diatribes of socialist thought. It asks the reader to contemplate what it takes to have a productive, healthy, comfortable, technological society. Whose intelligence and entrepreneurial alertness are in full operation in such a society and what are the consequences if these are extinguished by the voluntary withdrawal of those who possess them?
The philosophical dialog one can find in this book has drawn the ire of many an academic philosopher and politician. The reviews of the book when it was first published fifty years were probably the most vituperative of all in print. But vehemence towards the book has not extinguished its relevance or its power to instigate critical reflection. It is an alternative view of ethics, one that dignifies human individuality and self-interest. It is an ethic that abhors the initiation of force and worships human ingenuity. The philosophical dialog inked on its pages is a testament to the center of human optimism, and it is a perfect reflection and celebration of human normalcy.