Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
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Book Reviews of Atlas Shrugged
Book Review: Rand: a literary genius for the ages
Summary: 5 Stars
Many years ago my old mate Murray Rothbard, the eminent libertarian scholar and theorist, trashed Ayn Rand in his famous play "Mozart was a Red." (The character Keith Hackley is in part based on my own early life.) In "Mozart" Rothbard derided and mocked and plain insulted Ms. Rand, accusing her in a roundabout way of being a dogmatic fascist, the very opposite of Murray's sacred libertarianism. (This mean critique was to cause a brief falling out between Murray and me, though we later reconciled some years before his death.) I had approached him one day, my face deep angry red while he was calm as could be. I jabbed my finger into his chest and screamed, You don't know Rand like I know Rand! He smiled. I asked if he'd ever finished "Atlas Shrugged" and nearly went into cardiac arrest at his answer. He hadn't!
What, then, causes such bitterness and hatred in the hearts of men otherwise true and kind? (For the record, I do not agree with much of Murray's philosophy. It is too extreme for me, and I consider myself an American conservative styled in the fashion of Mr. Gingrich. Nonetheless Rand's books hold for me an abiding appeal.) My answer can be only jealousy. Jealous of Ms. Rand's success, not only in philosophy but in literature, jealous of her wide and deep influence. If only they had the same exposure, they think, or the same number of weeks on the NYT bestseller's list, they too could change the world and enrich minds young and old alike. This is false. At base Rand's success lies in her unprecedented literary genius, something which, quite naturally, her vanquished enemies could never hope to emulate. For genius is not doled out like so much government cheese! It is available only to the select few--the Galts, if you will, of our time. (Rand created Galt, a supergenius. To my mind this elevates Rand to the level of supersupergenius, a status heretofore obtained by but few men and certainly no women.) Her prose is not like their prose, no, few similarities are to be found save their common employment of English, that noble tongue, and certain words or phrases otherwise inescapable, "the," "and," "blue," "pie," etc. Emerson (a Galtian if ever there were one) once quipped that when he read Shakespeare he had to shade his eyes, the implication being that Shakespeare's words were so radiant, so brilliantly incandescent that it was like staring at the sun, or into the heart of a nuclear explosion. I posit that Rand's words are equally effulgent, or nearly so. Certainly she was the greatest writer of the 20th century, perhaps the greatest since Shakespeare himself. To her critics and detractors the jealousy came naturally, their secret yearning to be like the mistress a pathetic velleity. They have not the heart nor the brains, nor the deep canyons of human feeling necessary to produce lasting works of literary triumph.
In "Atlas Shrugged" the protagonist Dagny Taggart is an executive of a railroad company she inherited from her grandfather. The economic climate is much like that which we experience today under Obama's iron rule, a sad soggy mess of collectivism. Dagny recognizes it as her destiny to fight this natural injustice, and to win gloriously; in this way Dagny is a true heroine cast in the mould of Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I and Meryl Streep. She meets her male counterpart, Hank Rearden, her equal in every way. Then a question arises and arises again, an insistent interrogative drum beat louder and louder with each failing day: Who is John Galt? Our merry heroes then embark upon an epic adventure attempting to answer this question, traveling through the jungles of Laos, through the pyramids of Egypt and the lost Navajo ruins of the United States. Finally they have found the solution they seek, and John Galt appears like the sun on a cloudless morning, his 240-page soliloquy on the nature of man and righteous capitalism is the sum total of human understanding up to the point at which the novel was written. I'll not spoil you with details, but you may rest comfortably knowing that no dark crevice of humanity is spared from this man's awesome philosophic illume, not the awful ways of the peasant masses nor the higher calling of their betters. It must be said that, in a brilliant turn of technique in many ways anticipating the post-modernist metafiction that would send euphoric shiverrrrrs through the bodies of closeted literary theorists everywhere, Galt's ultimate ideal man is Rand herself.
Book Review: Explaining America To Itself
Summary: 5 Stars
If you take a lifeguard class at the local YMCA pool, the first rule they teach you is, don't go under with a drowning man. If a person is determined to drown (and some are), then there is nothing noble in letting the victim take you down with him.
Your YMCA instructor will say: "Kick him in the groin if necessary, but do whatever it takes to get free, and ensure your own survival -- so you can go on to live YOUR life (and, not coincidentally, save more lives of other potential drowning victims on other days)."
If you can understand the supreme morality of this rule, then you can appreciate Ayn Rand. I believe her influence on today's commonly-accepted political assumptions, concepts and language has been underrated. Rand came to America from Soviet Russia just in time for the rise of the Popular Front and the worship of collectivism to become the jargon of the day. The very belief in individualism, much less the value of it, was being undermined (for an example of this in pop culture of the day, see the old Spencer Tracy film "A Guy Named Joe" where it's explained that nobody EVER achieves anything on his own; each of us had help every single second of the way).
Confronted with this groupthink, Rand realized that America had a unique political philosophy, that of individualism. But she also realized that (beyond the outdated 19th century rhetoric of the "self-made man") America in the '30s and '40s had no stock language or popular concepts to explain or express that philosophy to itself. Accordingly, she saw this unarticulated political philosophy in danger of disappearing, and foresaw that America's greatness would go with it.
Like de Tocqueville, she made it her mission in life to explain America to itself, but in this case with a decided prescriptive bent. Intellectuals like to cite F.A. Hayek's 1944 book "The Road to Serfdom" as the seminal work that explains how collectivist government and social structures can lead to a loss of freedom and national vitality. But Ayn Rand's books have sold in the millions (her two main works usually are in Amazon's top 500 best sellers). Unlike Hayek's thought, her ideas were expressed with a popular propagandists's vulgar touch, had a much broader and deeper influence. Polls consistently show that Americans name "Atlas Shrugged" as the second most influential book in their lives, right after the Bible.
Admittedly, Rand is a problematic writer because of (among other things) her dogmatic, extreme way of expressing her views; and because of her contrarian delight in redefining traditionally negative words like "selfish" and "egoist" in positive terms. Where Rand says "egoist" we today would say "inner-directed" or "having intellectual and spiritual integrity" and so on. Where Rand says "selfish" we would say "not co-dependent" or "healthy self-assertion" or "taking proper care of ourselves" etc.
Rand over-idealizes free market economics as part of her dogmatic reaction against the worship of statism and planned economies that dominated mid-20th century political thought in the USA, Europe, and USSR.
Rand's efforts to portray her ideal of the free man or woman of inner-directed values can seem, paradoxically, like quasi-fascist idolatry of the Neitzchean Superman who worships nothing but his own strength. I don't think that's at all what Rand intended (I believe her heroes were iconoclastic creative geniuses like Edison, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc), but some readers take it that way.
Finally, if you believe that an artist should be judged not just by their work but by their private lives, then you'll be dismayed that Rand's marriage, sex life, and friendships were all disasters to varying degrees.
Despite these problems, I believe Rand is still very much worth reading today. She explains (and, in her novels, she dramatizes) how there can be a noble idealism of loyalty to the self, and how there can be an admirable morality of competitive meritocracy. She explains/dramatizes why these value systems are equally deserving of respect (if not more) as the ethics of self-denigration, self-negation, self-hate, and self-"sacrifice" that we still hear preached so often today.
Book Review: Socialists And The Impatient Need Not Apply
Summary: 5 Stars
While I prefer "The Fountainhead" to "Atlas Shrugged" overall, this is the most pure embodiment of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism ever penned, and it is perhaps the best anti-socialism novel ever written; it's certainly the best I've ever read. The book concerns itself with the travails of three great thinkers and industrialists, Dagny Taggart (railroad tycoon,) Hank Rearden (uber-metallurgist,) and Francisco d'Anconia (copper magnate, and general industrialist-at-large.) Ultimately they are united with other great thinkers by the mysterious John Galt, who typifies independent thinking capitalism. The overall philosophy here is very libertarian: keep government small and designed strictly for essentials, dramatically limit the welfare state, and allow free markets to be really free. Any type of government intervention (socialism, communism, fascism) is demonized in the objectivist manifesto.
The actual world that the characters find themselves in is very bleak. Socialism has taken over the rest of the world, and is eating away progressively at America. The protagonists in the book are so principle-driven as to be almost unbelievable; nevertheless they are very compelling. The most likeable character is Dagny, and she presents a very well defined character study. Pages 193-206 shed more light on her character than any others, although her exhortation on page 815 to her sister-in-law, "first, above all, don't be afraid," is perhaps the best single-line distillation of her ethos.
The book does have some detractions. Much of the science in the book, while at the time was very futuristic, has not weathered the ages well and now comes across as amazingly bogus. This wouldn't be such an issue, but the book is very long (1069 pages) and a large portion of it is devoted to descriptions of technicalities. Additionally, the party line of objectivism is to embrace atheism, a philosophy that, interestingly, most conservatives and free market thinkers in America don't embrace now, and certainly didn't when the book was written.
On a more structural note, in the third section of the book, John Galt gives an extremely long radio monologue (it lasts from page 923 to page 979 nonstop) about the dangers of going down the road to socialism. I actually agree with the bulk of his speech, but it is extremely long-winded and repetitive (I especially dislike Galt's repetitive use of the term "blank-out" in the speech,) and it could have been substantially shorter. Although it is the true essence of Rand's (Galt's) philosophy, it could have been distilled to a much less tedious passage. Having said that, the speech makes numerous wonderful points, my favorite of which is on page 926 when he says "To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call 'human nature,' the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness." The concept that man is free to think and decide the course of his life on his own is the key to this book, and I think this single sentence encapsulates the essence of the enormity of the book.
The book has a very good synopsis of Ayn Rand and her philosophy in the "About the Author" section starting on page 1070, which will help her new readers better understand her viewpoints; likewise the introduction by Leonard Peikoff also includes many revealing insights about Rand, although it gives away several plot developments, so it's best to read last if you have never read the book before.
There are certainly things I would change about this book; the length is excessive for one, much is repetitive, a feature that reinforces major points, but anyone intelligent enough to enjoy this book doesn't need that much reinforcement to understand her points. Overall, though, this is a great novel, an important book, and one that every free-thinker should read.
Book Review: A conceptual masterpiece conveyed through imperfect language is no less tainted
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a 'good' book. I call it such because its concerns are chiefly achieved, and its points are poignant. That is not to say, however, that there are some serious detractors contained in the 1200-page monstrosity.
To those who criticize her economic/political structure: it's a tad irrelevant. Ayn Rand was not proposing capitalism v socialism v communism, etc... instead, she used some fundamental aspects of economical/political structure to highlight things which were 'good' and those which were 'bad'. Please do not be distracted by the political/economic structure, they serve only as vehicles to a different point. I will agree, however, that her stance on 'objective values' is difficult to wholly swallow, as the world she constructs is a hyper-focused hypothetical one. Little is done to discuss the nature of these values; unfortunate, considering she had 1200 pages to do so.
To those who believe her ideas are 'pernicious' or 'destructive'... unfortunately she makes this misinterpretation far too easy to realize. She is not proposing that if you are good at your job, you should quit and work in obscurity. Her message is two-fold: to those who find themselves king of the 'able' hill, be wary of the cost you incur on yourself and the evil which you may inadvertently assist; to those who are everything else, understand that there is a purpose to your life - live it fully, productively, and use reason as your absolute. It is the latter of these ideas I think is a tad out of reach for society, but on the shelf of philosophy it sure looks pretty.
To those who say her writing sucks: I can't wholly disagree. She says 'as if', 'some', and 'as if some' far too frequently. "Dagny shuddered, as if some evil countenance were before her". It got frustrating for me, as Rand had clearly intended for the reader to bypass these words of ambiguity. Regardless, it's on nearly every page. She uses the same literary structure and devices in an almost frighteningly unaltering manner. Start the chapter with a metaphor of the weather and surrounding sights, introduce a character by deifying or uglifying their manner and physicality, write as if she's barely containing a veiled secret just out of reach for the reader (which it is not), then ground and pound with Objectivism. For a methodical person such as myself, I both enjoyed and disliked this method. Were the novel only shorter, I would have simply enjoyed the strict methodology. You'll notice even her descriptions of people make them a walking algorithm. The story, containing 1200 pages, is longer than the Mahabharata, which is considered one of - if not the longest - epic ever written. Considering all the things that happen in the Mahabharata, the story of "Atlas Shrugged" is an extended ramble in comparison. The story is insufficient to enrapture the reader, and the Objectivist content is repeated ad nauseum; for this reason, I find the length unjustified.
The end of the book, I believe, leaves the reader with a feeling of impetus, and of hope. The parting blow of Rand's ending set the stage for us to begin. Francisco, Dagny, Midas, Galt... they all represented a part of us. As they set out to begin anew in the world, so too are we to move forth in our own way. We're not supposed to quit our jobs in angst of incompetence; we simply are meant to pick the battles worth fighting, realizing at last that happiness is the moral purpose of our lives, with productive achievement as our noblest pursuit, and reason as our only absolute.
If you manage to escape the frustrating elements of this book, you will find a gem of an idea that just might alter your passage through life - for the better.
Book Review: Nunkey Publishing Review
Summary: 5 Stars
I'd been recommended by my mentors in the self development field a million times to read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged before I finally got round to getting it: Christmas 2006 - some six years after I'd first heard of it. And even then, it lay dormant on the bookshelf for another few months. Before I continue, let me point out that there will be spoilers of form in this review.
Being an avid reader of anything self development, its one thousand plus pages put me off reading it, since I was expecting a much shorter, non fiction book of true self help style and not some monster of fiction; I didn't want to spend a few weeks or months plowing through a book, hoping it would measure up, only to discover I'd wasted my time on rubbish when it could've been spent on a decent read, such is the value I place on my time.
Eventually, on reading the synopsis one day, which resonated heavily with the philosophy I'd been furiously honing for a while, I decided it was time to delve in, reasoning that it was now or never. And was I pleasantly surprised. The more I read, the more I couldn't believe what I was reading! Every chapter, every scene, every interaction, left me reeling and exclaiming, "Yes! That is how to live!"
To say that this book, which is the fictional representation of Ayn's 'Objectivist' philosophy, fit with my own, new, growing philosophy - is an understatement. Rather, at a time when I was just building the foundation for my site, I was suddenly given fresh purpose and impetus.
The book itself is very well written. The plots are racy, the characters - deep, the backdrops - massive and the moral - right. Ayn Rand leaves no stone unturned in giving a detailed background on all major characters - and even some of the smaller, less important ones.
The book's events are broken down from every relevant viewpoint, allowing you to form your own alliances with the teams and characters of your own, calculated choice. Although you won't have gone too far in Atlas Shrugged before taking the right side.
Indeed, for anyone that has a flicker of, at the very least, 'suppressed' anger at the seemingly unrelenting, merciless, surreptitious journey toward a totalitarian state - worldwide, I challenge you to not get riled and fired-up at the evil in the book - because it is this evil which is represented in our media today.
The antics of the enemy in the book will fill you with fight, passion, cause and ambition and you will duly feel inspired to become your own version of a Hank Rearden, John Galt, Dagny Taggart, to step out your door and face our own Dr. Robert Stadlers, Mr. Thompsons and Jim Taggarts. And you wouldn't be alone: A poll carried out in 1991, by The Library Of Congress and The Book Of The Month Club reported Atlas Shrugged to be the second most influential book behind the Bible.
And if a survey of 1,239 American adults - conducted by Freestar Media/Zogby between October 10 and October 14, 2007 - asking the question, "Have you ever read the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand?" is anything to go by, its 8.1% affirmative would seem to suggest that I'm not a member of an exclusive club in being a reader myself.
Quite simply, if you're reading this review, there's a good chance that this book will do something to you. Something good. I strongly recommend you make it the very next book you read. And when you have, come and tell me what you think. I could use someone like you...
To freedom,
Scotty Stevens