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On Buying Atlas Shrugged for the second time

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I believe I bought my first copy of Atlas Shrugged at Renzi’s Bookstore (long since defunct) in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  I either loaned that copy out or gave it away because I could not find the tattered paperback on the shelf where I keep Rand’s books.

So, last night, I headed to Barnes & Noble with a coupon determined to buy the book if they had it on their shelves.  Not only was I delighted to discover it there, but pleased as well to see it tagged with a pre-printed note “Our Staff Recommends,” underneath which someone had written in a clear and bold longhand, “One of the greatest novels of all time.”

Interesting that a clerk at a Hollywood bookstore would so label a book that so challenges the prevailing political ethos in this town.  Well, a film version is slated for 2011 release.

I wonder how I will experience the novel I so enjoyed at the twlight of my adolescence as I re-read it in the midst of my adulthood.

Comments

  1. As I’ve said elsewhere, I think _Atlas_ is strong as philosophy (esp. political philosophy) and not so much as literature. The iconoclast in me loves the _South Park_ episode about it. It turns out that the town dolt, Officer Barbrady, can’t read. The town’s hippie book-mobile owner seduces him into learning to read, with an elaborate series of crimes involving (1) chicken-f*cking and (2) written evidence about who did it. In the end, Officer Barbrady learns to read and solves the crimes. The chicken-f*cker was the hippie, by the way. Anyway, the whole town turns out to cheer Officer Barbrady. He thanks everyone for their support, then announces he’s stopped reading. Why? Because he read _Atlas_ by “Anne [sic] Rand” and can’t believe what a POS it is, and he never wants to read again 😉 Honestly, I do like _Atlas_ and will be interested to see if the movie is any good.

  2. The only bad thing about reading Atlas Shrugged again will be the chill that goes down your spine when you realize the story is eerily like our current world…

  3. Well, given that you have had a few years of graduate study in the humanities, I expect you will be somewhat disappointed. Although I had read Ayn Rand’s Anthem in adolescence, I didn’t read Atlas Shrugged until I was in my 20s and working on a PhD. I had a number of problems with the philosophy outlined by the novel, but even more with it as a novel itself. Most of the characters are like two-dimensional cartoons (as another blogger whose name escapes me aptly observed the other day), and the novel is not exactly a work of fine craftsmanship.

    I’ve still got it sitting on one of my bookshelves, and with all the attention it has received lately, I keep thinking about reading it again, but I don’t think I’d have much patience for the long speeches or the many other flaws. Nevertheless, I am interested partly because some of the characters–cartoonish though they might seem–no doubt work as satires of individuals in our current political climate. I think it would be fun to rediscover all of the appropriate satirical moments, but I’m not sure I’d be as charitably disposed towards the novel’s other flaws.

  4. dude, that’s so funny. i was going to re-read atlas shrugged too, but after checking my bookshelves, my old copy also appears to be missing. perhaps old copies of ayn rand novels are themselves “going galt”?

  5. You motivated me to dig up a blog post I wrote back in 2004, pointing out some really insightful observations that Florence King made about “Miss Rand”. Money quotes from King:

    Although she was born in Czarist Russia in 1905 and raised in St. Petersburg, [Rand] told her biographer Barbara Branden that she had never met with the slightest manifestation of anti-Semitism, nor heard any discussion of it at home.

    In The Passion of Ayn Rand, Branden posits that since anti-Semitism was ubiquitous in Russia during Rand’s childhood, she had to have encountered it, but probably blocked it out of her mind “because the memory would have carried with it an unacceptable feeling of humiliation.” She never denied that she was a Jew, but “it had no significance to her.” Jewishness conflicted with Rand’s belief that “man is a being of self-made soul,” so she chose to be un-Chosen.

    I remember talking about this with a Jewish friend online after I posted that — she was old enough to have been around when Rand’s “Inner Circle” of Objectivists were attracting attention in NYC’s Jewish intellectual sphere, though she hadn’t been involved with Objectivism herself. She suggested that Rand’s inability to see family life in positive terms (none of the heterosexual romantic couples in her novels have any aspirations to parenthood, and both Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden are plagued by parasitic siblings) was at some level connected to her self-alienation from Jewish identity.

    Also from King:

    Studying this passage, I detect something that Barbara Branden missed in this otherwise superb biography: Ayn Rand’s whole schtick was a gargantuan displacement of her never-admitted fear of anti-Semitism.

    Her philosophy based on individualism, reason, logic, objective thinking, and rejection of emotionalism would, if universally adopted, bring about an immediate end to anti-Semitism, which is a product of the Gentile id.

    I daresay that many gay fans of Objectivism have been similarly attracted to Rand because they felt a hope that the rational, meritocratic society she claimed to stand for would bring about an end to homophobia.

    And finally:

    “Galt’s Gulch,” into which the rational creators and captains of industry disappear and start their own community, is Ayn Rand’s Israel. The WASP-y inhabitants are Rand’s Chosen People, exiles who actually do what the Jews have always been accused of doing: running the world.

    Discuss amongst yourselves!

  6. I haven’t read any Rand since my 20s. I also recall that her characters were very 2 dimensional. My favorite of her books was: We the Living. Maybe because it was closest to autobioraphical.

    My libertarian son has enjoyed reading her recently, I think that is as close as I’ll get to reading her again. Too many other good books out there.

  8. Throbert, very interesting!

    Personally, I’ve sometimes noticed a kind of coded or displaced Christianity in Rand / Objectivism.

    First, lots of Objectivists seem to have bugs up their butt about Christianity. (I don’t… but then, I have only ever counted myself as an “Objectivist sympathizer”.) But Rand’s core ethical principle is that each person is an end in him- or herself; people must emphatically NOT treat each other (or themselves) as sacrificial animals. Where did I first hear that? Umm… Oh, yeah, it was in the Bible. The part where it talks about not making human sacrifices, not killing and so forth.

    Second, at the end of _Atlas_, where Galt is being tortured – and, *by the explicit logic of the plot, he has to be* tortured – that’s Christ-like moment. And afterward, he escapes to her version of Heaven, and a new world – a new life. And we are never told his upbringing or family background: he may as well have been a virgin birth. Rand is, in effect, offering Galt as a new Christ – or, if you prefer, she is re-using plot elements from “The Greatest Story Ever Told”. I wonder if she did it consciously?

    Finally, it’s worth noting that Rand’s fiction is filled with compassionate moments between the ‘good’ characters. In that regard, I’m going to bring in a quote that Patriot Goddess offered in the other Rand thread:

    She said in a Playboy interview (thank you google for making it so easy to find), “I regard compassion as proper only toward those who are innocent victims, but not toward those who are morally guilty.”

    Believe it or not, Christianity used to take that attitude.

  10. I first read Atlas during the summer of 2007 and loved it as literature and philosophy both. After having been indoctrinated into progressive moral relativism (i.e. moral bankruptcy) in public school and later on at university, Rand was a bolt of lightning, tearing down what the liberals took years to instill. Atlas seemed to have a realistic, but obviously impossible, storyline. And it seemed that way for all of a year and a half. Now I’m rereading it, and have come to realize ‘impossible’ has come to be prophecy.
    The only question is whether we treat the prophet as Daniel or Cassandra. The answer to that will show whether we end up as Dagnys and Hanks or Wet Nurses and Cherryl Taggarts.

  11. It strikes me that the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon contain lessons similar to Atlas Shrugs. These books contain what we call the Cycle of Apostasy.

    1. Nations follow God’s law and wax strong.
    2. As nations prosper, they grow decadent, and turn away from God’s law.
    3. Nations collapse as a result of turning from God’s law.
    4. The survivors return to God’s law and rebuild.
    5. Wash, rinse, repeat.

    If God’s law is simplified as “what is known to work” — i.e. hard work, self-denial, adherence to healthful virtues — it’s easy to see how this cycle works. Ayn Rand is simply concentrating on one aspect of “what is known to work” — i.e. letting people keep what they have earned instead of taking it to reward those who are unproductive. Prosperous nations develop an illusion that the mere fact of their wealth diminishes the necessity of hard work, self-denial, and adherence to healthful virtues. But squandering the inheritance derived from those virtues can only work for so long. Similarly, governments take from the productive and give to the unproductive under the illusion that they can afford to because the productive will remain productive. They fail to recognize that the appetite of the unproductive for the wealth of the productive is insatiable.

  13. Interesting that you should mention the film version. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are rumored to be cast in it. Both say they are fans of Rand, but they supported Barack Obama in the election. WTF? This bothers me to no end. I seriously question their reading comprehension. Were they only interested in the extramarital affair parts of the novel? There are several other Hollywood leftists who say they like this book as well. I just don’t get it. Do they simply just like Rand because she’s controversial? Because she’s an atheist?

  14. I’m not sure, but I think Atlas Shrugged was an assigned book. It wasn’t assigned to me, but maybe one of the other English classes or something. I remember seeing the title frequently back in HS. Maybe it was when I was a library assistant.

  15. I read it a couple of years ago on a friend’s recommendation. Hank Riordan is the man! (I wish he would have gotten the girl!) I found it very prescient especially the part where the doctor starts talking about having to order tests that aren’t necessary etc. I think I need to reread it as we are completely immersed in the culture of looters and producers in a way we never were before.

  16. These guys trying to find Christian allegories in Rand’s stories are fooling themselves. Rand was a steadfast atheist. She is no doubt spinning in her grave on the news that her body of work has been co-opted by the country’s unreasoning religious faction.

    Please, just because a work of fiction contains a thematic element similar to one used in the Bible does not mean that that work of fiction is derivative of the Bible. Stories of self-sacrifice predate the Bible and will be around long after it is forgotten. You don’t need to look at these ideas as being biblical in nature, they are human in nature.

    In other words, not everything that happens in the world is a validation of your religion.

  17. Screw all of you cattle. I WON’T be re-reading ‘Atlas Shrugged.” I’m swimming against the stream and dusting off my dog-eared copy of Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes A Village (to Raise A Child)” to see if it makes me puke even more than I did the first go-around.

    For the record, there is absolutely no documented evidence of any African village ever saying that proverb.

  19. V, I love how now Levi is an expert on Rand all the sudden.

    Stories of self-sacrifice predate the Bible

    Levi… You haven’t read _Atlas Shrugged_, have you? Admit it.

    If you had read it, surely even you would then know that it isn’t a story of self-sacrifice. And that there was no possible way I could claim it was, and no possible way I would want to.

  21. and this bit:

    She is no doubt spinning in her grave on the news that her body of work has been co-opted by the country’s unreasoning religious faction.

    ‘Co-opt?’ That implies that (1) some churches somehow approve of _Atlas_ and make use of it; and/or that (2) I (who wrote #8) belong to a ‘religious faction’. Wow, and wow! Whee-hoo, *LEFT* field, folks…

  24. Stories of self-sacrifice predate the Bible and will be around long after it is forgotten.

    Nice. Trash millions of people the world over. Why should we “unite” with liberals, again?

    In other words, not everything that happens in the world is a validation of your religion.

    Actually…..it is.

    Running around seeking validation for your hatred must be tiring.

  25. V, I love how now Levi is an expert on Rand all the sudden.

    Levi is just an all-around negative vibe merchant. He never posts anything except to tear someone else down. In this case, he was in such a hurry to spew bitter that he stupidly mischaracterizes my point. In doing so, he seems to suggest, also stupidly, that a theme of “Atlas Shrugs” is the virtue of “selflessness,” which is in fact antithetical to the theme of that book.

    I don’t throw around words like “idiot” lightly. When someone earns it, he gets it.

    TGC is also correct. Levi was stupid for asserting that I was attempting to validate my religious beliefs through Ayn Rand. But TGC is correct, because real world events consistently reaffirm to me Biblical truths. For example, “The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.” – Ecclesiastes 10:1-3

  26. Objectivists have told me the following about Rand’s ethics, and it may shed some light. In her view, the world traditionally teaches people that, ethically speaking, they have only the following choices:

    Christian ethics: sacrifice yourself, not others
    Nietzshean ethics: sacrifice others, not yourself

    She believes it is a false dichotomy, because there is a third alternative:

    Christian ethics: sacrifice yourself, not others
    Nietzshean ethics: sacrifice others, not yourself
    Rational (or Objectivist) ethics: sacrifice neither yourself nor others. Resist those who would harm you; create positive values for trade with those who would help you.

    Let’s sidestep for the moment whether her “trichotomy” is correct; I only wanted to outline it. If you’re a Star Wars fan, it might play out like this:

    Jedi: Anakin should sacrifice himself to the Jedi order, let his wife die
    Sith: Anakin should sacrifice others to himself, try to rule the galaxy with his wife
    Objectivism: Anakin should say “F- U” to both orders, run away and build a private life with his wife.

    Lucas neglected to let Anakin consider the third option. Anyway, Galt is supposed to embody the third option. But I wanted to make the point at #8 that, subconsciously or not, Rand had clothed Galt in certain parallels to that other famous founder of a new religion.