Atlas Whined
Written: Nov 30 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sometimes, you'll laugh out loud
Cons: Laughing out loud 4 times in 1200 pages isn't enough
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| Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Rand, Ayn |
Expressing an opinion on Ayn Rand is like expressing an opinion on the Bible or the Backstreet Boys. People who believe have strong, even virulent, views. And they're not takin' any of your cr*p. An attack on the author or the philosophy is an attack on them. People take these things to heart. But at least if you take an anti-Bible view, there are others out there to stand by your side. People who disagree with Ayn Rand simply don't give a damn. So I'll stand alone on this one, the target of those slings and arrows from you Randies, you YAFers, you Goldwater Republicans.
The Story
Atlas Shrugged is for Randies what the Republic, On the Social Contract, the Politics, the Treatise on Human Nature and Leviathan are to real philosophers: An attempt to describe the nature of civil human relations, a stab at normative ethics and a dream of an ideal society.
The book, published in 1957, follows young Dagney Taggart, a railroad heiress and executive, and Hank Reardon, a metalurgist, in their adventures through the end of an industrial revolution that is threatened on all sides by Socialists, good Samaritans, non-smokers and poor people. For the better part of nearly 1200 pages, Rand details (excruciatingly) the rise of Taggart, Reardon and a series of peripheral rugged individualists as they create a better, more efficient, cleaner and more cape-friendly world. Dagney struggles against evil weak-chinned bureaucrats, and her brother, to get Daddy's trains to run on time. Reardon struggles against other corporations who would dare to try to maintain their monopolies, to get people to buy his bigger better metal. Other characters struggle to keep what's theirs or get their way or have people take them seriously, and when they don't get their way, they eventually take their toys and go home. Except home is a secret valley in the mountains where an ideal society has been established. And the operating principle of this new ideal society?: People should pay fair cash value for goods and services. Neat.
I mean it's great and all that we should pay each other fairly, but is this really a rallying cry for a great society? Should it really be our first principal that people who have stuff, and get stuff should be thought of as having obtained this stuff in a vacuum, and should be revered for being on the sexy side of a will? And can we really take seriously the complaints of rich kids that they're not being paid fairly.
The Ostensible Philosophy
Ayn Rand's other books tell essentially the same story. The Fountainhead details the rise and fall and rise and fall of rugged individualist architect Frank Lloyd ... um ... Howard Rourk to get his bigger better more ergonomic buildings the recognition they deserve when compared to the fools who abide by silly Romanesque forms.
The embarrassing "Anthem" tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world where everyone is raised in orphanages and the only pronoun is "we" until one young rugged individualist finds some old books and discovers the word "I", thus giving hope to the world.
"The Virtue of Selfishness" tells the story of, well, the story of how cool it is to be selfish.
Atlas Shrugged tells much the same story, and espouses exactly the same philosophy: The primacy of the individual is the single most important thing there is, and a good citizen will always choose their own self-interest over the interests of the community. Even when they don't want to. Furthermore, the value of one's ideas, one's life and one's accomplishments is only properly measured by the American Dollar.
Aesthetic Problems
If Ms. Rand were still alive, I'd have a series of questions to ask her, because there is so much about Atlas Shrugged, and the themes that book has in common with her other works that are simply strange to me. Perhaps a Randie out there can clear these up.
1. Why must the lead female character in each book, when she has sex with a man for the first time, be raped? Does it advance the philosophy or the story or our attachment to the characters that the female lead always submits to coercive sex with men she respects, and enjoys it? Why can't she ever just choose to f*ck a guy?
2. Wouldn't the stories be more convincing if the bad guys weren't consistently paper tigers? How seriously are we supposed to take the story, or Rand, when the bad guy is always a cigar-chomping overweight bald guy in an ill-fitting suit, or a weak-chinned mousy ivory tower professor in a twead coat with patches on the arms, in contrast to the strong-jawed, cape wearing, beautiful blue-eyed heroes? I mean, if you're gonna write harlequin romances, don't bog it down with stabs at original thought.
3. What's the obsession with cigarettes? I mean, I smoke, but I also recognize that it's a disgusting nasty addiction that is likely, in the end, to kill me. How many times must I read about some heroine sitting in the dark, staring at the glowing ember at the end of the cigarette in her hand, and thinking that this "holding fire in the hand of man" is some sort of symbol of man's greatness and power over nature. You know, man held fire in his hands when he picked up a branch from some tree that was struck by lightening, too. But you didn't see any Neanderthal's writing cave painting peons to the primacy of man because of it.
4. This is not ordinarily the sort of thing I would say, much less generally think, but Ayn Rand was one ugly-ass beeotch. Why is that important? It's not, to me. But Rand espoused an objective aesthetic. When determining if something was beautiful (a statue, a person, a building) she believed that there was no room for disagreement. That is, beauty is not subjective. A statue is "beautiful" in the same way it is "marble" or "six feet high." But her sense of objective beauty is a distinctly conventional, Madison Avenue sense of beauty. Dagney Taggart has it. The female lead in Fountainhead has it. Ayn Rand did not. What's stranger is that she associates her objective physical beauty with other types of merit. Pretty people are smart and right and just. Ugly people are narrow minded, dim and evil. By her own aesthetic expressions, I suppose we should believe Rand was a Commie dolt.
5. Is it even possible that you're wrong on the idea that a strict adherent to Objectivist principals would reward their underlings fairly. Throughout both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead we see noble tradesmen (welders, train porters and the like) doing their little part with honor and intelligence and diligence. In both books, these people are fairly rewarded. They get raises and promotions and the thanks of the big muhafs. But I submit that it doesn't really work this way in the real world. In the real world, Dagney Taggart would over-value her part in keeping the trains running, and accordingly overcompensate herself in relation to her underlings. Intelligent, efficient, noble tradesmen would be flying below her radar, for the most part, and if they were to except Rand's paternalistic view of compensation, nearly all of them would toil in anonymity for their entire lives. The only way that they can become fairly compensated is by gathering together to create a power equal to that of those with the capital. Unionize, organize and strike. Moreover, what is it exactly that makes Dagney Taggart so very worthy in comparison to, say, some Bolivian driller in the D'Anconia mines? Sure she's smart and talented and humorless and efficient. But she's also well fed and well educated and well connected. A Bolivian driller is none of these things. But a Bolivian driller has no toys to pick up and take home when he gets frustrated with people not wanting to play by his rules. He has a Union instead.
6. Finally, is there some special reason why every noun must be modified by exactly three adjectives? And they're not even particularly helpful adjectives. Buildings are tall and dark and windowless. Heroes are ... well ... tall and dark and windowless. Trains are powerful, black and steaming. What's wrong with two adjectives? Or four? If Rand was going to use Mad Libs to write novels, the least she could have done is tossed the adjectives out blindly, as we did when we were kids, so I could have had the pleasure of reading, "Reardon grabbed Dagney by the POOP, and kissed her on her PURPLE, SLIMY, GROSS FRISBEE, before throwing her onto the GREEN BOOBIES."
At least it would have made some sense.
Recommended:
No
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Mr.Eyore
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I come for the pervasive sense of elitist self-importance and semi-witty expressions of faux camaraderie
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