I married a follower of Ayn Rand. A big-time follower. He attends national conferences. He hob-nobs with the Ayn Rand Institute folks. He's met Leonard Piekoff. We are leaving money in our will to the Ayn Rand Institute. You get the idea.

When my husband and I met, nearly 15 years ago, I had only a cursory involvement with Rand and her fiction works, namely The Fountainhead and Anthem. As I quickly determined the importance of this brilliant woman and her philosophy's influence on my husband's thinking, I pledged to read and learn more. If this man I was marrying, who was my ideal, thought so highly and was guided by Rand's teachings and writings, I figured I must learn more about her. Since my husband has a complete and growing collection of Rand's works, it was easy to find material.

Night of January 16th is somewhat unique to Rand's other writings. It is a drama and it is short, quite unlike her books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. It was based on an actual murder trial of a Swede named Ivan Kreuger, who actually committed suicide on March 12, 1932. Kreuger had been a loner, but he had built a gigantic financial empire. The fact that parts of it were built on fraud came out later.

During the examination of Kreuger's life, his methods and fraud were not held up as crimes, but rather his ambition and success was criticized. The public focused on his lifestyle rather than his life. The fact that Kreuger's base fortune had been made my legitimate means was lost in the gloating of the public that he had fallen. In fact, it was Kreuger's venturing into politics after he had made his fortune that was his downfall.

Rand was inspired to write about Kreuger because she wanted to examine not his political leanings nor the downfall of a once successful man, but rather the public denunciation of him. She believed the public's distaste for Kreuger was not of his later shady methods of finance, but rather his greatness, his confidence and his ability.

Night of January 16th is written in the form of a murder trial of a man named Bjorn Faulkner, based somewhat on Kreuger. Faulkner never appears in the book, which is written in the form of a play, but he is the central figure of the trial during which his secretary-mistress, Karen Andre, stands accused of his murder.

The book is written as the play it was originally. The characters include a judge, two attorneys--one prosecuting, one defending Karen, and various witnesses. Each witness tells a story, some favorable to Karen, others not. The defense attorney is passionate about his case. The prosecutor appears to have it locked up. The reader follows each witness, each question, each objection, each examination and cross examination.

So...what happens? Here is where the book twists. THE READER decides the verdict! No, it is not one of those teen books where you pick different endings. The reader decides the verdict and the decision will be, whether one likes it or not, a verdict based on the reader's own sense of life and sense of purpose.

Rand's vision behind this story (the title, by the way, she hated) was to make the reader of the story focus on and examine his/her own sense of life, for it is that sense that will decide the verdict. The evidence presented in the case is more or less equally balanced. The verdict could go either way. But how does the reader see the ending? Which witness has more credibility or more importance? What will be Karen Andre's fate?

How the reader decides and pronounces judgment will be a clear reflection of the reader's philosophy about their own sense of life. That was Rand's purpose, and she fulfilled it well.

This book is often compared to Rand's other novels in which her characters represent her ideals of man, woman and romantic love, as well as her visions of evil, parasitical people and others. Night of January 16th should not be compared to those books. The characters in the trial are in no way ideals. They are a framework of people, presenting a trial of the murder (?) of a successful man against the woman who loved him. The reader will listen to the evidence, weigh it, then render a verdict. The reader will then, hopefully, examine his/her verdict and determine what it is about HIM/HER that formed that idea and that verdict.

This book was performed as a play on Broadway and in many other venues. Sometimes celebrities of the era were in the jury box. It is interesting to note the differences in the verdicts between these groups. Rand makes her verdict known to the reader in the introduction, but I won't ruin that for you.

I've seen this book performed as a play, and I think seeing that helped me to appreciate this book more, but a reader can still enjoy the writing and the story without having seen it performed live. One just has to use their imagination to dress up the scenery a bit.

The Night of January 16th is a unique, quick read. Being written in the style of a play, it requires the reader to be more visual in creating the courtroom scenes. Weighing evidence as one reads makes the reader more than a passive observer, as in most books; you truly are a participant. And in the end, a bit of self-examination of the reader's verdict could prove to be an eye-opening experience about the reader's sense of life, love and purpose.


If you'd like, please check out some of my other book reviews:

The Church Ladies
http://www.epinions.com/content_113636642436

The Kennedy Women
http://www.epinions.com/content_113209609860

The Universe and The Teacup
http://www.epinions.com/content_113144008324

Quentins
http://www.epinions.com/content_110845595268

Capital Classics - Recipes from the Jr. League of Wash. DC
http://www.epinions.com/content_104334921348

All the Presidents' Children
http://www.epinions.com/content_103249317508

The Last Brother - a biography of Ted Kennedy
http://www.epinions.com/content_91330743940

The Patriarch - The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty
http://www.epinions.com/content_91067551364

Catch Me If You Can
http://www.epinions.com/content_89177558660

Embers
http://www.epinions.com/content_88622927492

Lindbergh
http://www.epinions.com/content_88079175300

Mrs. Bridge
http://www.epinions.com/content_87304081028

Mr. Bridge
http://www.epinions.com/content_87096659588




Recommended: Yes