Rereading Atlas Shrugged, Part Deux

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."

-- Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

I am currently on page 242 of Atlas Shrugged, and am finding it un-putdown-able. Despite Ayn Rand's terrific ability to craft scenes vividly, I think my main reason for enjoying the novel this time is reading about the spirited defenses against the Statist sycophants and enablers.

Contrast that combative attitude with today's political environment, where the mainstream media is -- as many have written about en masse -- simply an outlet for the White House and Congressional press offices. The sycophantic worship of Everything Obama is stomach-turning, especially since the sole reason the Founding Fathers enshrined the protection of the press in the Constitution was to serve as a bulwark against government encroachment and abuse.

There are plenty of brave souls standing strong against the infection of government control in our lives -- Dr. Ron Paul comes to mind, as do countless bloggers and alternative media. However, if the mainstream media is your only source of news, you would think the only people opposing the solidification of the government into every nook and cranny of our lives are right-wing extremists who want the smallest tent possible.

'Tis not the case, of course, but as I have mentioned, therein lies the danger when a news outlet's main source of revenue is advertising, versus subscriptions. Only corporations with the deepest pockets can afford continuing advertising in the major newspapers, and many of those firms rely on government largesse or favorable government regulations. (And, it should never be forgotten, most news outlets are owned by the same corporations that do enormous business with the government.) Does anyone in their right mind harbor a hope that a newspaper would risk government wrath ... thus angering advertisers ... and risking cozy relationships with government staffers?

Back to Atlas Shrugged. A scene reminded me of the (continuing) fight over GM's nationalization/bankruptcy, where an "unnamed" Obama Administration official argued that,

"...the UAW was making other sacrifices in wages and benefits, and that [GM] could not function without workers."

That quote rang in my ear as I read Rand's depiction of the conflict over whether a railroad union would, in a clumsy attempt to dictate the operations of Taggart Transcontinental, try to stop the maiden voyage of the John Galt Line, a train running on advanced rail that was the last hope to save American freight shipping. (Bear with me ... the excerpt is a page long, but well worth reading.

"Well, it's like this, Miss Taggart," said the delegate of the Union of Locomotive Engineers. "I don't think we're going to allow you to run that train."

Dagny sat at her battered desk, against the blotched wall of her office. She said, without moving, "Get out of here."

It was a sentence the man had never heard in the polished offices of railroad executives. He looked bewildered. "I came to tell you--"

"If you have anything to say to me, start over again."

"What?"

"Don't tell me what you're going to allow me to do."

"Well, I meant, we're not going to allow our men to run your train."

"That's different."

"Well, that's what we've decided."

...

She reached for a sheet of blank paper and handed it to him. "Put it down in writing," she said, "and we'll sign a contract to that effect."

"What contract?"

"That no member of your union will ever be employed to run an engine on the John Galt Line."

"Why ... wait a minute ... I haven't said--"

"You don't want to sign such a contract?"

"No, I--"

"Why not, since you know that the bridge is going to collapse?"

"I only want--"

"I know what you want. You want a stranglehold on your men by means of the jobs which I give them -- and on me, by means of your men. You want me to provide the jobs, and you want to make it impossible for me to have any jobs to provide. Now I'll give you a choice. That train is going to be run. You have no choice about that. But you can choose whether it's going to be run by one of your men or not. If you choose not to let them, the train will still run, if I have to drive the engine myself. Then, if the bridge collapses, there won't be any railroad left in existence, anyway. But if it doesn't collapse, no member of your union will ever get a job on the John Galt Line. If you think that I need your men more than they need me, choose accordingly. If you know that I can run an engine, but they can't build a railroad, choose according to that. Now are you going to forbid your men to run that train?"

Now, just substitute "automobile factory" for "railroad," and you get a sense of what GM's former CEO Rick Wagoner probably felt ... just before Obama fired him.

THAT's why I'm enjoying rereading Atlas Shrugged, because I'm getting tired of being defenseless while the government cuts down one pillar of liberty after another.

Rereading Atlas Shrugged

I have started rereading Ayn Rand's magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, after having read it approximately 20 years ago.  With a confession that is risking a torrent of fury from Randophiles, I must say that I find it a little disappointing upon the revisit.  Since Atlas Shrugged is such a lodestone and flashpoint for lovers of personal responsibility, I plan to write a series of essays about my interpretation of her writing.  This is the first.

My dominant impression, so far, is that she makes her points in an almost cartoonish way -- unrelentingly, repetitively, and obviously.  Rand does NOT deal in subtlety or nuance.  At first, the style is powerful, as her lexicon vividly limns the characters.  After a while, however, its constancy becomes distracting -- you find yourself thinking, "Enough already!"

First, Ayn Rand is a superb writer; she can evoke images and scenes that the reader sees with perfect clarity.

"Far in the distance, beyond the mill structures, she saw a string of gondolas waiting on a siding.  The bridge of an overhead crane cut the sky above them.  The crane was moving.  Its huge magnet held a load of rails glued to a disk by the sole power of contact.  There was no trace of sun in the gray spread of clouds, yet the rails glistened, as if the metal caught light out of space.  The metal was a greenish-blue.  The great chain stopped over a car, descended, jerked in a brief spasm and left the rails in the car.  The crane moved back in majestic in difference; it looked like the giant drawing of a geometrical theorem moving above the men and the earth."

- Page 86

Not THAT is terrific writing.

I don't know how literature professors classify Atlas Shrugged, but reading it I feel the same way I felt about reading Frank Norris's The Octopus, a perfect representative of the naturalism movement in literature, which sought to describe things as they are, with repetitive language used to conjure a sense of realism.  (Of course, I read The Octopus in my early high-school years.  Even then, my classmates and I got fed up with the repetition.)

With Atlas Shrugged ... it is one thing to have the predominant themes/observations ringing in every chapter to keep your perspective front-of-mind, but when they occur every page ... it becomes distracting.  As a reader, you find yourself, literally, jolted back into reality -- death-knell for a novel -- where you say to yourself, "Okay, okay -- I get your point!  Your heroes are supermen and superwomen with intelligence, endurance, and grace beyond mortal understanding."  Some examples:

The reader's first introduction to oil magnate Ellis Wyatt:

"The man who entered was a stranger.  He was young, tall, and something about him suggested violence, though she could not say what it was, because the first trait one grasped about him was a quality of self-control that seemed almost arrogant.  He had dark eyes, disheveled hair, and his clothes were expensive, but worn as if he did not care or notice what he wore."

- Page 81

Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden watching "Rearden Metal" (an advanced metal alloy with unlimited possibilities) being produced:

"Rearden Metal..."

He noticed that, but said nothing.  He glanced at her, then turned back to the window.

"Hank, this is great."

"Yes."

He said it, simply, openly.  There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty.  This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of being free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood.

- Page 86

Keep in mind that pronouncements of the characters' virtues such as these are not presented in every chapter -- they occur almost every paragraph.  Reading a Rand novel is a bit like being hit over the head with an Objectivist shovel.

As anyone who knows anything about Ayn Rand realizes, she does not deal in gray; everything is black and white.  That holds true for Atlas Shrugged (and The Fountainhead).  People are either good ("clean," "angular," "graceful," "reasoned") or bad/evil ("slack," "slow," "impulsive"), and good people make good decision, while evil people make evil decisions.

I recognize that Rand was writing the shining example of her Objectivist philosophy and, hence, wanted it to be her "purest" exemplar of how objectivists (and non-objectivists) are.  (Notably, she does not write about how objectivists should be.  As will be discussed below, it appears that you are either born an objectivist ... or you will never be one.)

Nevertheless, her fiction is not an accurate reflection of life -- who, after all, is 100 percent good?  (Even Ron Paul has his faults.)

The most irritating aspect of the book -- and, ultimately, its most limiting -- is that the heroes of the book are all born as objectivists.  Not a single person sees the error of his/her ways, and grows to correct any inherent flaws.  I am currently on page 135, and Rand has introduced three main characters (all business titans) who serve as model objectivists.  Unfortunately for us mortals, all three have known from their earliest days how truly special and gifted they are.

To wit, Hank Rearden:

"...[H]e owned [the mines] as of that morning.  He was thirty years old.  What had gone on in the years between did not matter, just as pain had not mattered.  He had worked in mines, in foundries, in the steel mills of the north, moving toward the purpose he had chosen.  All he remembered of those jobs was that the men around him had never seemed to know what to do, while he had always known."

- Page 30

Dagny Taggart:

"Dagny Taggart was nine years old when she decided that she would run the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad some day....She never tried to explain why she liked the railroad....She felt the same emotion in school, in classes of mathematics, the only lessons she liked.  She felt the excitement of solving problems, the insolent delight of taking up a challenge and disposing of it without effort, the eagerness to meet another, harder test.

"Studying mathematics, she felt, quite simply and all at once:  'How great that men have done this" and 'How wonderful that I'm so good at it.'"

- Pages 50-51

Franciso d'Anconia:

"When I run Taggart Transcontinental..." Dagny would say at times.  "When I run d'Anconia Copper..." said Francisco.  They never had to explain the rest to each other; they knew each other's goal and motive."

- Page 95

In addition to knowing one's life's pursuit at an absurdly early age, Rand's protagonists are superbly intelligent.  At 12 years old, Francisco d'Anconia is already impressing adults:

Francisco's notes of calculation were still scattered about on the ground; [Dagny's] father picked them up, looked at them, then asked, 'Francisco, how many years of algebra have you had?'  'Two years.'  'Who taught you to do this?'  'Oh, that's just something I figured out.'  [Dagny] did not know that what her father held on the crumpled sheets of paper was the crude version of a differential equation."

- Page 93

Well, since I did not instinctively "create" differential calculus when I was 12 years old, I humbly recognize that I do not fit the mold of Rand's "superperson."  Does that mean I should renounce my goals of grandeur?  According to the models that Ayn Rand present, I should -- especially if I do not have a clear vision of exactly what I want to do (with a burning, unquenchable yearning, of course).

I certainly welcome prodigies and geniuses -- they are the lifeblood of innovation and progress.  However, crucially, I have yet to see a single character born "average" (or, at least, not preternaturally brilliant) in an Ayn Rand book, and not blossom to greatness through education and/or hard work.  The clear implication -- that you are either born with cognitive gifts and a focused purpose in life, in which case your success is assured -- or you have a completely corrupted personal philosophy that dooms you to unhappiness and proceeding through your days in slack-jawed torpor.

This reverence for elitism is what is most infuriating, because -- like it or not -- the vast majority of people do not have the acumen or native ability to accomplish feats of greatness.  However, that does not mean that someone could not discover truths about the world and himself, and try disciplining his life according to a set of defined values.

Life is hard.  Trying to craft a life that reflects values true to oneself, and raising children to do the same:  now that is a hero.

For the reasons discussed, I think the best age group for reading her fiction is 15 to 24.  Anyone older, I believe, would like to see character development and growth, as well as seeing people make mistakes and learning from them.