There is very little subtlety in Ayn Rand. Just like her followers, she gleefully clobbers you over the head with her message about producers and looters. To be fair… her book weighs about as much as a sledgehammer anyway so I’m not making much of a metaphor here.
When one of my friends pointed out that the first of 3 movies of Atlas Shrugged was coming out in Theaters, my response was, “meh.” Little did I know what uttering that one little word would cost me.
Ayn forbid that you dare to criticize Atlas Shrugged. If you do so then you’re sure to invoke the ire of the entire population of the sovereign state of Libertaria and all of its inhabitants. For all intents and purposes, you’ve dared to burn their Bible (or Koran) as Atlas Shrugged is universally regarded as their “holy book”. And that’s probably what I hate most about the book. You can’t criticize it.
You will inevitably find yourself accosted with questions like these: “So what exactly don’t you like about Atlas Shrugged? Do you not like capitalism? Are you against freedom? Do you not like art? Are you against democracy?” As if disliking the book itself (or the author) also means that you’re a Communist, you’re a Marxist, you’re a “looter”, you’re not a productive member of society… or you don’t like any of the tenants of Rand’s Objectivism (if you have the tenacity to sludge your way through it and if you can stomach the towering hubris of its author).
So I propose let’s take “Objectivism” and all that it entails and put it back on the shelf for the moment and talk about THE BOOK Atlas Shrugged! We’ll argue Objectivism another day. OK? No? Oh, I can’t possibly do that, you say? I can’t talk about Atlas Shrugged and NOT talk about all of the concepts within it? Why not? Well, there’s the fact that Rand proceeds to force feed it to us on every page until we burst like the Gluttony guy in the movie Seven. So I guess you can’t talk about one without talking about the other.
As someone who has tried now 5 times and failed the first 4 to get through this body of “work”, I am trudging along this final time out of spite and just to say that I did it. It is my objective to reach the end do or die… if for no other reason, than to shout out to the heavens, “DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!” I have armed myself this time with an Audio version off of Audible.com (which I should point out is unabridged… so 8 chapters long and each chapter a full 8 hours on its own), which of course, my friend was mad that I did that. I’ll save my argument about the pros and cons of unabridged audiobooks vs. reading books for some other time.
Ayn Rand, as a writer takes, pages and pages and pages and pages AND PAGES to describe… for argument’s sake let’s use a pancake as an example. She bombards you the reader with massively excessive and lethargically descriptive and cumbersome turns of phrases generously slathered like thick syrupy paste heavily dolloped over a plate of her own recipe of alphabet soup-like word pancakes. Then she painfully describes the way the butter slowly works its way down the syrup mountain and how, when you insert the knife into the pancakes, the way the light reflects off of your silverware and how the syrup slowly soaks into every new cut that you make into the flaky center. And then she REALLY gets going by describing the wafts of steam rising off of the plate and the sizzle of the bacon... She does this for 15 pages before you even get to take a single bite at which time you find that you no longer want to eat pancakes at all… or ever again!! You just want to stab yourself in the eye with the knife just to distract you from the fact that you’ve barely reached page 15! I’m told John Gault goes on for 100 pages later on in the book!!! Really?? For the love of Ayn!
We get endless chapters of unnecessary back story about two of the main characters, which in and of itself could constitute a “coming of age” mini-novel. We get the most "unsensual" descriptions imaginable of intimacy and sex acts and the lack of guilt associated with illicit affairs. We get dialogue that goes around in such circles that you as the reader get a weird sense of déjà vu and you’re left thinking, “Did they just say that exact thing two pages ago, just flip flop a few words around?”
Against all of this we are presented with very obvious metaphors and very blatant messages. The characters are cookie cutter at best. It doesn’t matter, looter or producer… all of the characters think they are the smartest persons they know. It oozes out of their pores. There is a kind of combative, condescending, patronizing, dispassionate and generally creepy way that they all talk to each other… (my friend blames this on my audiobook) like none of them possess any social skills whatsoever and anyone who disagrees with them on anything is barely worth drawing breath to address.
Against all of this we are presented with very obvious metaphors and very blatant messages. The characters are cookie cutter at best. It doesn’t matter, looter or producer… all of the characters think they are the smartest persons they know. It oozes out of their pores. There is a kind of combative, condescending, patronizing, dispassionate and generally creepy way that they all talk to each other… (my friend blames this on my audiobook) like none of them possess any social skills whatsoever and anyone who disagrees with them on anything is barely worth drawing breath to address.
Then halfway through this sophomoric insult to the very limits of human patience and decency we get something potentially exciting: a train accident. Or what constitutes pages and pages and pages leading up to a train accident. Or at least, we certainly get a lot of very lengthy description why in Ayn Rand’s mind it is totally justified why each and every person on the train died horribly in said accident. Seriously! “So and so” stole money from a producer once, so he won’t be missed! A teacher in car 10 taught his classes that “people are animals,” so no great loss there. Even this mother, who is tucking in her kids to bed in car 21… well she supported her husband’s endeavors to rip off hard working capitalists, so she and her brood deserve the violent and presumably fiery death that they got. But as we know, Altruism is bad. Caring at all about anyone else is bad, especially if they aren’t good laissez-faire capitalists. It was at this point where, if I had a physical book in front of me, I would have thrown it forcefully across the room so pissed off that I gave myself a migraine and then stomped on the book repeatedly like some twisted Wile E Coyote cartoon. I'm sorry... I that's just so wrong. No matter how much I disagree with someone or dare I say despise them, I would not go so far as to say their death was "justified". If this was "just a work of fiction", I could dismiss this section of the book and move on, but since it is considered "holy scripture" by it's adherents, my level of disgust is physically palpable.
I suppose this would be a good time for me to interject the fact that in my further readings about Ayn Rand I found out that she was a fan of William Edward Hickman… a serial killer. She modeled some of her hero characters after him. Rand was addicted to drugs. She fell for a younger man who, after a many years affair with her, he then fell for a much younger woman and left her... which was a serious blow to poor Ayn. She labeled anyone who dared to disagree with her a human “parasite” including those in her "inner circle"... But don't take my word for it.
Well I suppose I should try to listen to the second half now.
Oh. Sorry... All Hail Ayn Rand. Peace Be Upon Her.
Oh. Sorry... All Hail Ayn Rand. Peace Be Upon Her.
