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As a college student in 1961, I was downright stunned when I read, without putting it down from beginning to end, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.  It had a major impact on my young, impressionable mind.  Now Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which I just finished reading, has had a significant impact on my old, impressionable mind.  It’s as if Ayn Rand’s fictional characters have become the book ends of my intellectual life.

The book is almost 1,200 pages long in the hardback edition which I bought.  The fact that it is a philosophical novel adds to its difficulty.  The parallels between the forces of evil in the book and our contemporary governmental malaise are startling. 

Published originally in 1957, the novel’s heroine is Dagny Taggart, the Operating VP of the railroad Taggart Transcontinental.  The primary male protagonist is Hank Rearden, owner of Rearden Steel and inventor or a revolutionary alloy metal that is lighter and stronger than steel.  These people are archetypal doers, constantly beset on all sides by the incompetence, greed, and irrationality of others.  Then there are the three best friends and former classmates who possess superior intelligence and are the ultimate heroes of the story:  John Galt, inventor of a motor that turns atmospheric static electricity into kinetic energy, a man who has opted out of society because of his disgust over non-productive citizens who use laws and guilt to leech from the value created by productive people;  Francisco d’Anconia, heir and owner of d’Anconia Copper Mines, who appears to be destroying everything he owns as he deteriorates into an international playboy; and Ragnar Danneskjöld, a pirate.

If I was to find fault with any of this novel it is the idealized, caricature-like, exaggerated representations of the characters.  To put it bluntly, they are unreal.  But they serve Rand’s philosophical purpose, which is to make a statement that has come to be recognized as her objectivism:  the proper moral purpose of life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness or rational self-interest through productive achievement.  That’s about as succinctly as I can state it.  Because it is her goal to create a novelistic vision of her personal philosophical beliefs, there is a lot of sermonizing and intellectual discussion parading as dialogue.  There is no realistic dialogue whatsoever.  For that, you’ll have to read Mark Twain, who really did a much better job than Ayn Rand of masking the philosophy in his novels (perhaps because Twain was a great humorist and Rand probably didn’t have an ounce of humor in her).

But what a story this is!  Notwithstanding that it is easy to know who to root for and who to root against, there is lots of excitement and plenty of suspense, even though the reader cannot ever really doubt who is going to prevail in the end. 

The working title as Rand was writing this novel was “The Strike.”  This refers to the fact that Galt gets other producers to go on strike and stop sanctioning the looters and the moochers who are profiting off of their work.  The explanation for its eventual title is found in a conversation between Francisco d’Anconia and Hank Rearden.  “…if you saw Atlas,” asks d’Anconia, “the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?”

Rearden isn’t sure and says to d’Anconia:  “What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”

If you find that intriguing but cannot quite figure it out, read the novel and then you’ll know.  True to Rand’s philosophy, I’m not going to do the work for you.

Comments:

comment by miker on July 14, 2008 7:26 PM ()

Don't get excited. I never got any further than the back porch...the damn book was too heavy to tote beyond that point.

reply by looserobes on July 15, 2008 7:24 AM ()

WOW, very impressive to someone like me, 1200 pages??!!! I can only dream of a day when a book of this magnitude is in my hands reading page by page. I'm not there yet!!!

comment by darkstar on July 14, 2008 4:18 PM ()

I'm a slow reader so it took me awhile. The hard part was picking it up and starting it.

reply by looserobes on July 14, 2008 5:25 PM ()

I forgot to add that her philosophy of "Art" formed the basis of all my successful teaching of both practical art and the History of Art, for which I owe her a great debt. She was truy one of the grests and one day will be recognised as such -- if civilization survives,[]

I read both these novels in my late twenties, immediately joined the mailing list for the Ayn Rand Newsletter, Bought all her philosophical works, and began to spread the message - joining a political party that was founded on her philosophies.the "Alpha" party'.
And then Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan jumped on the band wagon. Purporting to be followers of her ideals they stripped away everything except laissez-faire capitalism. The notion of 'enlightened self-interest' was totally beyond their intellect. Other politicians then took the title of one of her best books, "The Virtue of Selfishness" and perverted it to mean their narrow interpretation of selfishness. It was the beginning of my total disillusion with politics and public figures. Humans don't deserve this planet... they get the governments they deserve and deserve the ruin that is unfolding. Allan Greenspan was her lover... or at least acolyte, and that explains some of his better fiscal policies. She remains one of the least understood philosophers of last century... escaping from communist Russia to be disillusioned in the USA... Poor Ayn.

comment by clovis on July 14, 2008 3:32 PM ()

I subscribed to her Objectivist Newsletter after reading The Fountainhead. I took my philosohy of fatherhood from it, which is why I have such cool adult daughters today!

reply by looserobes on July 14, 2008 4:47 PM ()