I didn't enjoy it as expected.

I read this book in about 1961. It was the must read book of the day among my group of quasi-whatever we were (not intellectuals of any persuasion I might add) and I struggled through it to the bitter end, telling anyone who would listen that it was the most important book of the century. Yeah, like I would know this at the tender age of 20?!

What it was, was BIG - 1100 and something pages - and while I was quite adept at posing with book in hand and able to quote some John Galt verbatim, I really understood absolutely nothing about the incredibly selfish philosophy of Objectivism. This book of essential reading was as dry as a dead dingo's donger and just as interesting. In later years, as I read and studied more, I came to realise just what Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Brand were on about and Atlas Shrugged became a personal memento of the shallow crassness of me and my youthful peers in the late fifties and early sixties.

20/01/2021 Addendum:
I am indebted to GR stalwart, Michael Perkins, for this quote which I copied from his review of Atlas Shrugged:
n  “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” – John Rogersn

28/09/2021 Addendum:
And thank you, Michael, for alerting me to this great comment about Atlas Shrugged:
n  “I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.” - Christopher Hitchensn

I was visiting an old friend for the past few days, and she showed me this cover of Atlas Shrugged I made for her when we lived in Ukraine:

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It was a necessary repair, but it pretty much proves I should be a cover designer.
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Original review:

I think Francisco D’Aconia is absolutely a dream boat. This book’s like blah blah blah engineering, blah blah blah John Galt, blah blah blah no altruistic act, blah bla- HE-llo, Francisco D’Aconia, you growl and a half. Also, there’s a pirate. So, what’s everyone complaining about?

Okay, it’s not that I don’t get what everyone’s complaining about. I get that Rand is kind of loony tunes of the Glenn Beck variety, and some people (maybe?) use her to justify being assholes, but I just don’t like to throw the bathwater out with that baby. Warning: I think, to make my point, I have to refer to Dostoyevsky a lot, which I seem to always do because he really is some kind of touchstone to me. The point I’m trying to make with all this blabbering is that the debate over Atlas Shrugged brings out something that I might hate more than anything else (more than weddings and kitty litter even). It makes people say that ideas are dangerous. People on all sides of the spectrum do this about different stuff, and whatever the argument, I don’t like it. If an idea is wrong, say it’s wrong. But genocide doesn’t happen because people put forward too many ideas. It happens because people put forward too few ideas.

Anyway, back to the book:

First, story. The third part of this book is super weird. It’s definitely not the actual ending of the book, I’ve decided, but more of a choose-your-own-adventure suggestion. It’s kind of fun that way because any end that you, the reader, come up with will be better than the one Rand suggested. My favorite part of her ending is how John Galt gives the most boring speech possible, and it lasts for about a bazillion pages, and you have to skip it or die. Then, at the end, Rand’s like, “The entire world was listening, ears glued to the radios, because Galt’s speech was the most brilliant thing they had ever heard.” No. Nope. Nice try, liar. So, that’s super lame, I agree, and you should just skip the third part.

But people don’t get as mad about the epilogue in Crime and Punishment. Why? That’s the same situation, where it kills all fun, and you have to ignore that it happened. Is it just because it’s shorter, and it’s called “Epilogue”? Maybe that’s enough. But, on the other hand, maybe people didn’t read all the way to the end of Crime and Punishment. Maybe, because it was written by a crazy Russian man, not a crazy Russian woman, people think they’ll sound deep if they say they like it.

Second, writing. People complain about Rand’s writing, and I always think, “When was the last time you wrote a 1000 page book in a second language and pulled off a reasonably page-turning storyline?” The woman spoke Russian for crying out loud! It most certainly would have been a better choice for her to have written the books in Russian and had them translated, but, I mean, most native English speakers couldn’t be that entertaining. It’s at least A for effort. I’m not going to make excuses for the unpronounceable names she chooses for her characters, but I’ll just say Dostoyevsky again and leave it at that.

I know it made a huge difference in my reading of this book that I was living in a Soviet bloc apartment in Lozovaya, Ukraine at the time and had forgotten a little bit how to speak English. I’m sure a lot of weird phrasing didn’t sound weird to me because it makes sense in Russian. But, also, I feel like I’ve read a lot of translations of Dostoyevsky and other Russians that feel really weird in English. You know, everyone’s always having some kind of epileptic fit or whatever with Mr. D. But, we allow for the weirdness because we picture the stuff happening in Russia, where the weird stuff typically goes down anyway. I’ll tell you right now, Atlas Shrugged takes place in Russia. No joke. She might tell you they’re flying over the Rocky Mountains, or whatever, but this book is a Russian if there ever was one. Just so it’s clear, I LOVE that about it. That’s no insult, only compliment.

Third, philosophy. Maybe I told you this story already, so skip it if you already know it. When I lived in Ukraine, I had the same conversation with three or four people of the older generation who grew up in the Soviet Union. They would tell me, “Things were really wonderful in the Soviet Union, much better than they are now. We had free health care, free housing, and now we have nothing. I mean, every once in a while your neighbor would disappear, but it was completely worth it.” This was really disturbing to me, because it gave me this picture of the people around me – that they were the ones who ratted out the neighbors who wanted a different life. Sure, Rand’s vision is narrow and sometimes inhuman, but I think it is because she was really terrified of this equally narrow and, as far as I’m concerned, inhuman vision. I want a public health care option real bad, and my neighbor has some really annoying Chihuahuas, but if forced to choose between them, I’d probably still pick my neighbor.

Admittedly, the problem with this argument is that it sets up a dichotomy where our only choices are the prosperity gospel and Soilent Green. From what I know of Rand, though, she had seen her neighbors and family thrown out of Russia or killed for being rich. She was fighting something extreme by being extreme. Unfortunately, in America, this rhetoric turns into the idea that having public services = killing your neighbor. To me, this comes from people taking her arguments too seriously on both sides. Dostoyevsky has ghosts and devils coming out of every corner, and people take his stories for what they’re worth. We don’t think that liking his books makes us mystics and hating them makes us inquisitors. Why is it different with Rand?

Fourth, women. I’m not going to lie and tell you that there weren’t other badass female characters when Dagney Taggert came around. All I want to say about this is that the most valuable thing I got from this book was the idea that one person being unhappy doesn’t, and shouldn’t, make other people happy. I think, in this way, it was particularly important to me that the protagonist was a woman. I see a lot of women complain about their lives and families, but say it’s all worth it because they’ve been able to devote their lives to making their husbands or children happy. I’m paraphrasing, I guess. Anyway, that kind of hegemony really creeps me out.

When I read this book, I was just realizing that I had joined Peace Corps with a similarly misguided motivation. I wanted to go to the needy and unfortunate countries of the world and sacrifice myself to save them. It might sound more nasty than it really was when I say it like that, but I think it is a really arrogant attitude to have. We might have hot running water in America (for which I am forever grateful), but if somewhere doesn’t have that, it’s probably not because of a problem a silly, 23-year-old English major is going to solve. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Peace Corps, and it was maybe the best experience of my life so far. But I love it for the things that I got out of it, and if someone else benefited from my being in Ukraine, it was dumb luck.

I don’t know about other women, but I was raised to believe that the more selfless (read: unhappy) I was, the better off everyone else would be. I think it’s a pretty typical way that women talk themselves into staying in abusive situations – that their lives are worth less than the lives around them. This would be the Hank Rearden character in the novel. I love that Rand sets up characters who destroy this cycle of abuse. I love that her female protagonist lives completely outside of it.

So, not to undercut my noble feminist apologetics, but really Francisco’s just hawt, and I think that’s the reason I like this book. There are lots of other reasons to read Rand, but most of those get into the argument about her ideas being dangerous. I just don’t think they are, or should be. I think ignorance is dangerous, but I think it should be pretty easy to fill in the gaping holes in Rand’s logic. Yes, she conveniently ignores the very old, very young, and disabled to make a specific and extreme point. I don’t think her point is entirely without merit, though (in the sense that our lives are valuable, not in the sense of “kill the weak!”). I also think that if we give a “danger” label to every book that conveniently ignores significant portions of the population to make a point, we wouldn’t be left with much.

Anyway, read, discuss, agree, disagree. I’ll be making up some “Team John,” “Team Hank,” “Team Francisco” t-shirts later. I hear in the sequel there are werewolves.

This really is a thumping good read. And ultimately, we're all on this earth to please ourselves. So hey . . . pass the dessert trolley and make mine a double.

Atlas Shrugged is a ferocious defense of the concept of capitalism. Although Rand depicts capitalism from her objectivist perspective and makes monumental over-exaggerations, she succeeds in demonstrating the importance of such basic social necessities as self sufficiency, personal responsibility, accountability, punctuality, and hard work. She equally condemns such economic poisons as socialized industry, redistribution of wealth, laziness, entitlement, and incompetence. Rand shows how these economic poisons also have the power to poison the human soul, embodied in the character of James Taggart. The ideas discussed in Atlas Shrugged are of monumental importance and Rand successfully unveils the consequences of a large-scale destruction of capitalism and how and why such destruction could become reality.

Aside from the political implications inherent in Atlas Shrugged, the book is also an excellent work from the fictional literature perspective. Critics condemn Rand’s bipolar use of almost godly heroes and devilish villains, claiming this as a failure to create human characters. This misconception is obviously false, based on the fact that Rand includes a Greek god’s name in the title. Creating god-like characters to emulate is not failure, it is an effective tool Rand used to establish a moral framework in a mythological industrial era. The only real criticism I can offer of this masterpiece is the use of repetitive, far too lengthy orations on objectivism, which culminates in John Galt’s two-hour speech over radio waves near the end of the book. This book could have, and probably should have, been shorter than it is. That said, I couldn’t put the book down for the first two-thirds of the story. The last couple of hundred pages were arduous, but the ending was worth the effort.

I recommend this book to adult readers of all ages, creeds, and political interests. The story is gripping, and the concepts it teaches are of great value. The enjoyment and enlightenment found in the over one thousand pages of this book are well worth the time and effort it takes to get through it.

Impresionante ! Mi primera lectura del año y le ha dado un vuelco a mi percepción de los sistemas sociales y las metas individuales.

Dicen algunos que es una especie de biblia para los capitalistas, lo entiendo, pero es mucho más, es un libro vasto en tamaño y contenido, es un reto, te reta personalmente a esforzarte por ti y para ti.

Lo recomiendo mucho, es pesado, pensé en dejarlo varias veces en las primeras 300 páginas, pero vale la pena seguir, vale la pena el esfuerzo.

Si tienen la oportunidad de hacerse de el, no lo piensen.

Ayn Rand's sociopath role model....

https://hartmannreport.com/p/american...

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more on Rand....

https://www.salon.com/2015/10/14/libe...

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In 1982, Rand died of cancer brought on by her excessive smoking habit. One of the things she was most admired for was the way she stuck to her principles throughout her life . . . or so it seemed. In 2011, it was revealed that Rand had spent the last eight years of her life receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits. At the time of her death, her estate was valued at $500,000 (around $1.2 million in today’s money), suggesting her decision was motivated less by rationality than by the sort of parasitic greed she’d always claimed to despise.

(Updates appended to the bottom, including a pointer to the best review ever of this book.)

OK, I’ve got to explain this four-star rating, because I don’t want anyone to think I’d actually recommend this book...

It has been many years since I’ve read either of Ayn Rand’s two doorstop books, and I can’t really recall the details of either. I’m pretty sure this is the one with John Galt had the absurdly long speech near the end, and all the cool kids smoked special cigarettes, and was mostly about railroads. This is that one, right? The other one has the architect?

Anyway, I think folks should need permission to read this. Frankly, I think teenage experimentation with pot is trivial in terms of risk to a kid’s soul compared to experimentation with Ayn Rand. Her books can much more easily destroy a life.

Let me explain. Rand’s philosophy, as near as I can tell, is that great people shouldn’t be encumbered by the not-so-great. Taxes, regulations, all that stuff: just the shackles the large number of mediocre folks force onto their betters: pure parasitism. Morality comes down to letting the best do what they want, and letting the rest starve. These books are her ideas about how that should work out, and as such are suffused with incredibly juvenile wish-fulfillment. The powerful are tormented by the weak, but through force of will rise above it all.

I might not be remembering all this quite right — after all, it has been a long time. The above description is what my initial impression has distilled down to; your mileage may vary.

So where’s the danger, and why the relatively high rating? Well, many teenagers look out at their world and feel victimized by the completely lame and restrictive world that adults impose upon them. It is clear to them that they are as smart and able as these authorities, yet those adults are so... clueless. Obviously, adult life somehow has turned them into a lesser breed of humanity, with all the vitality sucked out. Add Ayn Rand to this and you suddenly have the ingredients for a self-perpetuating sense of victimhood and entitlement.

I think it is possible that too much Ayn Rand is to blame for the Tea Party movement. The circular logic that these poor folks are victims of the evil American system, while simultaneously the vanguard and representative of the noble American system.

Most people have overcome their teenage angst and fantasies by, say, twenty-eight or so. At that point, Rand will have lost her magic and her books should be freely available. But between twelve and twenty-seven, a committee of wise elders should decide whether that kid is mature enough not to get sucked into it.

Sounds unlikely? Yeah, well so does Rand’s puerile philosophy, but somehow we have self-righteous imbeciles getting elected left and right. Well, not so much “left” — mostly “right”.

But then, why the good rating? Because Rand provided a window into the strange logic of the extremist libertarian. We might have seen Hitler’s deeds and learned of Nietzsche’s diktats, but we never saw the fantasies that drove them. I think most folks that believe along Rand’s lines are either too dumb to put pen to paper, or too smart to let the world see what sociopaths they really are.

So: four stars for the opportunity to watch the slow-motion train wreck of Rand’s political philosophy in action, warning us of where we’re heading.

n  n

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Update, August 2012— Romney's selection of Ryan as his running mate has got folks chatting about Ryan's on-and-off obsession with Ayn Rand. Not having made a study of Rand's life, I was pleased to learn that while her extremely anti-collectivist views are still antithetical to civilization (which is definitionally a collectivist enterprise) she was actually quite the social liberal. Not sure that makes her any more pleasant — ideologues of any stripe are quite annoying, even those that suddenly appear more complex and harder to pigeon-hole — but nice to know. A few more details? Check out the NY Times op-ed piece, n   Atlas Spurnedn.

Another Update, still August 2012— Everyone's talking about Ayn Rand, still. But one pointed to something especially juicy: the original 1957 review in the then-newish National Review by one of the world's most notorious flip-floppers, Whittaker Chambers himself! Scathing:

Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.

Of course, although it wasn't what he ended up being famous for, he was a tremendously talented writer and editor. Click over and read it: n  Big Sister Is Watching Youn.
­

This is not a good book. 1 star.

"Atlas Shrugged" is a novel. This ought to be fairly obvious, considering the fact that none of the events in it bear any resemblance to reality, and it's a brick-sized prose thing. Alas, some people take it as a sort of manifesto about how working hard is good and socialism is bad.

Plot-wise, Dagny has a railway and train business - and by God, she does everything to make it run well. A lot of things get in her way: a socialist government redistributing resources to everyone without an ounce of brain, incompetent collaborators, and good businessmen vanishing off without a trace. Luckily, she has extraordinary businessman Hank Rearden on her side, and together they will double-handedly try to save the world. They'll also fall in love with each other, because it feels like they're the last two competent people left.

Alas, who is John Galt? The question is asked repeatedly whenever a competent man disappears, and the mystery grows deeper and deeper before it finally gets resolved (spoiler): John Galt is the man of ultimate competence, who has realized that all competent people can give the socialist world the middle finger by removing themselves from it and letting it die on its own. It's very dramatic. Seduced by so much competence and a speech that's so long it could go around the Ecuator twice, Dagny throws herself in his arms, forsaking Rearden. Who is John Galt? He's the biggest disappointment in this novel.

Honestly, as a novel, it's not that bad (except for the speech and the ending). Come for the extreme views on the wonders of working hard, stay for the train porn.

Excellent comparison using extreme socialism and extreme individualism/capitalism. The socialist side didn't want competition, preferred an even playing field which results in total breakdown of the economic and educational systems. Illustrates the error of a feel-good educational system that yields incompetence.

The extreme capitalist is not only profit driven but pushes self and business to excel at all cost. Doesn't appear to be concerned with responsibilities toward providing for poor. Doesn't allow for compasion towards poor, widows/orphans.
Of course the capitalists here did provide jobs to competent workers and loyalty existed between the owner and employees.
From Rand's atheist perspecitve there is no higher authority than the individual.

As a Christian we should encourage the unemployed/uneducated to be responsible citizens and make the changes in their lives to be productive. Care for widows/orphans and those truly unable to work is our responsibility as Christians. We should insist on an educational system to push students to expand their minds and develop the ability to think clearly, make decisions based on research and reading. eliminate the feel-good mentality and create a self confident student who "feels good" because of success in studies, understanding of history and how societies have been successful and how corruption caused their destruction. Also, develop the ability to sort through the political smoke so often heard or seen in print.

Read:
1. For the strongest argument for being selfish.

2. As of 1, to redefine how selfish or 'selfless' you are.

Do not read:
1. You are impatient, physically weak, or can't stand an author using fiction to make a political/philosophical statement.

2. You would not read something socially disfavourable even if you thought it may raise a few good points. You cannot praise parts of an ideology, you must value the entire ideology and it must be one that clearly works for the lifestyle of any individual of any era and place (as few do).

3. You cannot forgive an author for sacrificing ambience for clarity. For example, you cannot tolerate seeing the inner thoughts of otherwise simple characters, or a lengthy (dull) monologue which reiterates explicitly all the points the author wishes to make in the novel. It's a bit like forgiving someone for explaining a joke.

4. You could not like having a cold emotional distance from your characters, or the same towards themselves.

5. You do not like to read serious fiction, or refuse to have your life perspective challenged by fictious plots; you rarely read for guidance or thinking but just easy-going enjoyment or distraction. You read for scenes, but not for their fables. You do not often think about whether the events in a book, no matter how extreme or even unfavourable, can/could/should occur in reality.

6. You cannot value texts devoid of interesting, varied, complex, implicit or highly descriptive language or syntax; Rand writes as (I think) her philosophy (objectivism) implies: all that is 'subjective' can and should only be valued for it's 'objective' properties (colour/distance/form/shape/time). No fancy writing here, but I think that's the point!

I'm not going to tell you what to do with this book, though many people enjoy telling others that they threw it out of buildings or moving vehicles. Take that as a sign of its power. If you value your independence, find it and form your own judgement. If you dislike this book, you will at least develop your being by asking yourself to explain as clearly and assuredly as you can, why.