Mia's Updates

"I read somewhere (was it Calvino?) that a classic is a book that offers you something different and fresh any and all times you encounter it, the kind of work that is rewardingly vital the first or tenth time you read it, whether as a teen or as a scholar.

In this perspective, "Atlas Shrugged" is an anti-classic. It took me three goes, across several years, to even finish this. This, in itself, does not mean anything. After all, this has happened before with books that I ended up not only loving but seeing as watershed moments (The Hunger Angel immediately comes to mind). But AS proved to be one a bulky, clunk, meandering mess of a book that would be fine- to some extent- if only it were not praised to high heavens.

Every time I picked it up (which is already an achievement, this thing is heavy and I actually own it, but hey, good old Rand has been a box for a very long time so not a single cent came her way) I thought less and less of it. Thus, in my early twenties (made it as far as the first speech, and knowing there was one much longer later one, gave up) I thought it was stilted but had a few interesting images. These pertained to urban landscapes and industrial environments. In my thirties, when I gave it another go (and made it through that first speech but did not reach the absurdly stultifying long one) I found it extremely stilted and peppered with quite a few horrendous ideas but still something of a fun read, whose author had simply bitten way more than she could chew. When I finally read it from start to finish- which meant rereading a lot of the book- I found it unintentionally ironic and silly without even realizing it.

AS takes place in a kind of comic book universe. I mean this in the most simplified of ways, as there are plenty of comic books with nuance and complexity. AS takes its cue from the traditional Men With Strong Jaws kind of comic book and then pretends this is the actual real world.

A little bit of self-awareness would have gone a very long way. Were the author conscious that virtually everything she presents might make sense in-universe (and even then...!) but simply does not apply to reality, she might have salvaged something: claim your novel's interest is in its "philosophy" in the sense that it illuminates truths...but don't try to sell me perpetual motion machines that, lols, the heroes just stumble on as not just things that can happen but are not even the main thrust of the story.

This is one of the biggest problems with AS: Rand is committed to ideology and the plot needs be twisted to satisfy it. In virtually any other work of fiction, a perpetual motion machine would be the theme, its ramifications, impact in the world at large, would be the focus and prism through which individual plotlines are told. But this is Randland, a world that bears not only a tangential relation to reality as its concerns are not those of actual people.

Interestingly enough, speculative fiction like Ursula le Guin's creates worlds that mirror ours while being deliberately different, in order to present ideas and themes in a fresh and highly relevant way, yet the cast remains profoundly believable. Rand may claim to admire Aristotle but she either did not read or forgot his Poetics: verisimilitude is everything.

Rand's characters are not actual characters. They are talking heads- and boy, do they talk....- with silly names that would make Tomino, of Gundam fame, roll his eyes. Being variations of two motifs, the "good guys" who are all manly, with them chins, did I mention chins, and super angular, the chins, MORE CHINS- and "the Moochers" who are weak kneed folk who are out for your MONEY!!, they can be multiplied ad infinitum without any sensible change. If anything, having more of these stereotypes only makes it clearer that the author has no idea of the diversity of human experience.

AS might have worked better if we only had John Galt and one single Moocher. It would at least be streamlined and not necessarily reduce the whole of humanity to these two types.

You might be wondering, "Wait, but isn't the main character a woman? Where does she fit in all this?" Dagny fits as "the Chick". She is the ultimate Pick Me and the closest the novel comes to actually fleshing out a character as such. There is still not much to go by, but she has something that John Galt lacks, she actually has a character arc.

Which brings me to John Galt. Perhaps one of the most absurd characters ever committed to paper, he is simply "more" what the other "great men" presented were. In Randland, you assess people as quantities of personal worth, so to speak, that are sort of line units. Think videogame, the best character has the best stats.

So John Galt "wins" Dagny's "love" despite the fact that she has a long lived experience with two other male love interests and barely knows Galt because his stats are better. Theoretically, were she encounter another man whose stats were even better, she would immediately drop Galt for him and so forth.

And right away, we can see how artificially contrived this is. People simply do not work like this.

But there are really hilarious implications that I am sure never occurred to Rand. Being entirely clueless about homoerotic tension, she manages to write a scene in which the two men Dagny drops, talk about love and how it is fine that she went for Higher Stats tm., while rolling around in their respective beds in a hotel room. It reads like the start of a sweet, sweet gay romance and I would be willing to bet this exists, somewhere. Rule 34 Rand, y'all! If you won't, I will. It makes more sense than anything else the novel tries to present us with.

From a Nordic Pirate handing out gold bars to a billionaire in an alley (this also does not lead to gay sex) to cheering for the death of everyone aboard a train, without forgetting the hailing of stalking as the epitome of romance and mourning that children no longer work in mines (Dickens, blast this woman to oblivion!), as well as the highly moral deed of sinking relief ships, AS is an awkward mixture of hilariously dumb and sociopathic.

It is difficult to be so wrong about so many things, Rand even goes out of her way to praise smoking. Because of course she does.

And if one may grant her that the nefarious effects of smoking were not as well known in her time, it is worth considering that Rand promotes actual ecological terrorism as not just valid but truly ethical. There are Gundam villains who would go "oh come on now..."

Case in point: Wyat owns oil rigs. But the Moochers decide to nationalize them. What does he do? BLOW THEM UP AND RUIN THE LAND FOR GENERATIONS TO COME. And this is not just seen as the correct choice but as one that exemplifies how a true man who knows himself should act.

Let that sink in for a while. Her hero is basically Saddam Hussein. And if you're thinking "just because he's a hero, does not mean that he can't make very bad decisions", then you clearly have not read Rand and I envy you. I truly, truly, truly envy you.

At some point, I decided I would finish this book so that I could review it. Shallow? Yes. But hey, I'm not blowing up oil rigs and ruining the land for generations to come while tooting my horn as to how amazing I am.

The best weapon against this kind of book is humor. While Rand and co. claim that they have a kind of "serene joy" and that The True Man's laughter is pure, in reality, they cannot handle being poked fun at.

I will proceed to do that now:

"Hank Reardon stared into the distance with his steely eyes of steel. The distance held his gaze but did not return it. Because it was afraid of his spirit. The spirit of the unfettered. 'What is a Man', he asked. He did not whisper. For whispering is for the cowards who allow their conscience to be dictated by Committee. I mean, by committee. Forget that capital letter. No, I cannot backtrack because I just type and type and type and soon will have well over a million pages. A speech will occupy half of it. Back to Hank, the skyscrapers were burning. Full of the Moochers. They had allowed the Engine of the World to stutter into silence. 'You brought this upon yourself'. A feeling beyond contempt invaded the serenity of heart. Of his serene steely heart. These people meant nothing. No one amounted to anything. Other than the burning, unconquerable assurance in his own unwavering strength. The un-jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj- cat jumped on laptop. Cats are Objective.
Meanwhile, John Galt was walking down the tunnel to spy on Dagny when the ground gave way. Turns out rolling back regulations had its pitfalls. As he manly got back to his feet at the bottom of a hole, he caught sight of a worker on the rim. "Are you okay?" the worker asked, betraying his herd instinct. 'I am Man the loves his life.' Galt answered. '...sure, wait a sec, I'll get some a crew and we'll get you out in no time.'

In proud contempt, Galt replied, 'You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.' 'Have it your way, then.'"

THE END."