Atlas Shrugged: 48-53

Pages 48-53

·         Here, in the first part of a chapter entitled “The Top and the Bottom,” we have Orren Boyle, James Taggart, Paul Larkin, and Wesley Mouch having a discussion in a high top restaurant that greatly resembles a hobbit hole, if said hobbit was a drunken hermit. I’m not even going to look up the meanings for ‘Wesley,’ because, seriously, his damn last name sounds like ‘mooch.’ Probably because Rand thought naming the dude Parrasyte was too obvious. And what do they talk about in this diseased hobbit hole in the sky? Well, follow the happy link and find out.


All Atlas Shrugged Or I'll Scream.

Atlas Shrugged: 33-48

Pages 33-48

·         The chapter is called ‘The Chain,’ and while on the obvious level it’s referring to the chain that Henry had made for his bitch wife, it is about the chain keeping Henry tied to all these horrible, horrible people.

·         Eh, and why don’t we just get down into it? In this chapter we meet Lillian Rearden, the unnamed Mother Rearden, Henry’s brother Phillip, and his friend Paul Larkin. And, amazingly enough, there is not a single redeeming quality to be found between them, no matter how hard Henry tries to convince himself that they exist.

Characterizations like these are originally where my complaints about Ayn Rand lacking subtlety came from in the first place. It was fine in The Fountainhead when Ellsworth Toohey was written as a flat, evil character with nothing at all to write down in the ‘positive’ column. Smug, evil bastards like that work, though, in small doses. In populating Atlas Shrugged, Rand is populating not just a city, but an entire world, and she still has the same “I don’t have time for you people not to get my point” attitude about the whole thing. And so…terrible, terrible people are born.

·         Let’s take Lillian Rearden first. ‘Lillian’ is from ‘lily,’ the flower, and as a flower it usually stands for purity and beauty. Which, just, GAHHHH. I’m sorry, it’s going to be REALLY hard for me to talk rationally about ANY of these people. And I’m trying, because I recognize this to be more about emotional manipulation than characterization on Rand’s part, but you have to give credit to the woman, she can create some horrible people.

Lillian offers nothing but contempt for her husband. So far, I’m not even sure why she married in the first place, and I can’t remember if we’re ever offered a reason. She belittles her husband in front of the rest of their family, she’s disappointed when she’s unable to watch him squirm at forgetting their wedding anniversary, and she treats his gift to her like it’s bird shit on toast. Ohhh, that gift.

·         Henry has just poured Rearden Metal for the first time. And in honor of that, the very first of that metal was used to create the titular chain, bracelet sized, made especially for his wife. And what little we know of Henry Rearden so far shows us readers that this is, perhaps, the most romantic and expressive thing Hank could do for anyone. He has dedicated his life to making this metal that works better than anything else that has come before it. It is his achievement, something he made, something he can be proud of, something he can stand behind. And to take something like that and give it to his wife is comparing the two, isn’t it? The two most important things to Henry Rearden, joined together.

When I read this in high school, it was the very first thing I correctly predicted before it happened. I knew, before we had even met Lillian, before we got any insight into her character, that she would hate it. But not only would she hate, she would portray the creation and the giving of the gift as being a symptom of some shortcoming or deficiency of Henry’s. That he was an idiot to have given it to her, selfish somehow, a man who doesn’t understand his wife, who doesn’t understand love, and that she would mock him and make a big show of ‘understanding’ but ultimately disregard the gift and not even come close to understanding what it meant to the man. And then it happened, and it was worse than I could have imagined:

“Lillian Rearden picked it up, hooked on the tips of two straight fingers, and raised it into the light. The links were heavy, crudely made, the shining metal had an odd tinge, it was greenish blue.

‘What’s that?” she asked.

‘The first thing made from the first heat of the first order of Rearden Metal.’

‘You mean,’ she said, ‘it’s as fully valuable as a piece of railroad rails?’” (p41-42).

YES, you shrew, and if you’ve been married to the man, you should know exactly how valuable that is! And of course she does. I’d say it’s impossible for this woman to not understand the man she married – he’s not entirely as subtle about his feelings as he’d believe – and that this is all part of some screw-over game she’s been playing with him for years? Why? I don’t know yet. In the end, she calls it “charming” and, most importantly, doesn’t put it on.

·         The rest of his family is not much better. His mother, so far unnamed, has chosen to live with him despite given the chance to live anywhere she wants, and spends every breath hurling emotional abuse at Henry, something we can conclude has been going on since the kid was old enough to play with Tinker Toys.

·         His brother, Philip (‘Philip,’ by the by, means ‘horse lover.’ Either Rand didn’t bother to give Philip a name that meant anything, or she REALLY hated this character), sets up a con to get a good donation out of Henry for whatever charity he’s promoting (it seriously does not matter) and then looks absolutely OFFENDED when Henry expects him to be happy about it. Philip is one of Mallory’s Zombies, working so hard for his fellow man and denying that he does anything for his sense of self that there is just nothing there anymore. He couldn’t be happy if he tried.

·         Paul Larkin is probably the least offensive of the lot, which is like picking out the least poisonous asp. ‘Paul’ means ‘small,’ and ‘Larkin’ means ‘rough and fierce,’ which, I mean, I can’t even see Paul being fierce in that way Tyra Banks is constantly using it. He’s also here as the night’s foreshadowing, as he brings up Henry’s ‘man in Washington’ but doesn’t give up why he’s doing it. My guess – and it’s an honest guess, I don’t remember from the book – but I think it’s talk of nationalizing Rearden Steel, like earlier we saw Mexico planning to nationalize one of Taggart Transcontinental’s lines.

·         Unfortunately, the worst person in the room for Henry is Henry. You know how, you break up with someone, and all your friends do that dutiful thing and say you were too good for him/her? Well, Henry is TOO GOOD for these people. During the entire scene he is CONSTANTLY justifying the actions of these people. His abusive mother chose to live with him, so that proves there must be some love in the relationship. Philip has never had a clear view of what he wants to do with himself so it’s his brotherly duty to help him figure it out. And Lillian was not attempting to screw him over with the trick with his wedding anniversary; she was merely throwing herself upon his mercy. Time and time again he justifies their actions as loving or affectionate, just ‘in their own way.’ And it isn’t until Henry figures out that he’s just lying to himself that he can extricate himself from this horrendous situation, hopefully with lots of explosives.

·         The worst thing to happen to Henry in this scene is Lillian’s reaction to the chain, but coming in at a close second is the reaction to his announcement that he’s finally poured and created Rearden Metal:

“There was a moment of silence. Then Philip said, ‘Well, that’s nice’” (p41).

Christ, Phil. Why don’t you just kick him in the ghoulies while you’re at it, huh? (Although it remind me of this. Hee.)

·         The whole night was not what Rearden expected at all, which someone makes it that much worse. Obviously, these aren’t new behaviors suddenly learned by his family. Obviously, they’ve been doing this for years, and they’ve shaped him into this little ball of helpless frustration that he can’t even vent, because then the nibblers will pounce. And yet, on his way home, he actually feels “certain that every living being wished him well tonight” (p37). We already know this to be untrue, as passengers on a train passing by Rearden Steel, people who don’t even know him or what he’s accomplished, are composing the terrible things they’ll say about him and his ‘ego’ at the next chance they get. But to have that feeling and then walk into that pit of starving lions? Sure, he seems to realize the truth of the situation even before he walks into it, but he walks into it all the same.

·         Finally, there are two very basic ideas about science and progress poised against one another here. The first is from the beginning, in the description of Rearden Metal being poured:

“Two hundred tons of metal which was to be harder than steel, running liquid at a temperature of four thousand degrees, had the power to annihilate every wall of the structure and every one of the men who worked by the stream. But every inch of its course, every pound of its pressure and the content of every molecule within it, were controlled and made by a conscious intention that had worked upon it for ten years” (p34).

‘Why does man do anything?’ Why the fuck not? The above passage is the best and happiest answer to that question and just a prettier rewrite of that shorter answer. Because what else are we going to do? Progress. Science. Physics. Men in white coats figuring shit out. And doing it not because it’ll help everybody – at least not completely. Maybe that’s in there. Maybe that’s a percentage. But it’s also part quest for knowledge, part domination of a world that was once scary, and part being fucking awesome and making sure everyone knows it.

As an aside, I’ve never agreed with people who think knowing the science behind something takes the amazing out of it, or the people who think science is just out to defraud religion. First off, science is beautiful. Second off, everything we are surrounded by, everything we are, is actually made up of tinier and tinier stuff until the tiniest stuff can hardly be seen by a microscope, and that’s not amazing? Or the fact that we know that now? That’s not amazing?! Dark matter, gravitational laws, hurricanes, evolution…fucking evolution. Is that not the craziest thing you have ever heard? How is that not the most amazing answer to ‘where did we come from?’ And even more amazing is that we understand things like this now. That people make their livings breaking these mysteries, and creating new things. Science rules, and it rules so hard I am sometimes very disappointed in myself that I can’t understand more of it unless it’s broken down into very simple terms on the Discovery Channel (“Now, pretend that the universe is this orange…”)

·         Now, our other science quote from this chapter:

“Larkin shrugged sadly.  ‘Why ask useless questions? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is John Galt?’” (p 45).

In order: average of 4267 meters; the exosphere ends around 600 miles up; fuck you, Paul. Now, I know you said useless and not unanswerable, but only someone who has no understanding of what the hell we have been doing as a species since we climbed down from trees would call questions like those ‘useless.’ I take back my assessment of Paul. Anyone who doesn’t understand the very basis of science is the most poisonous asp in all the animal kingdom.


All Atlas Shrugged

Night of January 16th

Book Cover: The faces of two women, probably Karen Andre and Nancy Lee Faulkner, with a city street between them. Both women look like they each downed a handful of Xanax.

Author: Ayn Rand. Do you think Ayn Rand liked The Muppet Show? Because I think a segment where Rand sings a song about Objectivism with, like, Sweetums and Sam the Eagle would have been amazing. Oh, and you know what else? Ayn Rand on Sesame Street, teaching kids that sharing is okay, but as long as you get however many cookies you want first. I think she’d love the Cookie Monster.

COOKIE MONSTER WILL SHARE COOKIES WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER

Category: Courtroom Drama, American Drama, MURDER

Why I Read It: I’m still in the middle of Rand Land, and I decided to go to the theater.

Reading Time Period: December 12 and December 13, 2010

Book Printing and Condition: Printed in 1968 by Signet. Old but in very strong condition.

Where I bought it: Phoenix, for $2.49.

Thoughts: Short little thoughts for a short little play, which is nice given the massive project I’ve taken on with Atlas Shrugged and I will be starting We the Living next. And it’s almost just your basic, courtroom drama. Lots of ‘We objects!’ and people screaming at each other and dramatic revelations and a damned Perry Mason moment (“I did it! Mwuhahaha!”) What makes it Ayn Rand is the fact that really, you as the audience decide if the defendant guilty based on whether or not you agree with Objectivism. It’s like a precursor to the trials of Howard Roark.

The end is set up for both verdicts from the volunteer jury, although there isn’t much after the ending. I would have voted Not Guilty, not so much because I agree with objectivism (not that I don’t, exactly, or do, exactly. It’s complicated) but because in the end when you’re on a jury it’s all about proving someone guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and whatever else was going on here, there was PLENTY of reasonable doubt. Actually, I’m pretty sure Whitfield DID kill him, because, frankly, what an ass.

Atlas Shrugged: 20-32

Pages 20-32

·         Meet Dagny Taggart! First off, I’m not the kind to automatically cast Hollywood actors for parts in my head as I’m reading. I did it for both Patient Zero and The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry, because to me those books read like movie scripts, but I did that consciously, too. “I wonder who’s going to play this guy when they inevitably get this to Hollywood?” When I’m just reading things I create people in my head, but they’re vague and undefined, and it’s not until someone disagrees with my version of a character that I realize I had a version of the character at all. That said, Dagny Taggart has always been Angelina Jolie in my head. Always. And I am just finding out NOW that not only has the Atlas Shrugged movie clawed its way out of development hell, it’s already in post-production. I’ll talk about the movie separate from the book, but this Taylor Schilling person is NOT my Dagny Taggart.

ANYWAY, getting back to some semblance of the point. Which was…oh. Dagny Taggart. First off, girlfriend works hard for the money. For her fellow man? No. For the money. She is trying to keep Taggart Transcontinental from the spectacular crash and burn it is currently heading for, and she quite frankly doesn’t give a shit what she has to do for it. Now, in our world, that would make her the antagonist in an Erin Brokovich type movie, but here, in what I’ve decided to call the Atlasverse, that makes her our hero, because all it means is while everybody else is waffling about trying to avoid making decisions (I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of facepalm that must happen with people in the service industry there) Dagny is making hard line decisions and getting things done. The Rio Norte line is crap? We’re going to fix it! Associated Steel still hasn’t given us our steel? Fuck ‘em! We’re going to Rearden! And further-fucking-more, we’re using their new Rearden Metal! I don’t need anyone’s opinions on it! I’ve looked at the facts, and the facts say you can suck it. Oh! Look at this! They also say the board can suck it, too! Oh, hold on, one more thing, it’s kind of in tiny print down here at the bottom…yeah, I can read it now…neener neener neener.

All of this, obviously, is in stark contrast to her brother, James. James doesn’t want to leave Orren Boyle (we haven’t even met him and I know he’s shaped like a Weeble), he doesn’t want to use Rearden Metal simply because nobody else has ever tried Rearden Metal, which, by the way, is exactly why everyone else is staying away from Rearden Metal, and he straight up hates Henry Rearden, which is our cue to know that we should like him. And why doesn’t he like him? Dagny’s got some ideas, but…

“If she were insane, thought Dagny, she would conclude that her brother hated to deal with Rearden because Rearden did his job with superlative efficiency; but she would not conclude it, because she thought that such a feeling was not within the humanly possible” (p26).

Oh, Dagny. You’ve lived with the man your whole life and you can’t get a bead on him? In the end, James agrees to the whole thing as long as Dagny takes full responsibility. James also accuses Dagny of being unfeeling and heartless because of the way she deals with other companies, looking at the money instead of the people, but of course Dagny feels everything, it’s just that she’s not a blithering idiot like apparently almost every other human being on the planet.

Dagny Taggart’s official title, by the way, is Vice President in Charge of Operations, but it seems like everybody who knows anything about the company knows that she’s really the one who keeps the company going. ‘Dagny’ means ‘new day’ and ‘Taggart’ is still ‘son of the priest.’

·         While we do not meet him, we learn about a composer named Richard Halley, Richard meaning ‘powerful leader’ and Halley perhaps most importantly being the name of a well-known comet. He is a favorite of Dagny, and it’s noted that he writes “a clear, complex melody – at a time when no one wrote melody any longer…” (p20). It’s kind of funny to think that no one writes melody anymore, and I think its following with the entire theme of the Atlasverse. A melody is something sung or played by one sound. A harmony includes many sounds working together. It’s not explicitly stated but I imagine there aren’t too many solos in music in the Atlasverse (“Should I do this solo in C or in A?” “I don’t know. Why don’t we vote on it?”).

There’s also something weird going on with Halley. Dagny hears a brakeman whistling a piece she recognizes as Halley’s but doesn’t recognize the particular tune. The brakeman informs her it’s from Halley’s Fifth Concerto, except as far as anyone knows Halley only wrote four, and no one’s heard from Halley in years. Clearly, Halley is alive somewhere and still composing and just not sharing anymore, which sounds like it makes sense to me. If Dagny Taggart loves the music of Richard Halley it’s a good bet everyone else hates him like they hate food shopping (“Should I get low fat ice cream or sugar free ice cream? I don’t know. There’s no one to ask. Damn it, I’m going to be here all day…”).

·         We also get more information on Henry Rearden. While I’ll hold off on the GUSHING AND UTTER LOVE I remember having from when I read this in high school for the man, I will say that ‘Henry’ means ‘home ruler’ and ‘Rearden’ means ‘bard or minstrel.’ Also, as mentioned above, he spent ten years creating Rearden Metal, which no one wants to use because no one else has ever used it, thus there are no opinions on it and no one to tell them if it’s good or not. It’s the ice cream thing all over again.

·         Ayn Rand also uses the chapter to show that the clusterfuck of nondecision isn’t just happening in New York City. We were given hints in the last part, obviously, that things were not right all over, based on the Rio Norte line all the way in the American Southwest being about as useful to trains as a pair of dolphins, but we get a direct view into it from Dagny, as she travels from the Rio Norte line back to New York City. There is only one train left worth its salt, and that’s the Taggart Comet (on which Taggart is listening to Halley, oh, Rand, I see wat u did thar). And then it gets sidelined because of a red light, and then this happens:

“The conductor spoke up. ‘I don’t think we had any business being sent off on a siding, that switch wasn’t working right, and this thing’s not working at all.’ He jerked his head up at the red light. ‘I don’t think the signal’s going to change. I think it’s busted.’

‘Then what are you doing?’

‘Waiting for it to change’” (p22)

Boyfriend might as well be waiting for Godot, but dammit, he isn’t paid to go against a red light! The whole thing reads like some low-rent, depressing version of Abbot and Costello, and once again, the conductor and the engineer only agree to go against the CLEARLY BROKEN red once Dagny says she’ll take responsibility if anything goes wrong.

·         So, we know that what we’ve seen here and in New York City is representative of what is happening across the entire country. And we begin to understand that it’s happening throughout the world as Dagny and James discuss the fact that they’re going to lose a line in Mexico once Mexico ‘nationalizes’ it. I love the way Rand has introduced the world to the reader. It’s done slowly, and in pieces, so the reader can keep up, but there’s no hand holding and there’s no explicit explanation of how it happened or how it’s different. You’re given pieces and left to fill in the rest, which shows remarkable trust in the reader.

·         The best indication we get of the attitudes and worldviews that are powering the Atlasverse comes from (surprise!) James:

“That’s an impractical attitude. Selfish greed for profit is a thing of the past. It has been generally conceded that the interests of society as a whole must always be placed first in any business undertaking which-” (p29).

Most important, of course, is that we’re seeing the same themes here that were pushed by Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead, that people must live for everyone else but themselves. But not to be missed is that James Taggart never says it’s what he believes in, or what any particular person believes in. It is just ‘generally conceded.’ Lots of people think it work, just like lots of people rely on steel instead of Rearden Metal and lots of people are used in a harmony.

·         The chapter ends the same way it began. “Who is John Galt?” And our tally is up to four, by the way.


All Atlas Shrugged But Sunday

Atlas Shrugged: 11-20

Why the hell am I rereading Atlas Shrugged?

The last time I read it was the summer before my senior year in high school. I wanted to get into the AP Lit class, and to do that you first had to write this quick essay sometime in the last month of your junior year. I don’t remember anything about that essay, but I passed that first test and got permission to get through the second trial: read three books over the summer, keep a journal full of your notes for each book, and write a three to five page essay for each one, all of which was to be due by, like, mid-August, I think. These three pieces were Blindess by Jose Saramago, An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

The notes I kept for Blindess and An Enemy of the People didn’t even make up half of what I took for Atlas Shrugged. I filled up over half of a three subject notebook. In the beginning of the notebook I tried to keep everything very civil and appropriate. Then I realized that if I was going to do this for the next two months and not give up, I was going to have to do it my way.

So I started swearing. Profusely. I felt like all of the notes I took were relevant to the text and incisive, but I wasn’t afraid to yell at a character, call out what I thought was going to happen next, or, in the case of getting to Galt’s speech, threaten suicide (“If this entire chapter is the speech, I am going to pound a nail into my forehead with a sneaker.”). I turned in the notebooks, along with my paper, a couple of days before the due date, and found out before school started that I had passed and I was going to get into the class.

The teacher was Mr. McCallum, a gangly, bespectacled man who was too good for my crappy high school. On the first day of school he welcomed us to the class, congratulated us for making it in, and brought up our summer assignments.

“Your papers were excellent, and your notebooks were…amusing…which one of you is Shannon?”

I raised my hand quickly. I wasn’t afraid he was going to be mad – he’d already accepted me into the class. He couldn’t kick me out now. And it’s funny how when something happens you think you’ll remember every detail for the rest of your life, but I already can’t remember exactly what he did after that, only that it was an acknowledgement that it was going to be a weird year.

So, I’ve already had a months long relationship with this book, why reread it? Especially since I have a long list of unread books in front of me, and Atlas Shrugged isn’t exactly something you can skim through over a meal.

First, it’s been six years since I last read it, and I feel like my perspectives have changed a lot since then. I spent four years in college to get an English: Creative Writing degree. I feel like I come at books a lot differently than I did in high school, both in the way I look at them as a reader and they way I look at them as a writer.

Second, I had kind of an attitude with Ayn Rand and the characters of this book the first time I read it. I’d like to find out if that attitude holds, or if I was just being a snotty teenager.

And finally, I am currently hanging out in Rand Land on the Road to Finnegan’s Wake, and not reading Atlas Shrugged while in Rand Land is like going everywhere except the Eiffel Tower while in Paris.

I’m reading Atlas Shrugged while I go through the other Ayn Rand books I have to hopefully speed things along a little, but seeing as how I’ve written around fifteen hundred words just for the first ten pages, I might be reading this for a while. For now I plan to be this in-depth with my notes, because Atlas Shrugged is a long, heavy, and dense book, ‘dense’ both in the sense that the pages are about as thin Kate Moss (cheap shot!) and the words are printed to be about the size of dust mites, and in the sense that there is about half a million things going on in this book at any given moment.

I’ll be breaking it down to short sections like these because holy shit this thing is eleven hundred pages long. If I tried to do just one write up on it at the end I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Also, while I want to do a small section a day, next month I go back to school to get a second degree, so I can’t guarantee that schedule.

So, with that, we’ll quit inching out way into the cold lake water and dive in.

Pages 11-20

·         And we’re off with a bang! “Who is John Galt,” possibly the most annoying question on the face of the planet and a perfect start to the story. I might as well keep a tally on how many times the question “Who is John Galt?” gets asked in this thing, so we can start the tally off at one.

·         One of the things I found out when I read this back in high school is that the name ‘Galt’ means ‘high ground,’ which indicates to ME, anyway, that Ayn Rand is one of those writers who picks names with a purpose, rather than just opening up the phone book at random. ‘John,’ means ‘God’s grace,’ but it’s also one of the most popular boy’s names in the English language, so I imagine it was picked to give Mr. Galt an everyman feel.

·         Eddie Willers. By the end of this section we know three things about Eddie: one, he is one of the novel’s good guys; two, he is clearly unhappy with the way most everything is going; and three, he is in love with Dagny Taggart. Yeah, we haven’t even met Dagny yet, nor gotten her name. She is just the unnamed sister to James Taggart, both of whom Eddie grew up with. But between the half baked memory of talking to ‘her’ from his childhood to the way James gets all moody when Eddie brings her up, it’s fairly obvious boyfriend is crushing hardcore.

·         Also, Eddie is short for Edwin (I totally cheated on this one and looked it up on Wikipedia because Eddie is short for, like, six different things). ‘Edwin’ supposedly means ‘friend of riches,’ which I’d say is apt. ‘Willers’ is a sort of common surname that points to him being English and German, but if you fudge it a bit and decide it’s some form of ‘William,’ you get ‘determined guardian.’ I honestly don’t remember much of Eddie’s role, so we’ll wait and see what happens on that one.

·         Ayn Rand Nerd Alert! “It’s the twilight, he thought; I hate the twilight.” I KNEW she’d hate that shit.

·         Rand then does a superb job of showing the readers just how much we’re NOT in our world for the following events:

“The clouds and the shafts of skyscrapers against them were turning brown, like an old painting in oil, the color of a fading masterpiece. Long streaks of grime ran from under the pinnacles down the slender, soot-eaten walls. High on the side of a tower there was a crack in the shape of a motionless lightning, the length of ten stories. A jagged object cut the sky above the roofs; it was half a spire, still holding the glow of a sunset; the gold leaf had long since peeled off the other half. The glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire; not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop.

No, thought Eddie Willers, there was nothing disturbing in the sight of the city. It looked as it had always looked” (p12).

The emphasis up there is mine, because despite the fact that I still think Rand isn’t entirely graced in subtlety and nuance, she kills it here. A quick description of New York City that sounds more like Pripyat than any American city ever, and a character living in it who thinks everything is just fine and dandy. Immediately you’re thrust into the world, and then immediately after that you’re thrust into that world’s way of thinking. On the same page, just to hammer it all home, we get this little gem:

“He enjoyed the sigh of a prosperous street; not more than every fourth one of the stores was out of business, its windows dark and empty.”

That’s Fifth Avenue he’s talking about. And he’s loving every minute of it. At this point, as the reader, you should be completely aware that this New York City is not our New York City, and this New York City has gone FUBAR.

·         Also, enjoy some heavy symbolism!

“The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot on the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree’s presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.

One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside – just a thing gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it” (p13).

Something Eddie took as indestructible and great has actually been rotting from the inside out, and possibly has been since before Eddie was even alive. Rand just lets you soak in it for a bit, before revealing more of Eddie’s character: despite the fact that he was just thinking about an oak tree that went all Titanic, he still has the same thoughts about the Taggart Transcontinental building: “It would always stand there, thought Eddie Willers.” Ever the optimist.

·         Meet James Taggart, President of Taggart Transcontinental. ‘James’ is another wildly popular boy’s name in English, but it also means ‘he who supplants.’ ‘Taggart’ means ‘son of the priest.’ James as a supplanter makes sense to me based off of what I remember from high school. I don’t know what to make of ‘son of the priest.’

·         And we can tell quite easily that we’re not really supposed to like James Taggart. He isn’t worried about one of his rail lines running like shit because no one can blame him, he’s allowing his company to be shrifted by a steel company because that way people will blame them for the one line running like shit, he doesn’t like an oil tycoon because he makes too much money, and he doesn’t like Eddie Willers because of Eddie’s “habit of looking straight into people’s eyes.” James Taggart is a man of the system, and while we haven’t learned much of it yet, I think we’ve learned enough to understand that it’s as broken as the Rio Norte Line.

·         Orren Boyle – “He spoke for an hour and a half and did not give me a single straight answer” (p 16). ‘Orren’ is most likely a variant of ‘Orrin’ and is a river in England. ‘Boyle’ seems to mean ‘vain pledge,’ which I think makes sense. It’s also, straight up, an ugly name. ‘Boyle’ makes me think of ‘boil’ and makes me hope we get to see Orren Boyle lanced at some point.

·         We should also pay special notice to the fact that James Taggart wants to work with a company called ‘Associated Steel,’ run by Orren Boyle, but refuses to work with ‘Rearden Steel.’ We don’t yet know the exact reason why he won’t work with Rearden, but it’s no coincidence James Taggart won’t work with a company named after a single man.

·         Ellis Wyatt, Oil Tycoon Extraordinaire. ‘Ellis’ is a form of ‘Elias’ which in turn is a form of ‘Elijah,’ which means ‘the Lord is my God,’ but perhaps more importantly was the name of a prophet in the Bible. ‘Wyatt’ means ‘war strength.’ And we know we should like Ellis Wyatt based on the fact that James Taggart doesn’t.

·         Pop Harper is quite frankly DONE with this shit.

·         And the “Who is John Galt?” Tally goes up to two!




All Atlas Shrugged, All The Time!

The Fountainhead

Book Cover: This dude on front with the glowy ball who actually reminds me a lot of those androgynous, monochromatic giants that used to stalk around the American Idol opening credits. That or a Ken doll.

Hi, I'm Bob Bland. Can I interest you in some white toast?

Author: Ayn Rand. For the record, the first name is pronounced to rhyme with ‘mine.’ But, if you go around pronouncing it ‘Ann’ everybody is still going to know who you’re talking about. That kind of unending mispronunciation is what you’re going to get when you basically make up your own name from scratch. Not that I’m judging, you move to a new country and gain new friends and want to make an entirely fresh start, its fine to get a little frisky with the baby naming books. I’m just saying if you decide to spell your name ‘U-N-I-Q-U-E’ but pronounce it ‘Brittany’ you’re going to run into a lot of problems.

And actually, Rand’s name can function as a great test to determine what kind of person you’re trying to have a literary conversation with. For instance:

You: “Blah blah [Ann] Rand blah blah blah…”

Other Person: “Blah blah blah…”

Here, Other Person makes no notice of mispronunciation of author’s name. If Other Person is known to have a working knowledge of Rand’s works and has certainly been around the name enough to know better, we can conclude that Other Person believes there are more important topics about the woman than her name and doesn’t feel it necessary to correct the pronunciation. Continue chatting, and perhaps attempt to initiate a high five on the mispronunciation you just shared.

You: “Blah blah [Ann] Rand blah blah blah…”

Other Person: “Blah blah [Ayn] Rand blah blah blah…”

Here, Other Person does not outright correct the name, but says the correct pronunciation in their volley of the conversation. Other Person may just be following up naturally on your statement, believes that correct pronunciation of Rand’s first name is crucial and respectful, or just wants to make sure you know that s/he knows the correct pronunciation. Whichever the case, the correct pronunciation was slipped in coolly and without further emphasis, so Other Person is probably not overly concerned with the name and more concerned with letting the conversation continue its natural course. Continue with the conversation, and use only Rand’s last name for the remainder of the conversation. Snacks might also help the situation.

You: “Blah blah [Ann] Ra-”

Other Person: ACTUALLY, IT’S PRONOUNCED [AYN]

Other Person has overridden you before you could even finish saying the author’s name, with an increase in decibel levels that made you physically jump, and also probably a tone that indicates that his/her estimation of your intelligence level just bottomed out somewhere around ‘Jack Russell terrier after a minor car accident.’ Other Person is NOT interested in a quality conversation about literature. Other Person only wants to make sure that as many people as possible know that Other Person is VERY SMART and KNOWS A LOT ABOUT LITERATURE AND ART AND MAYBE PHILOSOPHY. It is very important that you DO NOT CONTINUE TO ENGAGE. Lower your eyes, hide your teeth, and make no sudden movements as you back away from Other Person. If you have snacks, toss in opposite direction as a distraction.

Seriously, though, it's Ayn. She will cut you.

Category: American Literature, 20^th century literature, and I’m going to add speculative fiction onto this, too. There are not a whole lot of science fiction elements in here, not like Atlas Shrugged, but I think it’s safe to say that the piece does not take place in our universe merely as New York City gets shuffled around with key skyscrapers missing and new ones going up.

Why I Read It: The Fountainhead marks the first step on The Road to Finnegan’s Wake. My sister visited me in Cheyenne last May and I took her over to Phoenix Used Books downtown. We were only supposed to be in there for about twenty minutes because we were meeting someone else for dinner. We ended up being late because Phoenix is the best place in town and it’s easy to forget things like ‘time’ and ‘other people’ exist when you’re staring down row after row of books you’ve never read at really affordable prices. My sister ended up buying me The Fountainhead for…some reason. Actually, that part is slipping my mind. But it turns out the owner is a huge Ayn Rand fan, so while originally The Fountainhead was just another stop on the Road, it’s now become the port of entry to Rand Land.

Reading Time Period: August 14, 2010 to October 18, 2010. Easily the longest time period it’s taken me to read a single book all year. Except, of course, for Les Miserables, but I was reading other things at the same time. The problem was that, in the past two months, I have taken a two week trip to Ireland, taught everyone else at my job how to do my job so I could leave said job, left said job, drove the two thousand miles from Cheyenne to Oviedo, set up my apartment, and started a job search which became a wild decision to go back to school and get a second degree. I’ve been busy, is what I’m saying, and anyway, The Fountainhead isn’t exactly something you can scream through.

Book Printing and Condition: Printed in 1993 by Signet. It’s got some water damage around the edges and the back cover is torn just an eensy little bit, otherwise in solid condition.

Where I bought it: The Phoenix, for $2.49.

Thoughts: We’re going to have to break this up:

Ayn Rand and Kaboomski

I used to think Ayn Rand sucked at subtlety. This was back when I read Atlas Shrugged in high school, and, like every other high school kid currently or ever alive, I thought I knew everything. And, really, her stuff reads about as subtle, as, oh, how long has it been since someone picked on Michael Bay on the internet? Oh, whatever, he deserves it. Her stuff reads about as subtle as a Michael Bay movie. Most of the plots points are easily predictable and her characters don’t so much have traits and layers as they do catchphrases. If Ayn Rand wrote a sitcom, it would star Urkel and Screech, and the guy from Good Times who kept saying “Dinomite!” If she wrote movie reviews, they would be titled things like “Darth Vader is Luke’s Dad” and “HOLY SHIT HE WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME.” If she wrote a speech, it would be sixty pages long and just be a reiteration of everything that already happened in the thousand pages before it (oh, wait…).

Ayn Rand is not subtle, is my point.

But I’ve since changed my view point on why. It’s not that Ayn Rand is not good at being subtle. It’s just that she has absolutely no use for subtlety and doesn’t even try. I imagine the Rand family crest is a knight giving the finger to an onion. It’s not that she can’t write layered characters and scatter tiny clues so that after a while the reader goes ‘oh, shit,’ and everything clicks and understands what the writer is trying to say without ever saying it. It’s just that Ayn Rand does not have time for that bullshit.

"I have cigarettes to smoke, I just do not have time for your bullshit right now."

Ayn Rand has a MISSION. A WORD. A THESIS that she wants to get out to the public, and she can’t be just dropping hints and hoping that people understand. That is why her books are the equivalent of a pimp slap. Because, God dammit, you are going to get the message or she will NOT be responsible for what she does next.

Howard Roark

P96 – I am seconds away from writing Mrs. Shannon Roark all over my Trapper Keeper.

I really don’t want to be the guy comparing Ayn Rand and Fucking Stephenie Meyer, so how about I’m the guy contrasting the two?

It’s no secret that Twilight and the subsequent sequels are just God awful. And I don’t think it’s any secret at this point that the whole set of books are just Fucking Stephenie Meyer’s fantasy put down onto paper without any thought towards characterization, growth, or, well, sanity. Edward Cullen is literally the man of Fucking Stephenie Meyer’s dreams, someone she wishes she could have steamy staring contests with in meadows and then marry and have sparkly, bizarre vampire sex with.

Howard Roark is the man of Ayn Rand’s dreams. Both women have written books about a man they idolize. The similarities stop there.

Fucking Stephenie Meyer took the man of her dreams and wrote him into what amounts to a bodice ripper.

Ayn Rand took the man of her dreams and made him save himself, his friends, and attempt to save the world. And because I’d very much like to stop talking about Fucking Stephenie Meyer now, we’re going to focus on Howard Roark.

Because, to Ayn Rand, Howard Roark isn’t just an imaginary lay. Howard Roark is the man that all men – all people, really – should aspire to be. He’s not so much the man of her dreams, but the man of her ideals. He, like John Galt, is the realization of her philosophy. He’s handsome but kind of weird looking, he’s intensely independent and emotionally cut off to the point where Asberger’s starts looking like a quality suggestion. Oh, and when we first meet him he’s naked. So, there’s that.

Roark is a man who doesn’t compromise, because even compromise is at fatal sin (poor Wynand). Everything he does must be done by him, and him alone, because man must stand and think for himself and fuck everyone else who tries to change him. Roark is also completely unafraid to be taken down a peg or two hundred on account of his stubbornness. He just keeps plugging away, taking the hits, happy because at least he’s not bowing down to every other opinion like everyone else seems to be doing.

And bringing it right back around, I hate Edward Cullen because he’s a terrible human being. I fell in love with Howard Roark because besides the fact that I’m 74% sure that he’s a robot (I AM HOWARD-BOT. I AM PROGRAMMED TO BUILD. I DO NOT COMPREHEND WHAT YOU CALL EMOTIONS) he stands and fights for great things. But this does lead me to…

Ayn Rand and Collaboration

To Ayn Rand, there is nothing worse in the world than collaboration. If you ask people to join together to work on something, then, according to her, everyone is just going to make sure everyone else is happy and the meeting is just going to turn into a tickle fight and you’re going to end up with something slipshod and terrible and most likely bland and stupid. And while I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, I also don’t think that collaboration is something to be avoided at all costs.

Doing his own thing worked out for Howard because he was a genius in his field. But even in the confines of the book, would anybody want a house designed solely by Peter Keating? Isn’t that pretty much guaranteed to consist of three walls and a gun turret? And outside of the book, here in the real world, I can give you a good example of where individual control fails: George Lucas.

I’m going to assume many people already know what I’m talking about, but if you don’t happen to live on the internet or personally know any nerds, I’ll explain: when George Lucas was working on movies where other people had artistic and creative input, he created the Star Wars movies. When he was working on movies where he was the sole voice in all matters and any dissenters were taken out back and shot, he created the prequels. Haven’t seen the prequels? Lucky bastard.

So, while I agree that sometimes an individual has a vision and we all just need to let him go and do his thing (Oh, hi, Kubrick), sometimes we need to sit a guy down with a team of other people and keep him from eating his own toenails.

Gail Wynand and Compromise

P450 – Dear Mr. Gail Wynand: Marry me, you fantastic bitch. Kisses! Shannon.

Poor Gail Wynand. He’s just a dude who wanted to rule his world. But he committed a cardinal sin as far as Rand is concerned – he did it on literally everybody else’s terms, not his own. It wasn’t enough that he owned the paper and that he made a conscious decision to do what he did. His paper followed the whims of everyone, the collective consciousness that made up the city. He didn’t try to change anyone mind’s, he just listened and gave them what they want. He compromised. And that’s a death sentence for Rand, and that’s why, despite how fabulously bitchy he is, he’s essentially ruined by the end of the novel. He tries to implement his own thoughts and the readers go bananas and fuck him over. It does lead to perhaps one of my favorite parts of the whole novel, though:

“The presses stopped.”

By the end of the novel Toohey has gained control of The Banner, essentially taking over the lifeblood of Wynand. And Toohey is being shitty, like always. Except Wynand has the final ace. He’s blown the whole thing up, just to keep it from Toohey. He’s sacrificed the only that every really mattered to him to keep it from becoming the vehicle Toohey would use to drive the world. And while that’s not nearly enough to keep a bastard like Toohey down for long, and while he deserves all the bad things to happen to him, his immense “BUH?!?” reaction is hugely satisfying.

Ayn Rand and J.K. Rowling

P636 - Rand has created a completely evil character here. No shades of gray, no dissenting views. In fact, not evil. Evil.

J. K. Rowling deserves a lot more respect than she gets from certain literary circles. I’m not saying she’s a flawless writer, but she is a talented one, and dedicated, and the Harry Potter universe she wove is as intricate as it is layered. Characters grow, events are foreshadowed books in advance, and everything is closed in a concrete resolution (glaring at you, Lost). And yes, there is a lot of summing up and obvious choices made and there’s kind of a formula she follows for each book, but they did start out as kid’s books.

What she had in common with Rand is the ability to create completely evil characters. You could argue Rowling creates flat, unlayered characters because she created children’s books, but a) the Harry Potter series is one that grows up with the kids who read it, and it really stops being a kid’s series around Prisoner of Azkaban, and b) most of her characters, even the smaller ones, have subtle and well built layers. Much like Rand, it’s not that Rowling can’t write layered characters, it’s that she recognizes in certain situations it’s best if a character is flat.

And I’m not talking about Voldemort. That guy is a hot mess of emotions and trauma and headless, bleeding bunnies. A psychologist could make a career off that guy, if she didn’t get stabbed first. No, I’m talking about Dolores Umbridge.

You hate her. You hate her right now, even if you’ve never read the books and you don’t know who she is. Look at that name. Isn’t that the ugliest name? Oh, wait, you only hate her right now? Let’s see how she’s introduced:

“He thought she looked just like a large, pale toad. She was rather squat with a broad, flabby face, as little neck as Uncle Vernon, and a very wide, slack mouth. Her eyes were large, round, and slightly bulging. Even the little black velvet bow perched on top of her short curly hair put him in mind of a large fly she was about to catch on a long sticky tongue.”

Has that hate evolved into loathing yet? Do you not just want to punch this woman in the face and never, ever stop? And that’s just where Rowling starts with this woman. It is all just a goddamn sprint downhill from there. There is nothing redeeming about this woman. She is a horrible person with way more power than morals who terrorizes people while laughing this cutesy little laugh and loving the color pink and kittens and being a total bigot. And you never find out why. There is no back story on this awful woman because Rowling understood that she didn’t need back story. She was evil. Period. Done and done. By the time you finally get the entire picture of this woman, your loathing has somehow evolved into a vendetta where even your great grandmother hated her.

Rand creates the same type of character with Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. Again, do you not just hate this guy already? His last name sounds like someone spitting, his first name is pretentious and his middle name is as stupid as his stupid face. He is Rand’s boogeyman, the thing that hid in her closet as a child and stole all her smokes as an adult.

Whether he actually believes that people are interchangeable, that no one is better than anyone else, and that a life should only be lived in service to everyone else is moot. Ellsworth sells that shit like it’s a Frisbee and it’s currently 1954, because that’s how he gains and stays in power. And, just like Umbridge, the worst part about it is he’s not upfront about it. He pretends that he’s doing what’s best for the people while really he’s just forwarding his own agenda. He even pimps out his own niece in the process. Ellsworth Toohey is a character that is tailor made to boil blood.

Rand actually does give Toohey back story, and almost seems to give us a reason as to the ‘why’ of Toohey in the form of Johnny Stokes, but really, the guy was just born a sociopath. He’s a high functioning nutbar with just enough charisma to control whatever room he’s in, and I’ve never wanted a character to be a real person more, because all I want to do is hit him in the face with a seven iron.

Steven Mallory is the Most Badass Character Ever.

Ever. Because here we have a man who has his priorities straight. Who knows what’s important in life. Who starts off his time in the book by taking a shot at Ellsworth Toohey, which is already hardcore. But then, Steven Mallory describes the one thing in the world that scares him:

"Probably. But not quite. I'm not afraid any more. But I know that the terror exists. I know the kind of terror it is. You can't conceive of that kind. Listen, what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me - it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice - your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you'd become the vessel of absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something close, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. I don't think I'm a coward, but I'm afraid of it. And that's all I know - only that it exists. I don't know its purpose, I don't know its nature."

Romero, eat your fucking heart out.

Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968. Twenty-five years before that, Steven Mallory is a man afraid of zombies. Talk about being ahead of the curve.

And this is not just some random speech. These zombies are exactly what Ellsworth Toohey turns people into it. It’s what he turned his own niece into, Katie, a nice girl in the beginning who’s only real problem was that she was relying on Peter Keating, Sad Sack Extraordinaire, to save her from the world her uncle was building. And the last we see of Katie, she’s mindlessly chatting away about how her work is important and how much better she is now that she’s thinking about other people and this guy says that and that guy says this and you really shouldn’t drink coffee, Peter, Americans drink too much coffee, everyone knows that. Mallory’s Zombie, in the flesh.

Rand’s best example of Mallory’s Zombie, though, is cleverly written. At a meeting, with Tooehy present, natch, everyone is talking, but they might as well just be humming with fingers in their ears.

‘“Lois Cook said…”

“Ike – what’s his name again – says…”

“Jules Fougler said…”

“Lancelot Clokey said…”

“Gordon Prescott said…”’

Everybody repeats what they have heard other people say, people who probably heard it from somebody else. And in the entire section Rand does not signify who is talking. Because it doesn’t matter. Everybody is interchangeable. Well, almost everybody.

“Ellsworth Toohey said nothing.”

Because he doesn’t have to. This is his vision, self sustaining and flowering like he never believed possible. Mallory’s Zombies on the rampage.

Ayn Rand Was a Total Nerd

She writes about zombies. Even she’d be pissed at George Lucas. And she’s definitely a Dr. Who fan:

"…it gave Scarret a funny feeling of apprehension, like the sight of a tiny crack in a solid wall; the crack could not possibly endanger the wall - except that it had no business being there." P414

A crack in the wall that has no business being there? Where have I heard that one before?

Ayn Rand and Yakov Smirnoff

Has anyone else imagined what would happen if you locked these two in a room with each other? Because I’m pretty Yakov would say something like, “In Soviet Russian, objectivism defines you!” And then Ayn Rand would pin him to the table with her elbow in his throat and put out her cigarette in his eye.