atlas shrugged book review

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn rand , leonard peikoff.

1168 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 1957

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Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’: What the critics had to say in 1957

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“ There are two sides to every issue: One side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. ” — Ayn Rand’s hero John Galt speaking in “Atlas Shrugged”

Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” has polarized opinion for more than 50 years. Its fans — including, until recently, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan — applaud the book’s celebration of rugged individualism and no-holds-barred capitalism. Its critics dismiss it as heartless, simplistic and elitist.

In the novel, many of the nation’s most brilliant and innovative entrepreneurs and business leaders have disappeared, leaving the nation in chaos. It turns out they have all departed for “Galt’s Gulch,” a secret and parallel society formed to show an increasingly government-dominated America how much it needs pure capitalism and the men and women who drive it.

In a 2005 speech, Ryan cited Ayn Rand as a key reason he went into politics. He said that he had made “Atlas Shrugged” required reading for his staff, and that he still liked to check his “premises” against passages from the book to be sure “that what I’m believing and doing and advancing are square with the key principles of individualism.” Lately, because Rand didn’t believe in God and because “Atlas Shrugged” celebrates an adulterous relationship between two of its main characters, Ryan has distanced himself from his former remarks, telling the National Review recently, “I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy.” These days, he said in the interview, he favors Thomas Aquinas over Rand.

But even with all the controversy about the message of “Atlas Shrugged,” there’s been little discussion of its literary merits. Is it a great book? Here’s what the critics had to say at the time of its publication in fall 1957.

Robert R. Kirsch, Los Angeles Times:

It is probably the worst piece of large fiction written since Miss Rand’s equally weighty “The Fountainhead.” Miss Rand writes in the breathless hyperbole of soap opera. Her characters are of billboard size; her situations incredible and illogical; her story is feverishly imaginative. It would be hard to find such a display of grotesque eccentricity outside an asylum.

Granville Hicks, New York Times

Not in any literary sense a serious novel, it is an earnest one, belligerent and unremitting in its earnestness. It howls in the reader’s ear and beats him about the head in order to secure his attention, and then, when it has him subdued, harangues him for page upon page. It has only two moods, the melodramatic and the didactic, and in both it knows no bounds.

Edward Wagenknecht, Chicago Daily Tribune

There is much good sense in this book and it deserves more careful consideration than it is likely to get. For all that, Miss Rand is not quite the Moses to lead us out of the wilderness…. The worst thing in her book is her denunciation of what she calls mysticism, her ideas of which seem derived from Hitler rather than Meister Eckhardt or Rufus Jones. For her a mystic is a parasite in spirit and in matter, “a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with the minds of others.” No, Miss Rand, a mystic is a man who insists upon using those areas of his mind which you block off.

Helen Beal Woodward, Saturday Review

Miss Rand … throws away her considerable gifts for writing by fixing her reader with a glittering eye and remorselessly impressing upon him her convictions. These range from a hatred of Robin Hood as “the most immoral and the most contemptible” of all human symbols to a belief in a kind of chrome-plated laissez faire. Much of it is persuasive…. But Miss Rand is undone by her prolixity and her incontinence. She sets up one of the finest assortments of straw men ever demolished in print, and she cannot refrain from making her points over and over…. Altogether this is a strange, overwrought book.

Gigantic, relentless, often fantastic, this book is definitely not one to be swallowed whole. Throughout its 1,168 pages, Miss Rand never cracks a smile. Conversations deteriorate into monologues as one character after another laboriously declaims his set of values. One speech, the core of the book, spreads across 60 closely written pages. Yet once the reader enters this stark, strange world, he will likely stay with it, borne along by its story and its eloquent flow of ideas.

Paul Jordan-Smith, Los Angeles Times

A neighbor of mine who occasionally reviews books for an eastern magazine dropped in and, seeing the massive volume on my desk, asked what I thought of it. “Challenging and readable and quick with suspense,” I replied…. “a book every businessman should hug to his breast, and the first novel I recall to glorify the dollar mark and the virtue in profit….” But how the shabby little left-wingers are going to hate it!

Donald Malcolm, the New Yorker

Apparently Miss Rand set out to write a novel of social prophecy, something like “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” But while Orwell based his predictions upon the nature of the police state, the lady who gave us “The Fountainhead” has based hers upon — well, it is hard to say. Miss Rand’s villains resemble no one I have ever encountered, and I finally decided to call them “liberals,” chiefly because I can’t imagine whom else she might have in mind. In her vision of the future, then, the liberals have brought the world to a sorry plight. America is plunged into a catastrophic depression, caused by the government’s infernal meddling with the economy, and most of the other nations of the world have become People’s States, whose inhabitants are actually grubbing up roots to keep themselves alive. The last sparks of industrial competence are concentrated in the minds of two dozen — at most — American businessmen, who manage to hold the globe aloft in spite of the best efforts of governments everywhere to bring it down.

Hedda Hopper, in her syndicated column

Ayn Rand, although born in Europe is one of the finest American citizens I know. She worked with John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Adolphe Menjou, Lela Rogers, Charles Coburn and a bunch of us when we formed the Motion Picture Alliance anti-commie group. She’s author of “The Fountainhead,” and has written a blockbuster of a book titled “Atlas Shrugged.” It runs 1,168 pages, and you won’t want to miss one word. I couldn’t put it down, neither will you be able to once you’ve started reading. You’ll say it can’t happen here — but it’s happening every day and we sit still while watching our rights as humans being whittled away.

Whittaker Chambers, National Review

“Atlas Shrugged” can be called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers inside the tent, and as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The Message is the thing. It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism. Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system, one, intellectually, at about the stage of the oxcart, though without mastering the principle of the wheel. Like any consistent materialism, this one begins by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc. etc. (This book’s aggressive atheism and rather unbuttoned “higher morality,” which chiefly outrage some readers, are, in fact, secondary ripples, and result inevitably from its underpinning premises.) Thus, Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world…. 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.

Cary Schneider is library director at The Times. Sue Horton is Op-Ed editor.

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Sue Horton returned to the Los Angeles Times as Op-Ed and Sunday Opinion editor in December 2018, then moved to a senior editor role before leaving the newsroom in July 2021. For four years before that, she was a Top News editor and West Coast bureau chief at Reuters. She held a variety of editing jobs at the Los Angeles Times between 2001 and 2014, including Op-Ed and Sunday Opinion editor and deputy California editor. Before her first stint at The Times, she was editor-in-chief of the L.A. Weekly for six years. Prior to that, she was a journalism professor at the University of Southern California. Horton started her journalism career working for Community Information Project, an investigative reporting nonprofit that did stories on contract with public television, “60 Minutes,” and a variety of newspapers and magazines. She is the author of a nonfiction book, “The Billionaire Boys Club,” which was the basis for an NBC miniseries. Horton has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Redlands and a master’s in journalism from USC.

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An Insane Read: Atlas Shrugged Book Review by Ayn Rand

September 4, 2018 By Kaisar

What Is Atlas Shrugged?

It is your classic dystopian novel (my favorite genre, if you haven’t caught on by all my other reviews). It highlights a well-functioning, self-sufficient country (USA) that later turns into a collectivist hellhole. IE: dystopia.

It follows the story of Dagny Taggart, as she struggles against “looters” (socialists) that seek to control all businesses and take all of their output in the name of the public good.

As the story progresses, more and more of the prime businessmen and women that created the well-functioning society just give up. In essence, they stop working altogether in protest against the looting.

As the strike continues to escalate, more and more of society collapses. Thus creating the dystopian mess that Ayn Rand depicts so vividly in Atlas Shrugged.

Who Is Ayn Rand?

Ayn Rand is a Russian/American author and philosopher that lived through collectivism in the Russian era.

She was a staunch proponent of individualism. So much so, she created the philosophical system known as “Objectivism”. This system purports that reality exists independently of consciousness, that we (humans) have direct contact with reality through logic. In addition, it holds that the highest moral purpose in life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness, within the confines of laissez-faire capitalism. While I do not agree with this mindset, it is still a unique book and a great read.

She also wrote Anthem, which I reviewed here: Anthem by Ayn Rand .

Why Is Atlas Shrugged Such An Interesting Read?

You’ll fall in love with the characters of this book. I rarely relate or care about people in novels, but Atlas Shrugged changed that. Between Dagny, Hank Rearden, Lillian, Eddie, and my personal favorite (Ragnar Danneskjold), there is a certain element of character development that seems sorely lacking compared to most other similar novels.

Ayn Rand wrote the novel in a common style writing, so every piece is highly readable. Which is essential, considering it is 1168 pages long. But don’t let the length scare you, just consider it a book to read for a little here and there. Before you know it, you’ll be hooked and wanting to power through, regardless of page count.

It’s also a novel that is still relevant today. It is particularly relevant with regard to the philosophical debate about collectivism that is present in the Western world. Everything in this book revolves around things such as freedom of speech (and thought), private property , private enterprise, entrepreneurship, and government regulatory oversight.

Then within this broad theme, we have many tidbits of spiritual reflection and even romantic interest.

In short, Atlas Shrugged contains a bit of everything. Moreover, when you figure out why “Atlas Shrugged”, you’ll have a little mind-blown moment from the unexpected twist.

Naturally, I don’t want to give any major plot points away. It would spoil the fun of the novel. But as you read through, pay close attention to the actions of Lillian. She plays background for a long time, but is one of the most interesting characters.

It is hard to imagine a more thought-provoking book that considers government structures and the collectivist nature. You can see a parallel in the modern movements of American society.

In summary, I am thrilled I tackled this mammoth of a text. It taught me a tremendous amount and has easily become one of my top three favorite books.

It’s not likely that this book will suit everyone, I get that. However, for the readers of this website, I’m positive you all would love it if you haven’t read it yet.

Also, you will never be able to look at a train or railroad track the same way again after reading this. So fair warning.

Personal Implications

Atlas Shrugged does require you to take a serious look at yourself and your actions. It is natural while reading through that you’ll contemplate yourself in the characters’ situations, and even begin to see the principles of the text in your everyday life.

It can be a bit of a “lecture” at points. And some people don’t like to be lectured or expand their thoughts outside of their bubble. This book forces that, so I get why some people (especially the socialist-minded) dislike it.

In over 1000+ pages, Ayn Rand teaches you to think with your mind, not your heart. This trait then results in actually being more caring and doing more good than thinking with just your heart.

In Ayn Rand’s perfect society, even teachers and stay at home moms were considered the “atlases” of the world. All it took were the right beliefs and the dedication to their own values to help them reach the peaks of their own happiness.

In short, if you can’t handle looking at your own imperfections and faults, don’t read it. But if you have an open mind and are willing to learn something while enjoying an outstanding storyline, grab a copy.

Atlas Shrugged Final Note on Size

A.S. is an affordable book, especially for the size. I always recommend getting a paperback or hardcover. Mass-market paperbacks are cheaper, but they are hard to read, as the book and text are small.

For a book the size of Atlas Shrugged, it’s best to go with a larger sized edition to make the reading easier.

I say this, but I actually bought the mass-market paperback because it was cheaper. So do whichever suits you.

The main key here is actually reading whichever style you buy.

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ATLAS SHRUGGED

by Ayn Rand ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 1957

One finds oneself virtually under an indefinable compulsion to keep reading once caught in the mesh of sheer story telling as Ayn Rand weaves the strands of her fantasy. With one part of reason, one tries to reject the grim horror of the portrait she draws of the final bastion of the once free world falling into a new sort of Dark Ages. The sins of the power magnates are taking their toll. In terror over the threat to their security contained in the ruthless drive of a few leaders of industry, they sell out their initiative, their imagination, their creative powers, their right to independence of thought and action to government, in exchange for imagined security of regulation and strangulation. The thinkers, the creators, the doers, the free spirits fade out of the picture; those who remain label them deserters and traitors. But a few of them, under the leadership of the freest spirits, lay the groundwork for a new social order. Their philosophy has much that will shock the conventional; their oath — "...I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine" — seems to contain a negation of the code of humanity. There seems a warped sort of approach to a materialistic touchstone. The insistence on the godlike quality of the leader is never quite carried out in the characterization. In fact, for this reader, most of the characters are unconvincing, overdrawn to represent symbols rather than people. This- for me- was true of The Fountainhead some 14 years ago. Then, too, the machinery of the story was compelling, fascinating; the philosophic content had something faintly phoney; the characters were two dimensional.... Atlas Shrugged holds a terrifying immediacy, if one can envision today's prosperity holding the seeds of tomorrow's decadence. Except in the isolated cases of unrealized potentials of invention, she has tapped few of the now-evident clues to our immediate mechanical future. One finds it difficult to gauge the time span here. The market? Curiosity will be high pressured by the promotion and publicity:- an unheard of advance to the author; a tremendous advertising appropriation; a spirited bidding for subsidiary rights; a predicted advance sale of 60,000 copies out of an initial 75,000 printing... The sheer size of the book — about 1150 pages — is a magnet for an astounding number of readers.... The story is a challenging one; the manner of the telling holds reader interest, despite the unnecessary length; there's enough of sex to provide its mead of shockers; and there is the odd allure of fantasy, a sort of science fiction appeal. And one can count, too, on a goodly number who will discuss the social philosophy with heated arguments, pro and con — plus the intellectual snob appeal of those who like to feel they've plumbed a new code of ethics. It is not a book that leaves one unscathed.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1957

ISBN: 0452011876

Page Count: 1168

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1957

LITERARY FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Ayn Rand

by Ayn Rand adapted by Charles Santino illustrated by Joe Staton

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

More by Mark Z. Danielewski

by Mark Z. Danielewski

THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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News, Notes, Talk

Read a 1957 review of Ayn Rand’s “excruciatingly awful” Atlas Shrugged .

Today is the sixty-sixth publication anniversary of Ayn Rand’s 1100-page magnum opus of unreadable doggerel libertarian science fiction, Atlas Shrugged .

Set in a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations (isn’t it always the way), it’s the story of railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, and their struggle against the “looters” who want to exploit their productivity.

Despite receiving largely negative reviews upon its release, the novel sold briskly and became a formative text for numerous conservative/libertarian ghouls  politicians and thinkers, from Glenn Beck to Ayelet Shaked, Paul Ryan to Clarence Thomas.

One prominent conservative critic of Rand and her philosophy was William F. Buckley Jr., whose National Review published this scathing review of the novel by (Communist spy turned HUAC whistleblower turned book critic) Whittaker Chambers in December of ’57.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter .

“The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could not possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do. Somebody has called it: ‘Excruciatingly awful.’ I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the ‘looters.’ These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, labor, etc., etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. ‘This,’ she is saying in effect, ‘is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.’

Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive storyknown as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures.

“…the strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged is scarcely a place for children. You speculate that, in life, children probably irk the author and may make her uneasy. How could it be otherwise when she admiringly names a banker character (by what seems to me a humorless master-stroke): Midas Mulligan? You may fool some adults; you can’t fool little boys and girls with such stuff–not for long. They may not know just what is out of line, but they stir uneasily. The Children of Darkness are caricatures, too; and they are really oozy. But at least they are caricatures of something identifiable. Their archetypes are Left-Liberals, New Dealers, Welfare Statists, One Worlders, or, at any rate, such ogreish semblances of these as may stalk the nightmares of those who think little about people as people, but tend to think a great deal in labels and effigies.

In Atlas Shrugged , all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as ‘looters.’ This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears and hates. This spares her the playguy business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.

“So the Children of Light win handily by declaring a general strike of brains, of which they have a monopoly, letting the world go, literally, to smash. In the end, they troop out of their Rocky Mountain hideaway to repossess the ruins. It is then, in the book’s last line, that a character traces in the dir, over the desolate earth, the Sign of the Dollar, in lieu of the Sign of the Cross, and in token that a suitably prostrate mankind is at last ready, for its sins, to be redeemed from the related evils of religion and social reform (the ‘mysticism of mind’ and the ‘mysticism of muscle’). That Dollar Sign is not merely provocative, though we sense a sophomoric intent to raise the pious hair on susceptible heads. More importantly, it is meant to seal the fact that mankind is ready to submit abjectly to an elite of technocrats, and their accessories, in a New Order, enlightened and instructed by Miss Rand’s ideas that the good life is one which ‘has resolved personal worth into exchange value,’ ‘has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self interest, than callous ‘cash-payment.’ The author is explicit, in fact deafening, about these prerequisites. Lest you should be in any doubt after 1,168 pages, she assures you with a final stamp of the foot in a postscript: ‘And I mean it.’

“ Atlas Shrugged can be called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers inside the tent, and as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The Message is the thing. It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism.

“Randian Man, at least in his ruling caste, has to be held ‘heroic’ in order not to be beastly. And this, of course, suits the author’s economics and the politics that must arise from them. For politics, of course, arise, though the author of Atlas Shrugged stares stonily past them, as if this book were not what, in fact, it is, essentially–a political book. And here begins mischief. Systems of philosophic materialism, so long as they merely circle outside this world’s atmosphere, matter little to most of us. The trouble is that they keep coming down to earth. It is when a system of materialist ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real life that mischief starts. In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them.

“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. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged , a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber–go!’

“…we cannot help feeling at least a sympathetic pain before the sheer labor, discipline, and patient craftsmanship that went to making this mountain of words. But the words keep shouting us down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own antidote, warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything. Nor would we, ordinarily, place much confidence in the diagnosis of a doctor who supposes that the Hippocratic Oath is a kind of curse.”

– Whittaker Chambers, The National Review , December 28, 1957

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Atlas Shrugged is absurd but strangely compelling

If recent reports are to be believed, people have started seeing parallels between our current economic meltdown and the world collapse outlined in the 1200 pages of Ayn Rand's libertarian classic Atlas Shrugged. Rand's fans proclaim her a prophet - the hero whose teachings will rid us of recession. This sudden popularity is odd (why seek salvation from a situation caused by out of control markets in a book preaching less market regulation?) but it's also intriguing. And so it was that I recently became one of the millions who have set out to discover the answer to the book's opening question: "Who is John Galt?" .

Galt, it transpires (after 700-odd pages of hard yakka) is "Prometheus who changed his mind". A man who has refused to accept the increasing socialisation of American society in Rand's bleak future, who has "taken away his fire" and gone on strike. Living on the principle that "I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine", he's retreated to the Colorado mountains, along with his great big brain and a super-efficient energy generator of his own invention. He has also encouraged several other similar heroes to join him. These are all supermen: supremely intelligent, rich, very good-looking and clever. Without them the world outside begins to collapse and destroy itself, as a collection of two-dimensional "college educated" caricatures pass increasingly idiotic legislation in the name of "essential need", and feed ever more hungrily on the few producers whom Galt has not yet taken to Colorado.

Chief among the latter is the focus of the novel, the acting vice-president of a railroad, Dagny Taggart . She is just like the other supermen except she takes a long time to be persuaded to join Galt, she is beautiful instead of handsome and enjoys being near-raped by whomsoever appears to have the greatest earning potential. In Rand's world, dollars are the ultimate in sex appeal and sex is dark, kinky and weird. But not in a good way.

It's as unpleasant as it is daft and as a work of literature it's deeply flawed. Great chunks of the book are given over to philosophical rants (one particularly egregious radio broadcast clocks in at just under 100 pages). There are countless tedious repetitions of ideas, phrases and situations. Rand's world is a place of black and white morality, good and bad people and absolutely no shades of grey. Consequently, none of the characters or storylines are at all believable.

To top all that off, the writing is turned up to eleven throughout. It is, as Whittaker Chambers noted in this justly celebrated article in the National Review, a work of "shrillness without reprieve".

It's also, as millions have discovered before me, strangely compelling. Rand may be shrill, but the high-pitched urgency of her writing and uncomplicated morality also gives the book an irresistible force. It might take 900 pages too many to properly reveal the workings of John Galt, but it's an intriguing mystery. The conclusion might also be postponed in more than a dozen annoying ways, but Rand has a unique ability to bludgeon you along to it.

I hated the thing, but I couldn't put it down. It was worth the effort too, because the conclusion is one of the funniest things I've read. This mad denouement boasted, among other idiotic delights, a particle destroyer, a mad electric torture machine, gratuitous nudity, a laboratory, and a man who introduces himself in the heat of battle in all seriousness as "Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia".

Such laughs, however, come bitterly, given how seriously so many take this stuff. There is one thing Rand gets right (and, typically, repeats ad nauseam): people are frequently nuts and the ridiculous can happen. The cruel irony is that the true absurdity lies in Rand's insistence on selfishness, the need to create wealth at the expense of all else and the prohibition on sharing it – as recent events have shown.

Indeed, Rand's new acolytes all seem to overlook the one true link between the writer and the current recession: Alan Greenspan. He was one of Rand's foremost disciples , not to mention her main source of economic advice. He is also now widely viewed as one of the main triggers of the recession . This being the case, turning to Atlas Shrugged because you don't like the way things are going is the equivalent of diving for the centre of the fire because the frying pan got too hot.

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Book Review: "Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged"

BOOK REVIEW: Edward W. Younkins, Editor, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion (Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, Hampshire, UK 2007) 431 pages, $24.95 (paperback).

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a collection of thirty-six essays on Rand’s monumental novel and its meaning. The essays range from basic primers and plot summaries—competent book reports, more than anything else—to romps by scholars exercising their favorite theoretical hobby horses. Most of the writers are not literary scholars, nor is the editor: Edward Younkins is a professor of accountancy at Wheeling Jesuit University. So the book is not a piece of literary scholarship as the term is currently understood—most of the essays focus on political economy, philosophy, or practical psychology. And though a kind of love for the novel is present in all the essays, the result is a big, mixed bag.

THE THOUGHTFUL…

The best essays in the collection offer insightful analysis: They accurately represent Rand’s distinctive worldview while bringing something new to the table, such as a fresh perspective or a connection between Rand’s work and other literature, philosophy, or social theory. In this way, they allow people familiar with Rand’s work to approach it anew, and they encourage those who don’t know Rand well to inquire further.

In “Forced to Rule,” philosopher Roderick Long looks at how Atlas Shrugged may have been in part a response to Plato’s dialogue the Republic . The Republic portrays a collectivist utopia where material life and education are sharply controlled by the government. All must act from duty, not self-interest—even the rulers, who should be wise men forced to rule against their inclinations. Long points out that this is strange, since Plato’s ethics appear to focus on individual flourishing. How can there be individual happiness without any freedom? But Plato was a dualist, holding that real knowledge, truth, and virtue proceed from a realm of Ideas only dimly reflected in material reality, and this made him pessimistic about practical affairs. Long shows how Ayn Rand strikes back at this conception of man in Atlas Shrugged and details implicit references to Plato in the text. Ayn Rand rejected the dichotomy of mind versus body and its attendant splits of spirit versus matter, love versus sex, and art versus engineering. In the climax of Atlas , Rand put Plato’s doctrine to the test as the villains try to torture John Galt—the best and wisest of men, “an engineer and philosopher”—to make him rule them. (Spoiler: It doesn’t work.)

In an essay subtitled “Virtuous Sexuality in Atlas Shrugged ,” anthropologist Susan Love Brown argues that Rand’s view of sex developed over the course of her career. Rand always presented sex as channeled violence and a dance of dominance and submission. But in Atlas , Brown says, we see a philosophical view of sex as a “celebration of life” that was not fully present before. It’s an aspect of the novel’s theme of mind-body unity: Sexual desire should be a response to the whole person one loves—physical traits, of course, but mental traits, too, such as intelligence and virtuousness. Also, sex should be based on particular knowledge of the loved one. In Rand’s earlier novels, the characters make full sexual commitments based on a love-at-first-sight perception. In The Fountainhead , hero Howard Roark sexually assaults his lover Dominique Francon, certain that’s just what she wants—though she doesn’t know it herself. Contrast this with the sexual affairs of heroine Dagny Taggart in Atlas : Dagny knows each of her lovers well before sleeping with them.

In a related meditation, “Friendship in Atlas Shrugged ,” avocational Rand scholar Peter Saint-Andre puts some of the friendships in the novel under critical scrutiny, bringing to bear a wide reading of the psychological and philosophical literature on friendship. Like several of the writers in this book, Saint-Andre finds Rand’s ideal man, John Galt, too much like a god, and he finds Galt’s friendships unbalanced. Even his two closest friends seem to worship and follow him. That doesn’t sound healthy. But one of those strikers, Francisco d’Anconia, has a “more interesting and instructive” relationship with “scab” industrialist Hank Rearden. Their friendship is a relationship of equals founded on shared values and mutual esteem. Saint-Andre accurately describes Rand’s theory of friendship, imports insights from Aristotle and others in a clear and intelligible fashion, and has us looking at the novel afresh.

Let me also mention economist Bryan Caplan’s “ Atlas Shrugged and Public Choice: The Obvious Parallels.” Public-choice theory is the economics of democratic policy-making: It posits that “politicians maximize votes, just as firms maximize profits.” Caplan ties together a variety of plot developments distributed throughout the novel that show public-choice effects at work. For example, when businessmen use government power to loot competitors, they gain in the short run while greater losses are spread throughout society. The “aristocracy of pull” in Atlas Shrugged   rules through access to Washington, trading favors and back-stabbing in a destructive political competition that eventually leads to economic collapse.

…THE WORKMANLIKE…

A problem with the book is that many of the essays are nothing much to write home about. If the book is intended to serve as (among other things) a resource for teachers and students, it needs basic textbook material that identifies main themes, structural elements, and characters. An example in this volume that does the job nicely is philosopher Fred Seddon’s tour through the chapter titles. Ayn Rand chose every one purposefully, and Seddon shows why and how. But few of contributions of this type are really rock-solid.

Editor Younkins writes an overview essay that reads like a mash-up of the various extant surveys and studies of Atlas . Summaries crash into summaries, and we zig-zag over deep issues. Because I’m a Rand scholar, I know what Younkins is getting at, but I doubt that most readers would be able to fill in the needed details and connect the dots.  Fortunately, the next essay, by researcher and editor Chris Sciabarra, offers a comprehensible overview of Rand’s view of man and society.

Then there’s the problem of the “book reports.” The volume has several essays that summarize what happens to a single character, such as Cheryl Brooks. A good character study, however, not only gives an overview of the character and his role in the novel but also sheds light on the author’s choices by bringing in comparisons with other characters or relating the character’s behavior to heroic models or psychological truths. The character studies here don’t do that, by and large; instead, they are just summaries: what the character did and why, in terms internal to the novel. As a promoter of Ayn Rand ’s philosophy, I’m pleased to see these accurate summaries, but I don’t think they add much that an attentive reader couldn’t notice on his own.

By contrast, consider psychologist Robert Campbell’s study of Eddie Willers. It’s the best of the character studies in the volume. Campbell surveys the main role of Willers in the plot and theme (he is a decent, mediocre Everyman who comes to a tragic end because he lacks the ability to survive independently). Campbell points out a fact that I had never much considered: Willers is well-known to three of the heroes, and yet they never offer him the chance to join their strike and enter their hidden utopia. Did Rand bar him from salvation consciously, or sub-consciously? And what does that mean for most Rand readers, who, Campbell points out, are more like the decent-yet-unremarkable Eddie than they are like his companions, the world-beating achievers Dagny Taggart and John Galt?

…AND THE CRANK

So this is a hit-and-miss collection, with a few really wild pitches to complete the mix. For example, did you know that Sundays in Massachusetts induce lassitude and a neither-here-nor-there attitude—universally, across the state, every Sunday? Well, novelist Karen Michalson seems to believe so—or at least she takes a whimsical notion much, much too far in her memoir “Dagny and Me.” In this appalling piece of self-indulgence, Michalson offers thoughts on those Sundays, followed by some snarky recollections of her first meeting with some ardent Rand fans (on a Sunday). Then, on to Dagny. Michalson admired Dagny Taggart, the heroine of Atlas Shrugged , but has since given up comparing herself to the character now that she realizes Dagny “had inherited her position” and thus is not a model of a self-made woman. But that’s just an inaccurate reading of the novel. Michalson claims to be a literature scholar, but she can’t discern that a woman wouldn’t rise to the head of operations at a big industrial firm in the 1950s—or even today—no matter how much stock she owned? Yet that’s what Dagny does. And, er, “Sundays” are a man-made institution; they don’t have metaphysical effects.

In “The Non-Fictional Robert Stadlers: Traitors to Liberty,” anarchist economist Walter Block indulges in a petty exercise of rationalistic nit-picking and movement in-fighting. Using hyperbolic language, he lambastes the few figures who actually made a case for greater freedom in our times, like Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Alan Greenspan. Since these folks studied free-market theory, he claims, they should have known better than to compromise it. Well, too true. But Stadler isn’t just a compromiser: Over the course of the novel he betrays everything good he had stood for, abandoning even his own reason in the end. These men aren’t Stadlers; they all made substantial efforts to increase our political freedom. Even Block admits as much in the conclusion of his essay, so what was the point? The reader has learned little about Atlas and less about how its principles should be put into practice.

Many of the essays use Atlas Shrugged as the occasion for their authors to retail theories of their own that are not really an analysis of Rand’s work. An entertaining example is Roger Bissell’s presentation “My Music: Why It’s Romantic, and Why I Write It That Way,” which purports to be a lecture given by Richard Halley “on the 25th anniversary of the Great Strike.” This sounds like a fun fan-fic idea: Halley is a minor character in Atlas , a composer of heroic music who joins the strike against the mystic-altruist-collectivist culture that dominates America. But this isn’t Halley’s speech, it’s Bissell’s, retailing his own theory of how melody functions in music. I know that Bissell’s theory is one of several that try to develop esthetic ideas along Randian lines. But you wouldn’t know that from reading this disguised essay. Like many of the ingrown and self-referential essays in this book, the Halley “speech” is less than it could have been.

A COMPANION FOR WHOM?

I’ve not discussed many of the essays in Younkins’ volume, though for someone well-versed in Rand’s works and Rand scholarship, there are many juicy tidbits to pick up. I must mention philosopher Douglas Den Uyl’s investigation of Ayn Rand ’s view of America—had she become more pessimistic since writing the paean to the American sense of life in The Fountainhead —and also another essay I enjoyed, literature professor Stephen Cox’s discussion of “Ayn Rand’s Debt to Isabel Paterson.” Cox is Paterson’s biographer, and his essay is more about Paterson than Rand. But it calls attention to one of Rand’s mentors and reminds us that her biographers still have work to do tracing her intellectual development.

In the end, whom is this book for? I couldn’t imagine college students getting much out of it; they might benefit from Sciabarra’s overview, I suppose, and Seddon’s study of the chapter headings. Most of the other essays are too idiosyncratic, too “in-movement,” too scholarly, or too much like a paper that a college student would write. Ayn Rand fans may find many of them stultifying, though I’ve tried to indicate some that had gold in them. Philosophers, I suspect, will find something to root around in, but again, they will have to be choosy. Still, I must admit that reading these essays got me thinking about Rand and Atlas . It’s a useful volume for anyone who would enjoy a hunt around the attic of Rand scholarship.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

William Thomas

William R Thomas writes about and teaches Objectivist ideas. He is the editor of The Literary Art of Ayn Rand and of Ethics at Work, both published by The Atlas Society. He is also an economist, teaching occasionally at a variety of universities.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2015

Nathaniel branden, rip.

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Book Review: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Author:  Ayn Rand

Publisher: Random House

Genre:  Philosophical fiction

First Publication: 1957

Language:  English

Major Characters: Dagny Taggart, John Galt, Prometheus (mythology), Atlas, Hank Rearden, Francisco d’Anconia, James Taggart

Setting Place: The United States

Theme: The importance of the mind; the evils of collectivism; the need to integrate mind and body

Narration: an anonymous third-person narrator focusing mainly on Dagny and Rearden, but following all the characters.

Book Summary: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?

You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy…why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction…why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph…why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.

Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.

In early 1945, Ayn Rand embarked on the work which would eventually be considered her literary masterpiece. With a working title of The Strike, she diligently filled numerous notebooks, detailing her characters, plot, and theme, amongst others. Not for an audience, “ but strictly for herself–that is, for the clarity of her own understanding, ” writes her literary executor, Leonard Peikoff .

“These journals are also a fascinating record of the step-by-step birth of an immortal work of art.”

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is another of those novels which are classic because they create both an entertaining story, contain philosophical ideas and tie into historical events.

“If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

The plot follows two central characters while also covering several other important individuals. However one of the two characters makes almost no appearance in the first three quarters of the book. Hence the mysterious question on everyone’s lips: ”Who is John Galt?”

It could be seen as a dystopian and a semi-science fictional type of novel for Atlas Shrugged is set in a fictional America where the government rules ‘for the will of the people’, seizing the assets of the wealthy in order to do so. The main protagonist Dagny Taggart blindly accepts this system as she tries to become the sole female entrepreneur in the fictional economy. Yet gradually she comes to see that the government is manipulative and self-serving and that she cannot continue to accept that system as proper any longer.

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

The opening sentence is one of sheer brilliance. The question, “ Who is John Galt? “, reels the reader in instantaneously, and is very reluctant to let up. The question really resonates. Partly due to its simplicity, Rand’s detail orientated, incredibly vivid prose kept me reading, completely in awe of her skilful way with words. More importantly, the classic inquiry is voiced time and again, which serves to further elevate the overall mystery and suspense, without becoming tedious.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is populated with several diverse, well-developed characters. One such individual, Dagny Taggart, is a personal favorite. Superficiality aside, I love her for her unwavering convictions and determination, despite the fact that her somewhat shady actions oftentimes prove detrimental to her reputation (not that she cares.) I truly admire her, not solely for her bravery, but also for her flaws.

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

While I read Rand’s books for her ideas and to better understand the application of her philosophy, they can also be read on many different levels. Through reading them, not only did I read an amazing story, carefully crafted and well rendered, but I also learned so much. However, one does not have to delve deep into Rand’s philosophical background to enjoy  The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand — they are also great stories about human endurance, individualism, freedom, relationships, and integrity.

“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can’t stand still. It must grow or perish.”

If you are reading Atlas Shrugged to gain an understanding of Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, then I would recommend reading this book AFTER reading Ayn Rand’s other famous fiction, The Fountainhead. The Fountainhead is a more straight forward place to start that study.

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