for serious readers
"Atlas Shrugged is a classic. It's a classic in a lot of ways--not least of which is that it is still printed 54 years after it was written. It's a classic because its author, Ayn Rand, a Russian Jewish emigre, had the chutzpah to propose it at a time when it was unpopular to speak ill of what was later known as The Establishment. It's also a classic, because it reads like a black and white movie of its era. Men wear cuffed-pants suits and trench coats, and are either heroic or simply cads. Women are pushovers or goddesses with male temperaments, who jump into commandeered planes and fly them like Chuck Yeager. All heroes are blond-haired and blue-eyed. No, not kidding. Companies are named after their sole proprietors, not after cynical quasi-words that can be trademarked, like "Accenture," or "Inspirographics." The high-tech company of the story is a railroad that still uses steam locomotives in some locations, and of course jointed rail, which makes the once-familiar clickety-clack sound under the wheels.
Wikipedia reports that Atlas Shrugged was largely panned by critics when it was issued. It's understandable, given the simplistic characters, melodramatic story lines and stilted dialogue that is straight from Dragnet or Highway Patrol. But one of the reasons that Atlas shrugs to this day (and had funding for a 2011 "part 1"movie released on a limited basis) is that Ms. Rand was no less an observer of man than was Alexis de Tocqueville. What she foresaw is the dissipation of America through the many safety nets its largely well-meaning "liberals" have constructed and which is often presented nowadays as "The Nanny State." It is not too much to call her prescient. As we lose our grip and slide into a depression, the "D" word that our entrenched government system will not utter, we mirror the events of Atlas Shrugged. We see recent welfare recipient General Motors offering signing bonuses for new workers (September, 2011) in the face of high unemployment; how can we but understand that it is a rebate to the unions who supported the Democratic admininstration, along with the congress who voted the bailout. All of this is analogous to events of the book, for example, where railroad executives are pressured to give workers higher wages and feathered beds, even as their employer goes broke.
I couldn't say that I'd recommend Atlas Shrugged to everyone, because there are few who could stand to read all of its 1,000+ pages, while ignoring the many literary and circumstantial anachronisms that are the book's corpus. But for those, like me, who wanted to know who John Galt is, it's worthwhile. Sort of a plot spoiler, but however heroic John Galt might be, he's rather a gasbag. He goes on for 50 pages or so with his manifesto. Of course, we know that it's really Ms. Rand who is speaking, and Mr. Galt is only the fictitious deliverer of her Objectivist Philosophy's Mein Kampf to a worldwide radio audience (itself made possible by the familiar sci-fi trope of a shocking mass media hijack by unexplained means).
Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, and Huxley's Brave New World satirized communism, but Atlas Shrugged, whether it realizes it or not, takes a larger swipe at what we have come to know as capitalism. Of course, its intended wrath goes towards machine politics and totalitarianism, but ultimately, Rand's heroic capitalists are indifferent to the outsiders in the world they inhabit. Rand's system, like libertarianism in any guise, is rRead full review
