Ever notice that there is no particularly hefty body of literature about life in Heaven? Why do you suppose that is? After all, so many of us profess to believe in God and the hereafter, and when someone dies it is standard for one of us to say "He or she is in a better place now." Heaven is supposed to be the climax of our existence, our supreme reward. In terms of sheer time, it may be millions of times longer than our one petty mortal lifespan (barring reincarnation). And yet, very little about it. Sylvia Browne gives it a shot, Mitch Albom gives it a shot, we hear about one kid -- what was his last name, Burpus? -- having a vision, and that's about it. That Robin Williams movie "What Dreams May Come" was worthless to me; I think I like better the first few minutes of Alan Rudolph's "Made in Heaven," that comes closest to how I feel it ought to be. Eastwood tries it and just leaves us with a great big blurry waiting room without even any chairs.
Yeah, I know, some of the greats have taken on Heaven -- but how is it that when we think of Dante we almost always think of "Inferno" and not "Paradisio," and when we think of Milton we think of "Paradise Lost" and barely at all "Paradise Restored"? (Or perhaps "Regained" -- see, I even need to check that.) And another point: can anyone name one single book about Adam and Eve continuing to live in innocence and obedience in Eden? C.S. Lewis may have managed to cheat a little, by recasting the Eden story on his fantastical version of Venus in "Perelandra," but otherwise I can't think of one. P.J. O'Rourke -- a comic I rarely agree much with -- pointed out what a challenging story it would be to get excited about staying in Eden, though of course he brought it up only to suggest that eternal Eden is only what liberals stupidly want. (Gee, P.J., if that's true, and we liberals are so media-happy, you would think we'd've written that book or even made that movie by now, wouldn't you say?) Lancelot speculates on being a perfect Adam in a lyric in "Camelot" -- but hey, it's Lancelot, so forget THAT.
Here is where I share some of Rand's skepticism (but long before it turns to antipathy) towards religion -- that by all rights there should be Heaven and Eden books, much like, say, there are so many other thriving subgenres, such as "supernatural detective." (Come to think of it, that may be the only way to do it -- to have a Heaven where things can go a bit wrong, and a detective who settles that. I can see the blurb now: "Angels aren't always angels." But I digress.) But where this comes back to bite her is in the structure of Shrugged. For Rand has taken special pains to preach against merely negating a negative -- and I happen to agree with her on that point -- and yet, for all its length, that's all that this book is about. Galt's Gulch left me no persuasive sense of "Wow, the whole world needs to be like this!", and Galt's Gulch is supposed to be a haven of utopia, a kind of inverted Shangri-La. Yet this book is relentlessly about how horrible Lillian Rearden is, or what a bizarre stitched-together Frankenstein creature James Taggart is. I think I've said it before and I say it again: Rand is like Marx, voluminous in critique (but not nearly as good), but downright flip about providing any solution. Does she really want her world, or simply the destruction of this one?
Such thoughts cross my mind as we are at last free of the Big Harangue and we return to the far more lively and entertaining bickering of Galt's enemies. Chapter 28 kicks off with Mr. Thompson asking "It wasn't real, was it?" A whole page of the horribles being in shock goes by before we can trust the sheer emotionalism of James Taggart to be moved to try to speak more than six words at a time:
"We don't have to believe it! ... Nobody's ever said it before! It's just one man! We don't have to believe it!"
"Take it easy," said Mr. Thompson.
"Why is he so sure he's right? Who is he to go against the whole world, against everything ever said for centuries and centuries? Who is he to know? Nobody can be sure! Nobody can know what's right! There isn't any right!"
I believe right here is where we begin to glimpse the appeal of this book, for this section in and of itself, magically excised from this novel and appreciated all by itself, is great fun. What is more, it even finally begins to resonate with reality. I was writing just a little while ago about the great scientists, and this is how it is. Newton, Copernicus, Darwin, Einstein -- they all began as one man, reaching a conclusion, stating a proof. This also appeals greatly to the egos of impressionable adolescents. Maybe the world is wrong. Maybe I'm right. And indeed, maybe for once you are. Eh, but Rand doesn't know shit about science, so that's where it all kinda falls apart. But to continue, the horribles argue over whether to maintain silence or resume normal broadcasts, and then it somehow falls to the sadly ever-ill-defined Eugene Lawson to scream:
"It's horrible! It's immoral! It's selfish, heartless, ruthless! It's the most vicious speech ever made! It ... it will make people demand to be happy!"
Yeah, I bet it made people demand to be happy -- happy it was finally over. Yet this too is a telling little moment, because for one kind of person the industrialists are at least grinding out all the goodies, and there are always things out there on the horizon -- taxes, disasters, threats of war, moral arguments, changing attitudes -- which seem to endanger one's personal bubble of satisfaction. In such a world, one may feel moved to little more than the morality of an infant -- a couple of times this book asserts that children already understand Rand, before society brainwashes them -- and retort "Uncomfortable things bad, Daddy Warbucks good!"
The horribles decide that the religious, the workingmen, and the women won't go for the speech -- and here's where Rand got one thing eerily right, because I do think it has caught the Left off guard that religion, once a bastion of civil rights, and many workers and a lot of women have been picked up by the Right. The Left may have figured "Eh, we've got them in our pocket" -- always a dangerous assumption in a world full of propaganda. There is one amusing exchange:
"He's no friend of anybody," said Wesley Mouch, recapturing a shade of confidence at the sudden realization, "except maybe of big business."
"No!" cried Mr. Mowen in terror. "No! Don't accuse us! Don't say it! I won't have you say it!"
"What?"
"That ... that ... that anybody is a friend of business!"
Admit it, you laughed. Sometimes a joke lies more in its structure than its logic. And speaking of jokes, guess which one character singlehandedly sparks this entire tirade back to recognizable life:
"In the first place," said Dr. Ferris, encouraged, "people can't think. In the second place, they don't want to."
"In the third place," said Fred Kinnan, "they don't want to starve. And what do you propose to do about that?"
It was as if he had pronounced the question which all of the preceding utterances had been intended to stave off ...
"Well?" said Mr. Thompson at last, raising his eyes reluctantly to Fred Kinnan. "What do you think we ought to do?"
"Who, me?" chuckled Kinnan. "I don't run this show."
How did Rand ever dare to create Fred Kinnan? How much more would I enjoy a novel about Fred Kinnan than a novel about John Galt? In my mind he's played by William Frawley, Fred Mertz from "I Love Lucy," eating up his role the way he did in "Miracle on 34th Street."
Dagny gets a whole page to declare "Give it up" (taxes and regulation, I'm guessing???) before Mr. Thompson speaks up and assures Dagny that her input is appreciated, or some such placation. She leaves, but not without a cue to the obligingly silent Eddie Willers: "She jerked her head, indicating the door; he followed her obediently." Oh yeah, what an inviting example of how not to live for the sake of another person -- and Eddie, I still wish you and Cherryl Brooks could have gotten it on, Cherryl might still be alive and mooning after Dagny is going to be the death of you. Sweet Jesus, but I really hate Rand on this point. And now Dr. Robert Stadler -- as with so many of these people, I barely had any real sense of him, and so I barely care what he has to say anyway -- is obliged to go completely nutzoid:
"You must kill him."
It was the fact that Dr. Stadler had not cried it, but had said it in a flat, cold, suddenly and fully conscious voice, that brought a chill moment of silence as the whole room's answer.
"You must find him," said Dr. Stadler, his voice cracking and rising once more. "You must leave no stone unturned till you find and destroy him! If he lives, he'll destroy us all! If he lives, we can't!"
"How am I to find him?" said Mr. Thompson, speaking slowly and carefully.
"I ... I can tell you. I can give you a lead. Watch that Taggart woman. Set your men to watch every move she makes. She'll lead you to him, sooner or later."
"How do you know that?"
"Isn't it obvious? Isn't it sheer chance that she hasn't deserted you long ago? Don't you have the wits to see that she's one of his kind?" He did not state what kind.
"Yeah," said Mr. Thompson thoughtfully, "yeah, that's true." He jerked his head up with a smile of satisfaction. "The professor's got something there. Put a tail on Miss Taggart," he ordered, snapping his fingers at Mouch. "Have her tailed day and night. We've got to find him."
"Yes, sir," said Mouch blankly.
"And when you find him," Dr. Stadler asked tensely, "you'll kill him?"
"Kill him, you damn fool? We need him!" cried Mr. Thompson ... "What are you all gaping at? It's simple. Whoever he is, he's a man of action. Besides, he's got a pressure group: he's got all the men of brains. He knows what to do. We'll find him and he'll tell us. He'll tell us what to do. He'll make things work. He'll pull us out of the hole."
"Us, Mr. Thompson?" [asked Mouch.]
"Sure. Never mind your theories. We'll make a deal with him."
"With him?"
"Sure. Oh, we'll have to compromise, we'll have to make a few concessions to big business, and the welfare boys won't like it, but what the hell! -- do you know any other way out?"
"But his ideas -- "
"Who cares about ideas?"
"Mr. Thompson," said Mouch, choking, "I ... I'm afraid he's a man who's not open to a deal."
"There's no such thing," said Mr. Thompson.
And now at last you may begin to glimpse why I've been analyzing this book for over a year now -- because as dopey as it is, it is perhaps far more immediately relevant than we ever dared realize. To me there is little doubt that the Tea Party imagines itself in the role of Galt, and that Obama is Mr. Thompson -- and, of course, with only ninety-odd pages left, Mr. Thompson's utter defeat is a foregone conclusion.
You know, I've written and read enough porn to recognize a sexual subtext. There is, after all, so much violent passion beating inside this dreadfully dry novel that some tie-in with sex is nearly inevitable. For here we have Stadler, and to my mind he is sounding very much like a cuckolded husband in some tale calculated to scratch our sadistic itch. For here's Dagny, and Dagny goes around freely fucking anyone she deems a Man of the Mind, and then we have Stadler, and while he's never shown much desire for Dagny, it would be easy to imagine him as jealous. She fucked all those other Men of the Mind -- so why not me!? I have all the status, I have all the acclaim -- she must fuck me, I am entitled to her! But Dagny won't give him the time of day. Wild with rage, he then wants Dagny's every move to be watched and to have his cuckolder dead, dead, dead -- but in keeping with the underlying sadism of the tale, his torture is dragged out, the world assures him, Oh no, if anything we will lionize your cuckolder.
I'm usually not big on Freud, but oh! If Freud could have analyzed Rand!
And we're back to Dagny and the whole world running even further down -- so that will be it till next weekend. With any luck, I can hand you Rand's triumphant utopian ending by Halloween. A greater horror, I can scarcely imagine