[DruulEmpire]

Hey, if the Randroid looks anything like the robot from "Metropolis," then maybe with a little reprogramming ...

The business about The Brain reminds me a little of what crossed my mind when I first chose the title Atlas Shrank.  Back in a wonderful old comic strip called "Barnaby," a minor character was a midget named Atlas the Giant, the gimmick being that he was a MENTAL giant, with slide rule always in hand (told you it was old) and often speaking in elaborate calculus.

For me the greatest megalomaniac is Hugo Drax from the Bond movie "Moonraker."  I take him over Darth Vader or General Zod because in true Jules Verne style he begins as a mere man and takes on no supernatural or superhuman powers, yet nearly rewrites pretty much the entire story of Humanity on Earth.  As for Rand herself, I have to rate her over The Brain if only because she was personally adored by no less than Alan Greenspan.  Now that IS power.

On with the book: we meet Taggart Transnational president James Taggart, who can be summed up in two words: "Excuse, excuses."  He is spiraling down right past mediocrity straight into total inertia and all he can do is weasel out of responsibility.  I'm open to the idea he was inspired by the creator of "planned obsolescence" (which may, I suppose, have been the target of that peculiar little movie "Executive Suite") but I'm afraid that would have been too on-target, too aware of the actual world, for Rand to come up with.  No, James Taggart isn't even inventive enough to arrive at such an idea ...

[DruulEmpire]

So for me the great question is still being begged.  Forget "Who is John Galt?"  WHO IS JAMES TAGGART?

Rereading this in modern times, one parallel lept to my mind: Donald Rumsfeld.  Declaring "Stuff happens" when looting breaks out, telling the troops "You go to war with the army you have" -- man oh man, Rumsfeld brings James Taggart to mind.  Patton had his problems, but I have to believe he would have gotten on someone's case over such failings -- but no, not Rumsfeld.  I think what has long thrown people off is Rumsfeld's gruff delivery, which "The Daily Show" once nicely summed up as some crotchety curmudgeon growling "Go ahead and kick me in the nuts, ya young punk, just try, I dare ya!"  But I'm not persuaded.  He may have been growling away like Nick Nolte in "The Thin Red Line," but Donald Rumsfeld is James Taggart to me.

That is, until I consider -- Tony Hayward.  Murmuring that TransOcean has to share the blame (which it does, but come on!), hedging that BP will honor all LEGITIMATE claims, confessing "I want my life back" -- if ever there was any bleating mediocrity-apologizing chief executive to draw James Taggart from, it's Tony Hayward.

The problem being, these are examples from our times.  Did Rand have even one real person in mind when she created James Taggart -- and even more interesting to me, would her dogma have permitted her to own up to the James Taggart nature of Donald Rumsfeld or Tony Hayward?  I'm wondering if she's thinking of David Rockefeller, of someone inheriting a vast responsibility "wasting" himself on philanthropy -- but no, philanthropy hasn't even been mentioned yet.

Instead, James Taggart grumbles about one Ellis Wyatt making life challenging and difficult for him by learning how to "rejuvenate" (!!!) oil wells, or about the steel he's always gotten in the past from Henry Rearden.  Instead of acknowledging such men of ability, he's willing to stake everything on a friendship with the subcompetent Orren Boyle.  (If we take the Rumsfeld analogy further, does Orren Boyle become Erik Prince, the leader of Blackwater, now Xe?)

Rand also gives James (as far as I can recall right now, he's the only James in the book) a certain prissiness.  Must Eddie Willers barge in on him?  Can't that sister of his, Dagny, sit in a chair instead of on one of the arms?  Why must Henry Rearden be "vulgarly" referred to as Hank?  Petty stuff like that.

By the time Dagny meets James, we've already seen her throw herself into getting a train to keep its schedule.  I have to wonder if Rand was being directly ironic about Fascism getting summed up as "The trains run on time!"


At any rate, the problem "Who is James Taggart?" demands resolution, because without that answer Eddie and Dagny are simply upholding the most basic principles of business, such as using reliable suppliers.  Who honestly is against that?

We also get a glimpse of the "mystery" when the highly competent Owen Kellogg (clearly one OK guy) respectfully takes his leave of business with the railroad, and with this first chapter over we can now look forward to meeting Hank Rearden.  What I find quite striking is that Rand clearly meant John Galt to be the supreme man, yet her own readership seems to rebel a little and prefers to remember Hank Rearden.  So the one character that the fans seem to just plain like the most (perhaps in a sort of Han Solo vis-a-vis Luke Skywalker way) will be forthcoming ...

PS -- You know, the more I think on this, there's a LOT of James Taggart bailing out Orren Boyle to be found on the right.  "Heckuva job, Brownie."    

[pedonbio]

So she would suck Frank Lloyd Wright's cock, then come home to her typewriter and/or husband?

[pedonbio]

That is, until I consider -- Tony Hayward.  Murmuring that TransOcean has to share the blame (which it does, but come on!), hedging that BP will honor all LEGITIMATE claims, confessing "I want my life back" -- if ever there was any bleating mediocrity-apologizing chief executive to draw James Taggart from, it's Tony Hayward.

He does seem like the kind of dude who would name his yacht "Bob"...

[Lesbian Bob]

Ayn Rand in the 21st Century:  http://wonkette.com/415825/thats-objectivist-ayn-rand-in-the-21st-century

[Lesbian Bob]

What if you are a psychopathic killer that lusts for money?

And boobs?

Get therapy for the first two problems from a hot, busty psychiatrist.

[robclassact]

Who was John Galt?

[Lesbian Bob]

Who was John Galt?

The Antichrist.

Selfishness is a virtue.  Contempt for humanity is not.

[DruulEmpire]

I've toyed with declaring myself the Anti-Galt.  Would that make me the Antiantichrist?

Not even sure selfishness is virtuous, so much as it's a useful instinct.  Finally saw my dentist today -- several teeth are going to have to get **91** of my head.  So right there, sheer self-interest enforces (however belatedly) "public health" on a person-by-person basis.

By the way, I thank Lesbian Bob for the Wonkette cartoons.  Not so sure Rand would have freaked over a black President -- one Randologist I've read claims that the sympathetic character of Cherryl Brooks may have come very close to being black.  Also not so sure Tea Partiers would have been hailed as new John Galts or Dagny Taggarts -- it seems to me that Rand tried to sneak in a working-class cheering section for her heroes, and I'm going be on the lookout for that.  But "The Fountainhead" was on TCM a couple of nights ago -- part of a Patricia Neal retrospective -- so I VERY much appreciated Rand winning the trial a la Howard Roark by haranguing everyone into submission for hours and hours (and hours ... and hours ... ).

Today I'm just going to whip through Chapters 2 and 3, as there's not too much pleasant or diverting, let alone essential, in them.  2 starts with a portrait of Rearden as the earnest dogged creator, but then it drags us through his dysfunctional family in which everyone is some sort of hanger-on, capable of praising him only by throwing in some sneer about how rich and selfish he is.  Honestly, who in Rearden's position puts up with this?  Donald Trump and even Newt Gingrich go through wives like Kleenex, and I'm supposed to believe this is a serious social constraint upon the overclass?  Enough of 2.

3 begins with a whole lot of mealy-mouthed muttering by baddies.  Key to this muttering is their insistence on failing to recognize the potential threat of the People's State of Mexico.  Yes, you read that correctly: the People's State of Mexico.  In fact, this is going to be a running gag of Rand's as the novel progresses, one People's Republic of Anywhere but America right after another.  So let the tally sheet begin with: Mexico.  Speaking of Mexico, there's one spark of vitality, in that we get a glimpse of Francisco d'Anconia.  By all rights, "Frisco" could have been a human being -- sadly, he becomes just a slightly more exotic spokesman for Objectivism, providing a dash of flair in somewhat the same way that a foreign ally of James Bond does in one of the early movies, like Kerim Bey in "From Russia With Love" or Tracy's father in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."  After this we get Dagny arguing with James in such a way as to make clear to us that the wrong Taggart is in charge.

We also get an ad for smoking from a nameless newsstand owner -- more of that working-class cheering section I think Rand was trying to suggest: "When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind -- and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression."  Yes, Bert Cooper SHOULD get Don Draper to read this -- if only to plunder it for ad campaign ideas.  Oh, and 3 ends with another allusion to The Big Mystery, whoopdedoo.  But 4 should be more promising, as the baddies begin to find their focus, and Dagny talks with Hank.    

[DruulEmpire]

I'd better get on with this, if only to be able to say someday "I said I'd do it and I did it."  The problem being, I could have sworn there were some oddly cool moments in this first half, but they're taking forever to get to.

One of the few vaguely fun features of "Atlas" are some of her stabs at pop culture.  "Atlas" was written as we were entering the age of Harold Robbins potboilers, deeply Freudian studies of the rich and powerful designed to make one respond "Oh, how twisted!" while simultaneously playing on the response "Oh, how enviable!"  Dagny notes in passing a new hot novel entitled "The Vulture is Molting."  (Meanwhile, at the neighborhood theater even as I write, Gordon Gekko is Back.)

Speaking of Freudian studies, Rand opens herself up to one here in chapters 4 and 5.  We spend some time with Dagny as Rand keeps going on about how Dagny loves Richard Halley's Fifth Concerto -- but didn't he only write four?  Ah, a mystery -- or so we're told.  Critics have dumped on Halley as being heroic in an age that has "outgrown" that.  (I have to wonder if Halley sounds anything like Wagner.)  As Dagny yearns for music, we're assured that James Taggart's extramarital affair is somehow coldly dispassionate: "They had heard that men and women were supposed to **82** together, so they did."  James dallies awhile, then gets a call about that darned People's State of Mexico nationalizing the San Sebastian line precisely as Dagny prophesied.

James then takes part in a meeting that passes an Anti-dog-eat-dog rule which is stealthfully aimed at that darned overcompetent upstart, the Durango-Phoenix line run by one Dan Conway.  Conway is clearly a case study of a great and decent producer who has still not caught on to the Great Mystery of the disappearing competents.  After fretting with Conway about a world that "punishes ability," Dagny cgoes on to conspire in the name of progress with oil genius Ellis Wyatt and metallurgical genius Hank Rearden.  With Rearden she is awestruck but reserved --

-- probably because of chapter 5, titled (I kid you not) "The Climax of the D'Anconias."  We learn, at great length, that "Frisco" d'Anconia was her first lay.  Of course one would expect Dagny Taggart's first lay to be exotic, dashing, aristocratic, brilliant, witty and of course super-rich, and Rand succeeds reasonably well in conveying all that.  However, he appears to have devolved into a laughable pound-foolish playboy and Dagny is disappointed with him.  Why then does he seem to retain a spark of character?

I place value on a Frisco appearance, if only because that's about a lively a characterization as we are ever permitted.  At any rate, we will soon be hearing more about Rearden and his miraculous Rearden Metal, the morally compromised would-have-been-great scientist Robert Stadler, and and a frantic James as he gradually figures out that all people of competence are mysteriously abandoning him ...

Some thoughts -- does it mean anything that I imagine a young Ricardo Montalban as Frisco, and Montalban played a Mr. Roarke, suggestive of Howard, in "Fantasy Island"?  And is this a kind of inverted science fiction?  Science fiction is sometimes described as "an invention and society's response to it" -- but this seems to be about society REPRESSING invention.

[DruulEmpire]

At last this project is yielding something.  There's little to say about Chapter 6, it's mostly soap-operatic wrangling having to do with James Taggart's tiresome affair or Hank Rearden's tiresome extended family -- but page 152 is a doozy, as that is where we are treated to a People's State of England, Portugal, and Turkey.  Guess Rand figured "There's a Labor Party in England, so it's inevitable."

But seven is widely considered a lucky number, and I can say that it is chapter seven where things in this book actually start happening.  I think the first six chapters suffer deeply from an interesting fundamental contradication in this whole novel, for Rand seeks to show the social costs of the current state of affairs, yet she insists on claiming to be highly non-social to begin with.  She keeps begging us to weep for the injustice of Hank Rearden's family life, and it's unpersuasive, and in any event, what does it really have to do with her ultimate thesis?  So this would be the main warning I would give to anyone starting this cold -- I wish I had picked up on this much earlier in my on-off years of reading around in "Atlas."

Chapter seven begins with Rand at last inevitably taking on labor with a character named Ben Nealy claiming that all one needs is muscles to run the world.  Dagny then goes to Hank Rearden and here we get the beginning of the crucial background of a great crash which will come up later in the novel.  By chapter's end Dagny, feeling egged on by all the "Who is John Galt?' moaning, will stand apart from Taggart Transcontinental and start a new railroad, the John Galt Line.  Along the way we get the first mythologizing of Galt, as a man who found a Fountain of Youth atop a high mountain but also found that he could not bring it back down with him.  (Odd conclusion for a near-magical engineer to make, especially now as the Chilean miners are about to be brought up, but oh well.)

There's also some business I find personally interesting, as Rand introduces us to a Dr. Robert Stadler and a State Science Institute.  Neither of these are particularly prophetic; science continues to do what it can with universities and corporations, and the few times it gets a government boost we get men on the moon or an Internet, so I'm not sure what her thinking was.  Stadler is also a much duller figure than, say, the real life Carl Sagan, who I suspect Rand would have disliked.  Stadler is a **29** astrophysicist who argues that technology is social in impact and must bow to opinion.  I haven't who an actual Dr. Stadler would be -- but here I think we begin to see Rand and her gang instinctively recoiling from relativity theory and quantum mechanics.  How dare the universe not be an iron standard in all circumstances?  But Rand was not forthcoming enough to get into that.

That's one kick I'm getting out of all this, how this 1957 book was proudly technocratic but now so many of its heirs are antiscientific.  Another kick I'm getting is that Rearden Metal, lighter and stronger than steel, is being martyred because of sheer kneejerk resistance by a social status quo.  How does this bear any resemblance to our world which can't buy the latest Steve Jobs product fast enough?  And talk about a social status quo refusing to budge -- that too speaks a lot to Rand's heirs.

So it's finally getting good, and in a mere 500 more pages -- utopia!  Well, Rand's version.

[DruulEmpire]

And now, appropriate, I think, to this holiday (or would it really be more of an unholiday?), the supreme terror of -- more of "Atlas Shrugged," mwahahaaa!  Actually, I just need to keep slogging through this project every so often.

This time around, as we finally pass the quarter-thousand page mark, I'm just going to do Chapter 8 and the first pages of 9, since I see them as all of a piece.  To my reading Chapter 8 is little more than a lot more back and forth about the deluded world saying "The John Galt Line can't run!" and Dagny declaring "Oh, yes it can!"  Really, this is a stunningly inefficient novel.  But I do like two things about this part.  Check out this description: "She felt no wheels under the floor.  The motion was a smooth flight on a sustained impulse, as if the engine hung above the rails, riding a current."  As we shall see, Rand's science is for crap, but for once her romanticism -- or style of it -- was slightly prophetic.  Sounds to me like Rand was trying to imagine a maglev train!  Which might indeed mark a renaissance of American rail travel.  Trouble being, of course, would Rand stand for the market not wanting this, while it would take government funding to push for this?  Also, the reason I slop over into Chapter 9 is that we get Dagny and Hank finally having their Miller Time after so much hard work, having sex shortly before the "code" of pop novels made sex scenes de rigeur -- so Rand was a bit of a pioneer in that regard.  She makes passion dreadfully formal, though.  At the end of a giant paragraph beginning with "I want you, Hank," Dagny sums up: "If I'm asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have **84** with Hank Rearden.  I have earned it."

I break on page 256, because we are about to hit a subplot which has always mystified me, and I want to sort it out this time.  In somewhat the manner that Charles Foster Kane went and got himself involved with Susan Alexander, we are now about to see craven old James Taggart begin an affair with lower-class girl Cherryl Brooks.  Spoiler alert: Cherryl will go on to kill herself, but I've never been clear on why.  If nothing else, I hope to settle that in the course of this project.

[DruulEmpire]

I've been too long derelict.  Back to this project, and the mystery of Cherryl Brooks.

We get the meeting from James Taggart's point of view.  Oh, by the way, new to the ongoing tally of People's Republics: Norway.  How many monarchies can be Commie, I wonder?  Norway comes up because the romantic figure of Ragnar Danneskjold turns up, sabotaging an American shipment to so depraved a state.  Danneskjold is supposed to be based very loosely on someone who was once a "matchstick king."

Taggart buys some Kleenex, and the sweet endearing cashier recognizes him from his picture in the papers.  Turns out she's a po' girl from Buffalo and has come to the big city out of an instincitive attraction to a world of great feats, filled with proverbial movers and shakers.  To her James is a great man, someone to look up to -- and she persists in this view even as James takes credit that is not his to take, or insists that his life is miserable, or even gasses on about his petty vengeances against Orren Boyle or Dr. Floyd Ferris.  He insists so hard against his greatness, or any true greatness, that the girl chalks it up to sophisticated and rarefied ideals which she will work hard to understand someday.  This girl is of course Cherryl Brooks, and James doesn't seem sure quite what to do with her.  After all, he already has that rather pointless affair with that Betty Pope.  But James takes Cherryl home, and prides himself on not taking immediate advantage of her, only to then murmur "Would you have?" once Cherryl has complimented him on seeming such a gentleman.  We get a portrait of a man who seems to enjoy only ruin and degradation, while we assume we will meet Cherryl again later.  At this point I have no idea, even in this narrow social arena, what the hell James is supposed to be.  No doubt there are men who enjoy ruin and degradation, but the main such personality which springs to mind is Richard Nixon.  Once more, if Rand had any actual human being in mind, it's hard to guess.  It feels more like she figured "This man is already bad, so let's heap these other bad qualities on him."

Soon I'll finish off Chapter Nine, and then Chapter Ten, and that will complete the first three of the great "blocks" or parts of this thing, the part named Non-Contradiction.  There are cool parts to come, but damn, I wish they could come so much quicker.

[pedonbio]

Authentic characterization was never one of Rand's strong points; nor was organization or brevity. Come to think, she didn't have any strong points. One possible explanation for her poor characterization is her politics; I won't delve into the swamp of her personal psychology. She doesn't value empathy; indeed, she rejects that it has any value. That can be quite a handicap when trying to understand one's own characters. The best writers, from Mark Twain to John LeCarre, speak of how their characters take over the story unbidden. I think that is because the writer creates a character who is complete enough to create his/her own story. Rand could never do that.

[DruulEmpire]

My oldest best friend has the same problem.  He grinds out novel manuscripts, and a flurry of short stories, and yet all his characters are bound ever back to the constraints of his dogma.  They get to resemble people fleetingly, but then he has to demand that they always follow some strict code.  He tries to loosen this up with cute dumb humor, which only makes more obvious his desperate plight.  There was a time I could sympathize with him, and when I heard something like the character of the French lieutenant's woman getting away from that author, I could not help but snort derisively and say "Oh, blow it out your ass, you're the writer, you have the control."  But then from 1994 through 1996 I ground out a novel manuscript and the main characters just galloped off to regions completely outside my original plan.

Actually, poor characterization can still work in the right context.  Melodrama has its limits, but it can still be fun, and even a kind of stark spare demonstration of an argument, and I've enjoyed this book on the level of melodrama.  Even so, I get the feeling that Rand just keeps assuming "A person on the bad side of issues surely must have any and all bad characteristics."  Dean Koontz is not the subtlest of writers, but occasionally I sense that he bases certain character traits on behavior he has actually observed in real life.  There's nothing in Rand's writing to suggest she ever observed a single actual human being.