Dang, 6, sorting out this novel over the course of 13+ months is itself a bit of an assignment without taking on too much else in the same thread (however humorous it may be), but I'll take a stab at three topics:
1. Heinlein. I may as well tell you that you're not going to get much too much undiluted insight into Heinlein based on
Stranger all by itself -- especially if you take
Stranger at all seriously, which I think too many people do. I have a copy of the original unedited version of it, and while both longer and not as good (the editing really does improve it), it gives me all the more insight into how Heinlein undoubtedly meant it as a rather whimsical fable, weaving a tale purely for the fun of poking at religion. Sadly, some take it at face value, bemoaning "Oh, no, he's turned hippie!" -- which makes no sense, not if you follow the enduring hard-science tone of later works like
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and
Friday -- and even worse, some actual hippies tried to create their own Church of All Worlds. Yet all his life, from his short stories (I mentioned "The Roads Must Roll" -- and by the way, the mechanical term "waldo" comes from a Heinlein short story of that name) and juvenile novels (I recommend
Have Space Suit Will Travel and even his technical assistance to an old but sturdy movie called "Destination Moon"), Heinlein was the go-to technocrat of American SF -- and that's all I mean by using him as a reference point for critiquing
Shrugged. Rand and Heinlein were each in their own way arch-conservatives, but Rand loved some romantic ideal of industry whereas Heinlein always cared intensely about the details of science, and that's where Rand falls short of Heinlein. Rand can call herself the most fervent cheerleader of technocracy, but Heinlein was the quarterback.
2. About the motor. A device that could extract hydrogen from the air would be indeed be a fabulous thing. The prolific post-Heinleinian (i.e. hard-science) Ben Bova even wrote a novel,
The Green Trap, about such a capability -- although in the form of a cyanobacterium rather than a motor. Indeed, inquiry into a hydrogen economy can be traced back to a very old speech by a scientist named Haldane -- and, yes, I appreciate hydrogen as being only one aspect of the process of hydrolysis you're talking about.
I would actually enjoy assuming such a thing about Rand -- there's already enough so wrong with her that I could be, and can be, gracious about whatever she gets right. Case in point: earlier in this critique I speculated that Rand in her own vague would-be-romantic way was trying to imagine the motion of a maglev train. The problem is that in nearly 1200 pages she has more than ample opportunity to insert so much as one word specifying the process you mention, and she never does. Again and again the motor is simply described as plucking and using static electricity. That's it. That's all. No water, no ions, no fuels, none of that. One passage I glossed over in the Big Harangue was Galt actually proclaiming that he had captured the lightning itself. But as I understand it, standard electricity is already sufficient "lightning capturing" unto our day -- Edison beat Galt to it, ages ago.
And I would love to let Rand off the hook for this -- except that THIS IS NOT A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, even as some aspects of it strive to be science-fictional, and Rand most certainly did not see herself as a science fiction writer. (It is in a unique and funny way an ANTI-science fiction novel, a tale of innovations being
kept from society rather than
contributing to it.) Rand gives us the motor for its own sake, to brag about the principle of its operation regardless of whether or not it ever actually gets used for anything -- and THAT is where we part company with dilithium or the flux capacitor, because Rand really doesn't want to go anywhere (or anywhen), she chooses to concentrate solely on the inventions themselves. Rand was always stridently clear that this was first and last a philosophical manifesto for America and the world to live by. The claim is made repeatedly that Galt's PHILOSOPHY, a philosophy of inviolable absolutes, led him to the secret of being able to "capture lightning." Heck, I might even go easy on Rand if she mentioned Tesla in passing, and then I could have some pity on her, I could think "Ahh, she's one of those Tesla superfans, that's where she derailed." But she's only saying "This is how we should live" -- and so it becomes fair for me to say "But the motor which allegedly derives directly from your philosophy does not work."
3. About the slap. Galt is supposed to be the supreme and ultimate and perfect mouthpiece for Rand's philosophy. As such, he is barely a proper individual character in his own right -- and it shows, he simply feels so surreal and abstract as to be downright ghostly. So when he makes his crack about Thompson not representing the people, I do not take him at all as some quirky individual (like Rand's all too rare character Fred Kinnan, who will be coming back) giving some idle opinion, as you or I might about Dubya or Obama or whoever. (Please also notice that Thompson specifically said "we" and not just "I.") Read the discussion that just occurred -- Galt essentially wants to scuttle the ship of state. Within that context, as the mouthpiece of Rand's Objectivism, I am seriously obliged to wonder if all of democracy is getting slammed -- all the more because Judge Narragansett will get to do something truly radical at the very end of this novel.
As for light reading, no doubt I'm due for it some day, but none on the immediate horizon, sad to say.
I shall return.
************
By the way, I rather thought my going over the pages backwards was my tribute to Harold Pinter.
But to continue: after Galt and Thompson's first talk, there's a lot more of the usual snapping and screaming and overall hand-wringing among Rand's usual cast of horrids, with an interesting little flourish of personality from my man Fred Kinnan. The press promises a John Galt Plan which of course Galt is all too far from agreeing to, and we get apocalyptic reports from Wesley Mouch like "California's blown to pieces." Now here's an interesting little bit of Mad Maxery: "'There's armed fighting all over the state, between a "People's Party," led by Ma Chalmers and her soybean cult of Orient-admirers -- and something called "Back to God," led by some former oil-field owners.'" I give Rand this much credit: she was not one to suffer theocrats, not even American ones. Still: "soybean cult"? In any event, Thompson turns to Dagny for advice on how to deal with Galt:
"What do you make of it? Can you figure him out?"
"He's an arrogant egoist," she said. "He's an ambitious adventurer. He's a man of unlimited audacity who's playing for the biggest stakes in the world." ...
"The biggest stakes in the world, Miss Taggart?" Mr. Thompson was asking her anxiously. "What is it? What does he want?"
"Reality. This earth."
"I don't know quite what you mean ... "
Thompson, I'm with you there; if Rand and her book's fans wanted a Second American Revolution, they could have bloody well said so outright by now, instead of my having to piece it together like this after over 1100 friggin' pages. Thompson persists:
" ... Do you think he will ever surrender?"
The needle within her wavered for a moment, burning its oscillating way between two courses: should she say that he would not, and see them kill him? -- should she say that he would, and see them hold onto their power till they destroyed the world?
"He will," she said firmly. "He'll give in, if you treat him right. He's too ambitious to refuse power. Don't let him escape, but don't threaten him -- or harm him. Fear won't work. He's impervious to fear."
"But what if ... I mean, with the way things are collapsing ... what if he holds out too long?"
"He won't. He's too practical for that. By the way, are you letting him learn any news about the state of the country?"
"Why ... no."
"I would suggest that you let him have copies of your confidential reports. He'll see that it won't be long now."
"That's a good idea! A very good idea! ... "
Back in her apartment, Dagny notices a note slipped under her door, reading:
Dagny:
Sit tight. Watch them. When he'll need our help, call me at OR 6-5693.
F.
So, what does Galt think of the reports? Give me another while and I'll tell you. 57 pages to go.
************
Speaking of 57, it occurs to me that 1957 was perhaps an ideal time for Rand to dump this into the American subconscious. (You have to remember, she was working on this since 1945.) On the one hand, people were rightly scared of World War Three and the Sputnik launch was just on the horizon, while back home we were worrying about juvenile delinquency and such. So people were seriously wondering what was to become of Western civilization. At exactly the same time, though, people were chafing under all the rigorous conformity, they were itching to break free. Rand satisfies both desires at once, by offering a relatively easy and heroic rejuvenation of our civilization (she can play up the inner torment all she wants, but a strike is still much easier than participating in, say, a Civil War) and at the same time playing her heroes up as devil-may-care mavericks defiant and even contemptuous of social convention. When in "Mad Men" Bert Cooper (played by the ever great Robert Morse) remarks to Don Draper that Ayn Rand would have drooled over him, I have to wonder, because the "Mad Men" ideal is to succeed smoothly and effortlessly while not feeling bound by convention. I often wonder if certain manifestos, especially the really bad ones, need a specific window of historic time to make their biggest impact, and the more I think on it, the more Rand needed 1957.
Anyway ... Thompson sees Galt again, who is of course unimpressed by the reports, and for some reason Thompson has James with him and James launches into "You don't have a monopoly on truth!" and other such rhetoric. "There was something wrong in Taggart's manner -- thought Mr. Thompson, frowning -- some odd, too personal resentment, as if it were not a political issue that he had come here to solve." Indeed, James's motivation seems to come down to "I'm the big man, I'm the hero, me me me, I'm tired of being overshadowed by my sister," something like that. Anyhow, Galt blows off James's appeal to conscience. Next comes Chick Morrison, making appeals for pity. "Did they feel any pity for Hank Rearden?" Galt asks, and that's that. Dr. Floyd Ferris comes in, saying that the collapse of America will be Galt's personal moral responsibility, and of course this has no leverage with him. Finally, Thompson asks who Galt would like to see, and he specifies Dr. Robert Stadler.
As ever, Rand's would-be clowns are in fact making sense, the true nonsense being absolutely everything being all up to only John Galt. Before Galt brought up Rearden, Morrison showed him a plea from ten thousand schoolchildren, a plea from a home for the crippled, a petition from ministers of "two hundred different faiths" and an appeal from "the mothers of the country." Galt read none of them, and then Morrison argued:
" ... They may be weak, helpless, blind, ignorant. But you, who are so intelligent and strong, can't you take pity on them? Can't you help them?"
"By dropping my intelligence and following their blindness?"
"They may be wrong, but they don't know any better!"
"But I, who do, should obey them?"
Yes, it's this tiresome, this "Embrace your inner Social Darwinist" pitch. I've bumped up against this before. Being good to people would be a surrender of standards. Funny, I thought it WAS a standard.
The Stadler business gets a bit involved, so I'll take another break now.
************
Two new thoughts, one about the show "Frasier" and another about space activism. On "Frasier" it was quite sweet that Niles Crane, still married to the invisible Maris, had a major crush on Daphne Moon. So it hurts all the more for me to read a scene, indeed their very last scene together, between Eddie Willers and Dagny, knowing that "Dagny" sounds so much like "Daphne" in my head and also knowing that Eddie has probably stroked off whole buckets' worth yearning after Dagny. Eddie resolves to go out to San Francisco to try to keep the railroad going himself, as Dagny is stuck in New York. They discuss their business, and then:
He started to go, but stopped, turned to her and asked, his voice low, but steady, neither as plea or despair, but as a last gesture of conscientious clarity to close a long ledger. "Dagny ... did you know ... how I felt about you?"
"Yes," she said softly, realizing in this moment that she had known it wordlessly. "I knew it."
"Good-bye, Dagny."
And th-th-th-that's all, folks -- and I still wish Eddie and Cherryl Brooks could have hooked up. As for space activism: I would attend events where people were basically playing advocate for NASA, trying to drum up unconditional public support for NASA no matter what, and I began to pick up a certain attitude, one that went "Yes, much of the populace is ignorant, but if we can still manage to shake them down for their tax dollars anyway, we can still squeeze out ever cooler space missions." On one level I could agree with such an attitude, because if I do say so myself common attitudes towards science are downright medieval, and I could even see how they would figure that NASA was the only game worth playing -- but still I would find myself yearning for a better arrangement, one in which Americans could genuinely get behind space exploration and not just sort of wake up with it like the ugly girl after the party, the night and the hangover, as well as far more flexibility than just rubber-stamping NASA. I think of all this because it's about the most resonant analogy I can drum up for Stadler. Stadler is called in to visit Galt and immediately launches into a tirade while Galt utters not one syllable:
"I didn't bring you to this!" he cried. "I didn't mean to! I couldn't help it! It's not what I intended! ... John! I'm not to blame for it! I'm not! I never had a chance against them! They own the world! They left me no place in it! ... What's reason to them? What's science? You don't know how deadly they are! You don't understand them! They don't think! They're mindless animals moved by irrational feelings -- by their greedy, grasping, blind, uncontrollable feelings! They seize whatever they want, that's all they know: that they want it, regardless of cause, effect or logic -- they
want it, the bloody, grubbing pigs! ... What did you want me to do? Spend my life begging for jobs? Begging my inferiors for funds and endowments? Did you want my work to depend on the mercy of the ruffians who have a knack for making money? I had no time to compete with them with money or markets or any of their miserable material pursuits! Was that your idea of justice -- that they should spend their money on liquor, yachts, and women, while the priceless hours of
my life were wasted for lack of scientific equipment? Persuasion? How could I persuade them? What language could I speak to men who don't think? ... You don't know how lonely I was, how starved for some spark of intelligence! ... "
I'm already condensing this, and it keeps going on more or less like this until --
"Don't look at me, God damn you! I'm not afraid of you any longer! Do you hear me? I am not afraid! Who are you to blame me, you miserable failure? Here's where
your road has brought you! Here you are, caught, helpless, under guard, to be killed by those brutes at any moment -- and you dare to accuse me of being impractical! Oh yes, you're going to be killed! You won't win! You can't be allowed to win!
You are the man who has to be destroyed!"
Dr. Stadler's gasp was a muffled scream, as if the immobility of the figure on the window sill had served as a silent reflector and had suddenly made him see the full meaning of his own words.
"No!" moaned Dr. Stadler, moving his head from side to side, to escape the unmoving green eyes. "No! ... No! ... No!"
Galt's voice had the same unbending austerity as his eyes: "You have said everything I wanted to say to you."
Dr. Stadler banged his fists against the door; when it was opened, he ran out of the room.
Can I forgive Rand a little for this? For she does not seem to be pro-nukes, and she wrote this just before the Space Race and certain military developments would give birth to microcomputers and the Internet. From her standpoint in 1957, perhaps science helped along by government could be a disillusioning thing. The problem being -- why can't her modern followers bother to update their premises?
This chapter -- which, by the way, is titled "The Egoist" -- is six pages from ending. I'll do that tomorrow.