Ayn Rand
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1556
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Atlas may have shrugged, but I really cringed 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.
** Spoiler Warning ***
Oh, boy, where do I start? First, let me say this: that hero of hers may have stopped the motor of the world, he certainly could not slow down Ayn Rand's FURIOUS typewriter. This edition has 1,168 pages in tiny fonts. It should have been, and easily could have been, condensed to 300-400 pages. At most.
As a literary work it is flawed. There is not much I want to add to what other reviewers have already commented: it is long, the characters are two-dimensional, the dialogs long and repetitive, etc.
The only good thing I can say about this book is that it exposes the hypocrisy of those "benevolent social planners". Read in light of our current times of government bailouts and "wealth spreading", it is eerily familiar (for this I give it more than the minimum 1 star).
But it is not a novel in the traditional sense, it is a vehicle for Ayn Rand to expound her philosophy. And expound she did, with a vengeance.
Maybe one day I will write a full review of her philosophy, which I think is also flawed (though it has some good elements). Why is it called "objectivism" anyway? It sounds more like "subjectivism" or "absolutism" to me: she views everything as black-or-white, there is no middle ground, and those who do not agree with her are branded "irrational".
Since this is a review of the book, let me focus on it now. It being a vehicle for her philosophy which presumably she wants the user to apply in real life, then the fictional world she constructs must be at least somewhat realistic. But it is not. It is populated with three types of people only: 1. the industrialists whose only goal is to maximize his or her profit; 2. hypocrites who pay lip service to the abstract concepts of "social justice", "equalization of opportunity", but whose real purpose is to restrict the freedom of the industrialists and 3. the gullible "public", waiting to be rescued by their heroes. Aside from the fact that there are more types of people in the real world, even the ones in the book are not believable. The villains are singlemindedly against the heroes, to the point of absurdity (and Ayn Rand thinks herself as the champion of reason). For example, why is Jim Taggart so against his sister's success when he is the president of the same company? He stands to profit from it! Yet he persistently tries to run his own company to the ground. All the villains are absurd caricatures in her book.
Even the "good guys" are not believable, and their relationships are just bizarre. Consider the following conversation between Rearden and Dagny, after they had sex for the first time (Keep in mind these are two main characters and heroes of the book, they went on to have a long relationship, which is fraught with contempt, despisement and violence).
Rearden: I want to you know this. What I feel for you is contempt. But it's nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don't love you. I never loved anyone... I wanted you as one wants a whore .. You're as vile an animal as I am. .. I held it as my honor that I would never need anyone. I need you. ...
Dagny: I want you, Hank. I'm much of an animal than you think. .. You'll have me any time you wish, anywhere, on any terms. .. If I'm asked to name my proudest achievement, I will say: I have slept with Hand Rearden. I had earned it.
Yet this is supposed to be a model relationship between the good guys. Now ask yourself if you would speak like this and have a relationship on such grounds. And Dagny is supposed to be a driven, shrewd and rational businesswoman. Give me a break. With heroes like these, who needs villains?
Editorial Review:
At last, Ayn Rand's masterpiece is available to her millions of loyal readers in trade paperback.
With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?", Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. Atlas Shrugged made Rand not only one of the most popular novelists of the century, but one of its most influential thinkers.
Atlas Shrugged is the astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world--and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged stretches the boundaries further than any book you have ever read. It is a mystery, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder--and rebirth--of man's spirit.
* Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club
