Late last night I finished Atlas Shrugged. The day before yesterday I sort of got muddled down in "The Speech". Yesterday I intended to at a minimum get through "The Speech". I finished it in the evening and then talked with Wifey for awhile. I read a bit more and at about 11 I had 50 pages or so left. I decided to stay up and finish it. By about midnight I saw how it played out and got to THE END. Now it is time to review it. I will do my best not to spoil anything but still do a meaningful review.
A real quick description of the story. Basically Atlas Shrugged follows 3 groups of people: some big business type industrialists, people who think others should give them stuff who are called moochers, and those who use force to take from others who are called looters. It follows these 3 groups of people through an increasingly regulated and socialist society. As the situation deteriorates things get more and more interesting as these philosophies as personified by the characters clash.
The Good: It made me think a lot about politics, my thoughts and values. It didn't fundamentally reshape anything for me as I pretty much was a heartless libertarian (though with a grasp on reality so I have some Republican leanings) but it did support and deepen my thinking on some issues.
The Bad: I found it bitterly ironic that while Atlas Shrugged talked about how people should be free to do whatever they want (socially and economically) it also had decisive elements of judgment. The attitude was "everything I do/think is perfect" and people who do otherwise suck. Interestingly the judgments were almost all social and in some ways conflicted with the actions of the characters. That a woman who could ramble for 70 pages about how people should be economically free can toss out random glib and superficial judgments of various social behaviors of others really bothers me.
The Ugly: Have I mentioned that this book was long. I mean ridiculously long. I guess Ayn Rand found art and beauty in pages of rambling about how a skirt layed on the legs of a character while she smoked a cigarette or how some trees looked or whatever. It wasted a ton of my time and drove me completely nuts. At a couple points it picked up but books shouldn't be boring multiple times for a couple hundred pages. What people who write Paladin Press books do to get from say 75 pages to their requisite 120-140 (unnecessary repetition and just needless rambling) Ayn Rand seems to have done, except it took the book from say 700-800 pages to over 1,100. This book puts a lot of people off because it is really long, in my personal opinion the book didn't need to be anywhere near as long as it was. I feel like a lot of my time was wasted.
Thoughts?
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9 comments:
I love Atlas Shrugged but agree that there are some times in the book when it gets a little too rambling. FYI, the movie is getting ready to come out on April 15th (1st part of it anyway, as an indie film). More information including trailer at http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/.
Atlas Shrugged is like some sort of value-system Rorshach test...everyone reads the same book, but gets a different message out of it. Two things jumped out at me from the book - the first, the notion that guilt only works on you if you let it. THe quote about "make a man feel guilty and he'll accept whatever punishment you give him" part was very illuminating. Secondly, I have never viewed money the same since I read this book. Francisco's speech about 'the root of all money', esp., made an impression.
Yeah, the speech, which in my copy was 68 pages, can be a bit too muddle through but this book is definitely one I find myself re-reading over and over. While I dont agree with all of it, it does make me *think* and thats what a good book should do.
Rather than "wasting my time" reading the book, I'll just wait to watch the movie in april.
I've always that "Atlas Shrugged" was a bunch of socialistic ideas taken to ridiculous conclusions. It's heavy heavy reading.
I bought that book... probably two years ago. Tried desperately to read it last year, and gave up. It seems to me that she took three pages to say something that could've taken three sentences, or, at least, three paragraphs. It nags at me that I didn't finish it, so, I will make another attempt. I hate for anything to get the better of me.
It was definitely long... A couple of the speeches could definitely have been shorter: especially, well you know which one. I didn't mind the descriptive elements, but the repetetiveness of some parts drove me nuts. However, I did change some of my thinking, just a bit, after reading this book. Basically it boils down to my favorite line from the whole thing, where (a character) says "Get the hell out of my way"...
I read it back in 1992 or so, the money speeck from the copper tycoon (fergit his name) was good, but dang, about 60 pages long. I'd have lost my voice halfway through that speech.
They say The Fountainhead is much the same.
The book is worth reading more than once, but once you've read the first three pages of "The Speech" you can skip the rest of it. I don't think I've ever gotten all the way through it, and the idea that anyone would ever listen to a radio broadcast that long is simply ludicrous even in a more attentive age than ours.
I'm with Commander Zero - the key things to learn are about greed and money, and I'd throw in a lesson I pulled that Rand probably didn't intend: the difference between real, heartfelt charity and forced, taxation-based redistribution of wealth.
I'll be the mindless devotee here. :-)
Atlas Shrugged was the final catalyst that changed me from a Seattle-ite college greeny to a heartless libertarian with minarchist tendencies.
And I have to say that I truly enjoyed the long, artful descriptions. In particular, the sensuality and the focus on how the craft of Man can be artful even in the most mundane things like a burning cigarette. But, I also like Robert Jordan who was another author that many consider to be long-winded in his story-telling.
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