A colleague of mine
has my copy of Atlas Shrugged.
I warned him, and I tried to warn him off reading it, but he insisted.
I told him that this was my fifth copy, the first I threw out the window of a moving car, the second and third I took to the range and shot, and the fourth got run through my desk shredder, one or four pages at a time. it took me five copies before I could stand to get through it.
No, I won’t see the movie. Having that all injected into my brain once is more than enough. I’m assured that the movie is well done and honest to the book, and for acolytes of Ms Rand, that’s very nice, hopefully they’ll finish all three and do a good job of it. When they do, I might rent the DVD’s and scan through to a few parts I considered enjoyable in the book.
The world is not black and white. In the era of Randolph Scott, the good guys were always good, no matter what, and the bad guys were bad all the time, and always lost. That world of serial westerns was as realistic a portrayal of the west as you can’t get. Give me Blondie any day, or Angel eyes; the good guys sometimes act bad. Lie with cheap women. Doublecross a partner, maybe even. In the end, they do the right thing, but they are not the two dimensional cardboard cutouts from the beginning of the Wild Wild West, they have some depth and some dimension.
Atlas Shrugged is the Taurus Judge of conservatism/civil libertarianism. It’s good to have a weapon, but there are better suited weapons for the purpose. it looks nice, and on the surface it’s powerful and big, but at the core it tries to do several things, for each of which it is well unsuited.
Sure, Randolph Scott was a hoot to watch. And it’s fun to see bad guys get their comeuppance. Hell, evengun hating peace loving tree hugging Liberals flock to the theaters to see Bruce WIllis shoot the bad guys. And therin lies the problem with all of this: Not all bad guys are always all bad. Not all good guys are always all good. And there is nor has there ever been any person or group of people that can- as in Atlas Shrugged- drag the world to a halt as a result of the loss of their industry, it cannot happen, and never will. There will always be someone to step in and fill the gap, even if their gap filling is inadequate and inefficient.
Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons” is- though a much lighter piece- a much better indication of our futures; it’s easy to read the book and think “Those very few, very intelligent people- they are the kings of this planet, of this race! ” but when you look around, the obvious truth is not that the intelligent and industrious are the rulers of the race, but slaves to it. Such is it as it is, such it will always be. Oh, we’re compensated for the enslavement, and frankly, bright people have the power to wrench more enjoyment from life than the stupid, but we have chosen our enslavement by our very industry. “Want something done?” Lucille Ball once famously said, “Give it to a busy person”
There will always be busy people. The instant Atlas Shrugs, another Atlas will be right behind him, to take up the burden- maybe better, maybe worse, but the line of pretenders to the throne is as endless as the human race.
I have no love for the book, though I think Ms Rand might have been a lovely and interesting person to know in person. I share her burning desire that people be free and have a right to the fruit of their labor. Had she been a carpenter, or a chef, she might well have left the world a far better place than it was when she entered; instead, I fear, she leaves behind her a trail of acolytes as unwilling to admit her slightest fault as owners of Norinco 1911’s or people who have a Taurus Judge sitting on ther nightstand next to the false teeth in the glass and the Harlequin romance.
18 comments Og | Uncategorized
This is a brilliant post
So many Tea Partiers are all het up about the movie. It would be amusing if it weren’t so sad.
The underpinning fault of Rand’s philosophy is the “self-interested” man. People can’t stand such a man. They might begrudgingly admire him, but really find him distasteful.
Just take a look: who’s the most self-interested man around these days? Donald Trump. I watch the Randians go ape-shit with his plan to run for president. They can’t stand him, he’s a buffoon, he gives money to Democrats, he’s out for himself, he’s friends with the Devil, he goes bankrupt at will, he’s self-interested. Well duh. That’s what it looks like. A man in the full glory of his self-interest is all that and a bad comb over. Deal.
Lol. Joan, that is The Comment Of The Week.
Randolph Scott!
:)
Seriously, all well said, and thank you.
Joan — word!
Jenny
I’m not particularly interested in this movie, either. I haven’t read the book, and don’t figure it’ll wind up on my reading list any time soon. I think I’ll go re-read Freehold instead.
I fear I must watch the movie now, if only to be able to refute it to my friends who watch it.
Hardly remember the book since it’s been forty years since I read it.
Excellent post.
If you depend on a Taurus Judge, and the other guy survives and takes you to court: “Judge not lest ye be judged”.
I won’t be seeing the movie either, which will be a surprise no doubt to the folks who knew me a decade ago.
Let me see how many Randroids I can drag out of the woodwork by stating why: Rand’s work is fundamentally illogical, based on false premises, riddled with logical error (particularly of the “does not follow” variety) and utterly useless as any measure of understanding the human condition.
That said, I feel much as you do about her love of liberty and recognition of the value of property rights in any civil society.
With Rand you are either a bazillionaire like Rearden or you are a slag. No room for those folks who might not be geniuses, or are unable to create transformative products.
You do realize Randolph Scott and Cary Grant were pole-smokers, right? They were roommates, and the studio got so pissed off at their debauched parties that they made them get separate places.
I read it as a youth in college. I found myself bored with her pedantic approach to teaching the very solid concepts she was trying to explain.
Someone else said of “Atlas Shrugged (the book)”: Great book, but you’d better have a plan to force yourself to stay with it though the first 400 pages, or you won’t ever make it to the good parts”.
But, you comparison to a Taurus Judge is excellent! I’m “judgmental” about them, too!
You who’ve read my blog know how low I hold Rand and her true-believer acolytes.
But I have read a review that I thought I should share. It says a few things that echo what has been said here about what was most appealing about the book — and then added this: “Whereas the talky, preachy, self-absorbed characters of the book grate, the film’s rendering of them gives them dimension. Pages of dialogue are reduced to three-sentence conversations. That’s good.”
The reviewer thinks the movie timely and that it “succeeds in capturing on film the spirit of Rand’s ideas concerning Big Government criminals and their corporate bedfellows.”
I think that’s BAD. My observation is that conservatives often utter a sigh of relief and become less concerned once light is shined by the media on bad ideas. And that is because even we conservatives have been conditioned to believe we live in a gloriously rational and just world such a depicted by Randolph Scott, “so now that it’s common knowledge, those bad things will be fixed.” (Great Og analogy!)
About the only good that could come from the movie is that non-conservatives see it and another segment of society becomes former liberals. Some liberals are that out of habit and not out of firm conviction. Film has done that for many former liberals. Manchurian candidate did it in the early 60s. A Clockwork Orange did it in the early 70s. Maybe this film, with it’s stark depiction of the downside of liberalism will do it for many in this generation.
I’m all for even a partial antidote that can reduce the population of zombies and vampires. I’m sure you’d prefer smaller hordes too.
Personally, I preferred her short novel Anthem, but that’s just me.
“The Marching Morons” was an excellent story, and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the inspiration for the movie Idiotocracy.
I tried reading it in my youth but couldn’t get past the first ten or so pages. It was like slogging uphill through quicksand in 120-degree heat wearing wet canvas and cutting razor brush with a dull machete while someone with a megaphone was shouting at you from all sides.
Reading was extremely important to a kid with bad eyes, and I read novels to enjoy and to escape, to feed my life with passion and stock the bare cupboards with rich foods – not to “better” myself or hammer my brain into a certain shape.
Being a PK/MK I was already too familiar with the Jedi Preaching Voice and ran to avoid it at every *optional* opportunity – of which there were too few until I grew up and could step outside the smothering embrace. And now I will blog this since it’s me again.
Og, I admire Rand, and her “book,” but not to the point of zealotry.
The actions you mentioning as taking against Rand’s book; multiple copies meeting various early, violent demises; are not actions I would take against Rand’s “book,” but I would take such actions against Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.
Lol. I’ve never read it, but I’ve read enough about it to be able to say, I’mn glad I haven’t.
I’ve read the book three times now over 35 years, and every time I read it, I see different things in it.
I’m not an Ayn Rand fanboi, and I almost think “The Fountainhead” is a better novel.
My wife tried to read “Atlas Shrugged”, but gave up on it as she said the characters in it ‘weren’t nice people’, which is a pretty good summation of them.
We saw the movie last night, and while she liked it, I thought it was passable at best. I hope they make enough money on it to be able to do the other two parts they have planned, but the theater was pretty empty.
Terrible book. I wish I had the time back that I spent reading it as a young conservative brain full of mush instead of, say, chasing girls.
If we have been reduced to using cinema to put our ideas across, this country is well and truly circling the drain, if not indeed already halfway through the P-trap.
I have a copy of atlas shrugged somewhere in my room. thoughtfully wrapped in a t-shirt hell t-shirt that proclaims, “I’d rather be snorting cocaine off a hookers ass!”
For every great force, one must apply an equally great counterforce!. I think the T-shirt is maybe a greater counterforce.
I went to see this yesterday. It is not as bad as the critics say, and is definitely worth the support of anybody who detests the global warming scam.
http://pascalfervor.blogspot.com/2011/05/atlas-mugged.html
I recommend seeing the it for at least two of the no-name stars, as they are easy to look at.
But more importantly, the fact that critics panned for the same reasons as reflected in the behavior of critics in Rand’s other novel, “The Fountainhead.” There are so many vested interests for whom the exposure of how politics pays science to falsify studies would otherwise censor this movie if they could. Instead, the movie has been denied TV access to promote the film. That, along with the critics, could cause financial disaster for they who included that part of the story in this movie greatly scaled down from the enormous book.