Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Ed. HC) | Ayn Rand | Night's Splender Studded in Diamonds. More...

Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Ed. HC) | Ayn Rand | What a book

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Atlas Shrugged (Ce...

	Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Ed. HC) Ayn Rand Dutton Adult, 2005 - 1192 pages average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Night's Splender Studded in Diamonds. More Stars, Please!

I've read this novel three times. I'll read it again.

Each time it seems to live in my mind on a grander, higher scale.

In interviews and in some of her nonfiction books, Rand has said that the purpose of a novel is to entertain, to tell a good story. In ATLAS SHRUGGED she has accomplished this purpose, possibly better than any other novel. I haven't read every other novel; I don't want to read every other novel, so I won't attempt to say or prove this with certainty. I will say with certainty that ATLAS SHRUGGED is not a good story; it's a great story.

Reportedly, Rand's intellectual friends were continually asking her to write her ideals into nonfiction (maybe so they could digest them better); yet her soul lived in stories painting the heroic in life. She believed we live in a beneficent universe and that human beings were meant to achieve great joy, and to feel that joy in every moment.

In ATLAS SHRUGGED, Rand proceeded to dramatize (not to intellectualize) her concept of why we have thoughtlessly allowed ourselves to pervert this beneficence, and how to get back on track.

Many would say that a 50 page speech, given to the world by John Galt over secured radio waves, is more intellectualization than dramatization. I read that clear radio voice as drama perfectly staged within a well executed plot; I saw it as well earned, actually necessitated, by the complex weaving of multiple mysteries building unequivocally to the dramatic enlightenment presented in that speech.

The first time I read Atlas, in 1986, it took me a few months to get through it. It had taken me years prior to that to get past the first scenes of Eddie's "causeless uneasiness." I would read carefully to the point of him recalling the magnificent oak tree which was rotten inside, and I'd put down the book. Eddie's gestalt was so depressing and confusing, I couldn't push forward, couldn't go beyond this budding and painful awareness in Eddie, a seeding of consciousness which felt as if it had nowhere, no way to blossom.

Maybe I sensed the plot would move slowly, complexly, mysteriously, dramatically ... backward ... into the darkest night of the soul of the human race, before it would be ready to lift into any type of healing light.

It took me a while, a bit of growing, to be ready for that backwards, downward soul drop.

Yet, when Atlas lifted the reader into Galt's Gulch, I soared.

I soared higher than I've been taken by any work of fiction.

Is it a great story when an author takes a reader into the bowels of human culture, into the primal, absolute absence of true thought, paints that dank sewer-of-a-world brilliantly with the deepest, richest, most frightening and heart-wrenching color and clarity, then surges the reader suddenly upward on the strongest wings available to an embodied human form? Is that a great story, or what??

I'm speaking beyond the airplane ride Dagney piloted to break through to a small setting where a tiny, almost toy-like railroad was a more true-to-life example of that industry than the ugly, gritty, dark world beyond Galt's location.

When I say, simply, that there are true CHARACTERS in this book, I might have to set that statement against a contrast which would have to consider that there may be no true characters in any other novel. But, I don't want to say that, exactly. I merely want to exalt as it deserves, Rand's executed skill as a novelist.

I love stories. I love characters. I consistently read books I'm able to unfailingly and honestly give 5 Star reviews.

But to read ATLAS SHRUGGED is to be temporarily diminished in ability to fully enjoy other novels. This is why I hesitate to read it again right away. The contrast in the depth of characters, the complexity of plot and subplot machinations, the beauty of the mystery which unfolds in pacing so perfect it cannot be called pacing, it must be described as a natural, living sequence of cause and effect, all this honoring of the true form of the story, of a saga, is almost too rich to exist in the same time frame of other examples of human art.

Even as I exalt Atlas, however, this time I will be able to return immediately to my culinary cozies and love the heck out of them. Why? That's for me to know and you to find out, if you're interested.

For a placement of my customer review of ATLAS SHRUGGED on Amazon.com, I chose the cover of this novel which was taken from a painting by Ayn Rand's husband, Frank O'Conner. He was an artist; he gave a worthy image for his wife's novel.

I admire and appreciate every artistic version of this book, every exquisite cover presentation; the book's gestalt has the capacity to draw greatness from anyone who attempts to capture any nuance of it. But, I wanted to honor Rand's husband's contribution to her career as a novelist, a contribution which went beyond what most of her readers would be able to imagine. And I love O'Conner's red sun setting, his glowing, straight steel rails heading toward that day's end. I love the deep greens and iron-rust-red of the sun ball, and more.

I will stand, spine straight as possible with arthritis, and salute Ayn Rand and Frank O'Conner. They lived. They suffered. As all of us, possibly they suffered unnecessarily, as a matter of maturing as a race, as a matter of growing in consciousness about cause and effect. In their art, Ayn and Frank transcended the pain and left us gifted.

Live enthralled within this book as a story, as a novel, first. Then begin thinking your own thoughts, making your own living, one you're able to enjoy as who you are, not as Ayn Rand, not as Frank O'conner. As you. A simple person rich in capacity to enjoy the most basic of moments, to feel the grandness of human life in every breath.

Remember the perfect flavor of that cheeseburger Dagney relished in the small diner which almost magically appeared on her hardrock route to nirvana. (And you wonder why I love culinaries?)

Maybe that's what Rand wanted to accomplish all along. She wanted to give each of us that unique individual inside, terrified of shining, filled with shame (afraid to eat, even). Maybe she wanted to tell us, no, to show us that we have made no Original Sin. We were born free.

Now we must each live free, in our own way. And, to be a hero might not mean to conquer impossible dreams which we honestly don't want to reach. Maybe it means to enjoy each day and do what we can to live as who we are, to know who we are. Inside and out. As unique individuals, each unlike any other, yet coexisting with other individuals who are interesting to know in their variety of faces, not masks.

Who is John Galt?

Who are YOU?

I know who I am. Sort of. I'm gaining on the concept daily.

Rest assured that life was meant to be abundantly benefic, not a pain in the patootie.

For attempting to paint this awareness in words and oils, I thank you Ayn Rand and Frank O'Conner. Wherever you are (somewhat against your precepts, I believe your consciousness still exists), "live long and prosper,"

Linda G. Shelnutt
Author of several Kindle books, including:
Molasses Moon

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What a book

This book has influenced my life and the way I view the world and events. The second most influencial book in my life (the Bible being the first) I have read this book over and over. I can see why she would have a cult following. I would highly recommend reading this book for everyone.

Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged is a timeless classic about an industrialist with the weight of the world on her shoulders. After completing the book, I began to reflect on the interdependance of each member of society and the duty we have to one another. Ayn Rand changed the way I think about capitalism and economics. Interesting sub plots.

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Required Reading for the Sane

I reread Atlas shrugged, and as befits a classic, my review is even stronger this time. This time around, I read and listened to the audio book version together, highlighting key passages for their philosophical insight. There are 500 pages of a great novel, 500 pages of a comprehensive objective philosophy survey textbook, and 200 pages that could have been edited out to make this 1200 page concrete block more portable.

Still, my first review holds true: this must rate as one of the literary classics of the 20th century for Rand's philosophical insights and facility for cinematicly descriptive writing, an amazing feat for a Russian-born author writing in her second language. The application of Randian philsophy to current events, politics, and cultural climate leads one to the conclusion that Rand was more right than we'd like to admit.

Original review:

This must rate as one of the literary classics of the 20th century for Rand's philosophical insights and facility for cinematicly descriptive writing, an amazing feat for a Russian-born author writing in her second language. The application of Randian philosophy to current events, politics, and cultural climate leads one to the conclusion that Rand was more right than we'd like to admit.

The rating is for the ideas; the novel that is wrapped around them would rate just a little lower, knocked down by too many long monologues to express those ideas, especially a 50-page one at the crucial climax of the book that should have involved dialogue, action, and crises.

Still, this book packs such a vast array of (I think its safe to say) dangerous ideas that it can't be ignored. In fact, 50 years later, the ideas that have been ignored are glaringly obvious in current economic, political, and cultural loose thinking and the rotten fruits that have arisen from it. I felt as though I was watching Rand script some of the wrong-headed events I've witnessed in working around government projects the last several years.

Obviously, as a Christian, I can't agree with Rand's core idea that morality is only a result of rational or internal values (objectivism, as this philosophy has become known). God is the creator and source of all morality.

I do think that Rand is close to the truth in saying that the fall, the eating of the fruit of the tree of good and evil, made man his own moral compass. Rand believes that that event made man an Objectivist. I believe that event made us fallen sinners, because seeing good and evil, we are unable to always choose the good, thus we are inherently sinful and in need of God's miraculous salvation. Rand does not believe in the possibility of miracles or the need for salvation.

This should be required reading for politicians who want to enhance the "public welfare" or raise taxes so that government can "invest" in charity and other good deeds, and for those of any stripe who believe that they can act in the "public interest" by forcibly expropriating private property.

Rand's ideas have attained "cult" status; for example, check my review of Jeff Walker's book The Ayn Rand Cult, as as an example of this type, whose back-cover blurbs promise to expose Objectivism as "a classic cult."

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Good book hampered by bad editing

Let me start off by stating that this is a book worth reading. In it, Ayn Rand propounds her philosophy of Objectivism (politically similar to Libertarianism) which, as she states, has the following core principles:

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
--Ayn Rand

There's not much to fault in those principles; and, it's easy to envision the benefit that could accrue from espousing them. Even the story itself has appeal: it takes place within an extremely socialistic society whose economy is foundering because all of its great industrialists are disappearing.

My problem with the book, and what made it, at times, almost torture to get through, is that the action of the story happens between a seemingly interminable series of long repetitive speeches expounding Rand's philosophy. For example, toward the end of the book, a character gives an uninterrupted speech of almost 70 pages; and, even more exasperating than the sheer length of the speech is the fact that it's essentially just a reiteration of points made earlier in the book by other characters -- and earlier in the speech by the character himself. This book would've been made considerably better if several hundred pages of tedious pontifications had been culled from it.

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