Good book hampered by bad editing

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	• Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Ed. HC) Ayn Rand Dutton Adult, 2005 - 1192 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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.

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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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.

A celebration of human normalcy

It is difficult to find a book of fiction that has caused so much controversy as this one, and its critics have a degree of zeal that is matched by its defenders. It is a gigantic philosophical tome, with characters that many have scoffed at as being larger than life, as representing a sterile view of the human psyche, and as being naïve and sophomoric in its world view. Hated in general by both conservatives and liberals, those who love the book envy those who are approaching it for the first time. It is a book for optimists; a book for those who love and celebrate life. But above all it is a book for normal people, because in the final analysis, even though its author may have viewed its characters as representing statistical outliers, as rare and distinctive visionaries who epitomize high intelligence and creativity, it represents what it means for a human to be normal.

It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to want to organize themselves in a socialist state with no personal rights and no freedom to make their own way. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to wage war and destruction against themselves and others. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to avoid responsibility for their actions and blame others for their failures. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to hypothesize an imaginary deity and prostrate themselves in contemplation of it. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to serve others without question and with no mutual respect. It is abnormal and an aberration for humans to sit still, to lose their kinetic energy, both physical and mental, and not overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

Humans are in a state of normalcy when they create, build, think, and prosper, and unashamed when they are doing so. This novel, now appearing in print for fifty years, asks the reader to contemplate what would happen if the most creative and industrious of humans were to withdraw from society and leave it to those who took on the grotesqueness of inaction, envy, and sterile diatribes of socialist thought. It asks the reader to contemplate what it takes to have a productive, healthy, comfortable, technological society. Whose intelligence and entrepreneurial alertness are in full operation in such a society and what are the consequences if these are extinguished by the voluntary withdrawal of those who possess them?

The philosophical dialog one can find in this book has drawn the ire of many an academic philosopher and politician. The reviews of the book when it was first published fifty years were probably the most vituperative of all in print. But vehemence towards the book has not extinguished its relevance or its power to instigate critical reflection. It is an alternative view of ethics, one that dignifies human individuality and self-interest. It is an ethic that abhors the initiation of force and worships human ingenuity. The philosophical dialog inked on its pages is a testament to the center of human optimism, and it is a perfect reflection and celebration of human normalcy.

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Required Reading for the Sane

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; in fact, check my review of Jeff Walker's book "The Ayn Rand cult", as I plan to read his book next, whose back-cover blurbs promise to expose Objectivism as "a classic cult."

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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