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Author: Ayn Rand
Category: Fiction

Part of me feels guilty wasting words in this review, the other part of me is compelled to do so as a favor to society. Obviously we know what side of me won and if you want the short and simple without having to spend your time reading the rest of what I have to say, just take this with you: THIS. BOOK. SUCKS.

Considering the rabid following this book has, the multitude of times I have heard this book is a must read, the number of people that consider this the best book ever written and the high placement often given to this book–contrary to all logic–I am surprised by how terrible this read was. It would not be a stretch to say that this is the worst book I have ever read from cover to cover. It must be noted, however, that most bad books are dropped within a hundred pages if they fail to get my attention. That was not the case with Atlas Shrugged, simply because I had tried reading it once and stopped reading it at about page 500. When I made an attempt to comment on this book’s lack of value, I was promptly told I could not judge it because I never finished it. So, after reading five books in the month of January, this book took me from February to the end of April to get through, mostly because I dreaded having to sit down with it and opted to game, or watch movies, or watch paint dry instead.

The story is simple and tells the story of the Taggart siblings–Jim and Dagny–who are of two very different mentalities when it comes to running their Transcontinental Railroad business. Dagny, a woman who worships reason, is determined to run the business to the best of her abilities, as effectively as possible and circumventing the unnecessary red tape put before her. Jim, is a dunce who hides behind the popular, social driven theories that serve as the counter argument–weak as they might be–to the theme of this book. It is through a number of challenges that Dagny fights the world, trying to do what her mind tells her is best, realizing along the way that she is not alone and all over the world, men of the mind are taking their own stance under the banner of one man, who boldly claimed, he would stop the engine of the world.

Forget the Objectivism argument. Whether you agree or not with Rand’s philosophy, is really beside the point when discussing the merit of a book as literature. This book wields an ‘epic fail’ badge of amazing proportions. We could tackle the monotonous and overly redundant plot, whose sole purpose is to beat into your head with a hammer that this objectivist view point works in every level of life. This is certainly necessary if you have less than three living, active brain cells residing in your head. If you are, however, capable of formulating simple thoughts it does not take very much to get the idea Rand is trying to drive home before you reach page 300. The remaining 900 pages are only a reiteration of every speech made, a re-statement of every argument brought up and more condescending rants from the author.

At 500 pages, The Fountainhead was a challenge to read, but not entirely pointless. It achieves in less than half the number of pages, everything that this book does, while also managing to hold a reasonable plot. Apparently someone, somewhere, did not feel The Fountainhead was enough, that they needed to see the long version written and Ayn Rand was more than willing to comply.

There are only two characters in this book, the noble man of the mind and the looter. That is it. Sure, the two characters go by many names, but they fit neatly into those two categories without any variation. The personalities of the people in each category are the same; they act the same; the behave the same; they dress the same; they think the same. Rearden is Dagny, who is Francisco, who is Galt…changing the names on a character does not a new character make, but this is a concept that seems to have gone beyond Ayn’s head like the idea that people might actually be able to think for themselves (an irony considering the theme of the book, which paints her as little more than a hypocrite). In the same fashion, Lawson is Taggart, who is Stadler, who is Boyle and in like manner, they are all amazingly annoying to the same extent. Ayn Rand succeeds in making flawlessly perfect heroes and perfectly flawed villains, all of them apparent clones of each other. If the simplicity of her characterization were not simple enough, however, Ayn makes it even easier for the reader to translate: if a character is physically lean and good-looking, they are a good guy; if they are pudgy and soft, they are a bad guy. Sadly, this is Rand’s approach and as much as I would like to say it is, this is not an exaggeration. Atlas Shrugged truly paints ALL of the characters with these two brushes, which would not be such a problem if the novel was a hundred pages in length, but when it rakes up 1221 of them, the idea is enough to tempt one to commit suicide rather than read this atrocity.

The simplicity of the plot and characterization is further hindered by Ayn’s inability to see in a gray scale. You are either a man of the mind and reason, or you are scum of the earth. In a very George Bush sort of way, she has divided the world into the Axis of Good and the Axis of Evil and applies those rules so that you fit in one neat box or the other, leaving no room in between. This, combined with her inability to weave a realistic story, leaves us with a mess that is only going to satisfy those of a like mind that enjoy her murderously long monologues which reassure her and her audience of how noble they are and how corrupt the rest of the world is.

This brings us to her philosophy–one I am loathe to bring up because it merits its own discussion, in its own forum, with a proper dialogue and debate–which permeates every page of this tome. Agree with it or not, there is no denying that this is a masturbatory piece of work, whose only purpose seems to be 1) reassert one’s values if you believe in them or 2) show the world how wrong they are for not worshiping her point of view. Ayn Rand leaves no room for realism here, playing on the extremes of the fields makes of this book a highly idealistic work that is in no way applicable to our world and which in turn ends up being an utter waste of time, because what IS important, what DOES need to be said, could have been summarized effectively and efficiently within a couple hundred pages. Instead, what you get is the torment of repetition, where each character takes a stab at making long speeches, whining about how the world can be so blind to not see what they see, complaining about how wronged they are and then turning right around to compliment each other on their own, unique brand of awesomeness. This would all work, even if you do not agree with their theory, if the characters were in some way likeable.

Unfortunately, there are no likeable characters; there is nobody to relate to. Rearden is likeable, for about three hundred pages, before he turns into a complete douche bag. Francisco starts off as an intriguing bad-ass but turns out to be a cartoon with no backbone as it pertains to Dagny, who goes around opening her legs for every man of the mind she meets on any given day. Needless to say, Dagny herself is hard to like, when she goes submitting from one man, to the next, to the next, until she meets the ultimate man of reason (Galt) abandoning her other lovers with twisted justification which is made all the more ludicrous by the men’s own compliance. It is difficult to understand Francisco’s decade long love for Dagny or Rearden’s ardent passion for the same, when in the drop of a dime, Dagny hands herself over to Galt’s feet (I would love to hear the feminist point of view here) and Francisco and Rearden literally bow, noting how right she is to love Galt and not them.

There is a point, where this book loses the seriousness it tries to carry and becomes a complete, laugh-out-loud farce and once you are able to see it for the comedy it truly is, the book becomes actually more manageable. The plot still moves at snail speed, the speeches of 50 plus pages are redundant and boring, but the second part of the book does manage to provide some rather amusing moments.

For all its faults, the book is not entirely devoid of achievement. Ayn Rand has some interesting things to say which would remain so if she did not feel like she had to hammer them into our brains. There are a few plot points which do also start making a bit of a page turner of the book, particularly when it deals with the relationship between Francisco, Dagny and Rearden, but which is concluded in such a laughable fashion that burning the book might have been a real satisfactory action, if I had not been reading it on my nook. Those few, bright moments of insight are unfortunately overshadowed by the sheer magnitude of emptiness this novel stores.

The only thing that might save this novel is, if you are an objectivist yourself and subscribe to this idea, because if she does one thing well, it is applying her theory in every possible way in every aspect of life. One has a right to believe her philosophy–though most people might find it debatable as to its application–and that much could have been delivered better if she had left room for argument, if she had varied her characters, if she had dared step into the gray zones where things are not all evil and good but the complex matters of a complex world. In the end, it is easy to summarize her theory into one sentence, which is really the one thing you can draw from this book (not verbatim): Live and act to the limits of your knowledge and continue to increase said knowledge to the limits of your life. That was one of the truly profound statements I found in Galt’s speech, which I think is the must draw theory of this book and if you can understand that, the rest of this book is fluff.

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