summarize the review to be 2 sentences long and give a general outline : Atlas Shrugged is absurd but strangely compelling
This article is more than 15 years old
Ayn Rand's libertarian rant is unpleasant, daft and deeply flawed. I hated it - but I couldn't put it down
Sam Jordison
Fri 27 Mar 2009 06.44 EDT
124
If recent reports are to be believed, people have started seeing parallels between our current economic meltdown and the world collapse outlined in the 1200 pages of Ayn Rand's libertarian classic Atlas Shrugged. Rand's fans proclaim her a prophet - the hero whose teachings will rid us of recession. This sudden popularity is odd (why seek salvation from a situation caused by out of control markets in a book preaching less market regulation?) but it's also intriguing. And so it was that I recently became one of the millions who have set out to discover the answer to the book's opening question: "Who is John Galt?".

Galt, it transpires (after 700-odd pages of hard yakka) is "Prometheus who changed his mind". A man who has refused to accept the increasing socialisation of American society in Rand's bleak future, who has "taken away his fire" and gone on strike. Living on the principle that "I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine", he's retreated to the Colorado mountains, along with his great big brain and a super-efficient energy generator of his own invention. He has also encouraged several other similar heroes to join him. These are all supermen: supremely intelligent, rich, very good-looking and clever. Without them the world outside begins to collapse and destroy itself, as a collection of two-dimensional "college educated" caricatures pass increasingly idiotic legislation in the name of "essential need", and feed ever more hungrily on the few producers whom Galt has not yet taken to Colorado.

Chief among the latter is the focus of the novel, the acting vice-president of a railroad, Dagny Taggart. She is just like the other supermen except she takes a long time to be persuaded to join Galt, she is beautiful instead of handsome and enjoys being near-raped by whomsoever appears to have the greatest earning potential. In Rand's world, dollars are the ultimate in sex appeal and sex is dark, kinky and weird. But not in a good way.

It's as unpleasant as it is daft and as a work of literature it's deeply flawed. Great chunks of the book are given over to philosophical rants (one particularly egregious radio broadcast clocks in at just under 100 pages). There are countless tedious repetitions of ideas, phrases and situations. Rand's world is a place of black and white morality, good and bad people and absolutely no shades of grey. Consequently, none of the characters or storylines are at all believable.

To top all that off, the writing is turned up to eleven throughout. It is, as Whittaker Chambers noted in this justly celebrated article in the National Review, a work of "shrillness without reprieve".

It's also, as millions have discovered before me, strangely compelling. Rand may be shrill, but the high-pitched urgency of her writing and uncomplicated morality also gives the book an irresistible force. It might take 900 pages too many to properly reveal the workings of John Galt, but it's an intriguing mystery. The conclusion might also be postponed in more than a dozen annoying ways, but Rand has a unique ability to bludgeon you along to it.

I hated the thing, but I couldn't put it down. It was worth the effort too, because the conclusion is one of the funniest things I've read. This mad denouement boasted, among other idiotic delights, a particle destroyer, a mad electric torture machine, gratuitous nudity, a laboratory, and a man who introduces himself in the heat of battle in all seriousness as "Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia".

Such laughs, however, come bitterly, given how seriously so many take this stuff. There is one thing Rand gets right (and, typically, repeats ad nauseam): people are frequently nuts and the ridiculous can happen. The cruel irony is that the true absurdity lies in Rand's insistence on selfishness, the need to create wealth at the expense of all else and the prohibition on sharing it – as recent events have shown.

Indeed, Rand's new acolytes all seem to overlook the one true link between the writer and the current recession: Alan Greenspan. He was one of Rand's foremost disciples, not to mention her main source of economic advice. He is also now widely viewed as one of the main triggers of the recession. This being the case, turning to Atlas Shrugged because you don't like the way things are going is the equivalent of diving for the centre of the fire because the frying pan got too hot.