Atlas Shrugged will soon hit the big screen.

[The Homogenizer]

Originally Posted by harry chickpea

It is amply clear from her own words that Dagny is a cartoon figure. If you disagree with that, you are disagreeing with Rand and not me. If Dagny had been more like Rand, she would have had at least a little more depth.

But I'm still not clear about how you think that depth would take form if it were there. My reading of Dagny is that she's a woman whose work ethic is highly developed and through the stress of possessing that work ethic when everyone around her is incompetent or otherwise unreliable she develops as a person.

There are other characters in the novel that are so cardboard as to be unbelievable. Wesley Mouch is given no redeeming qualities by design. Lillian Rearden is also portrayed with a broad brush, yet, last time I checked, it takes two to tango. Was Hank Rearden totally blind to the person he was marrying, or just stupid? Spousal conflicts typically come from issues on both sides of a matrimonial bed and spousal choice can reflect a number of different character traits or issues.

Mouch is one of the forms of parasite. He is essentially evil. For a parasite with, if you feel that one who would steal from you can have them, what might be called redeeming qualities, you just need to look at Dagny's brother, whom frequently articulates the beliefs held by well intentioned parasites.

I don't understand why you've made such conclusions about Lillian Rearden. Hank Rearden explicitly states that the problems of their marriage were his creation. Lillian Rearden is an unlikable figure, but the novel isn't about why Hank Rearden should accept his misery but why he deserves to be free of misery. It's not a story about marriage therapy, so her redeeming qualities, if any, are completely irrelevant. Your matrimonial bed issue is what all of us fans of Rand claim is the consistent issue held by critics: it's not the quality of her writing, which is phenomenal, but it's the moral that you dislike.

John Galt himself just pops on the scene late to deliver his address and metaphorically collect his paycheck.

That's false. After what I experienced to be an incredible build up, Dagny chases him down and catches him. His address, a later climax, is delivered after Rand had built incredible tension for the bomb. The character of Galt isn't necessarily positively built; his character is built from tension that's so taut that it creates a psychological void in the reader's mind that can only be filled with the enormous power of Galt's address.

As for Rand's "research" on railroads, as reported in much of the online material and some of her own writing...

Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan were friends for years prior to the publication of Atlas Shrugged. And Alan Greenspan's notable achievement prior to that friendship was (paraphrasing) developing models of our economy's anticipated production based on railway cargo. I'm not familiar with Rand's research, but she certainly had access to the greatest mind working railroads. I don't think it's a coincidence that Greenspan was using the railroads to predict production, and Rand chose the railroads as the object that would cripple the economy.

I didn't intend to ask you about your personal opinion of Rand and her religion, so I'll not comment on that.

[harry chickpea]

During the financial crisis, when Greenspan was approached for his comments on how it could have occurred when people were following his guidelines, his response was basically "Hummuhna hummahna." (paraphrasing, of course)

The use of railroads as the vehicle for Rand's vision was a reflection of her upbringing and the times, when railroads were just past their peak (1914+-). The mythical TT was a doomed concept from the start, not because of governmental interference, but because of the basic logic and economics of railroads. In point of fact, the railroads themselves attempted early on to switch passenger traffic to airlines that they owned. Boston-Maine Airways is one example I'm familiar with because of my father's work at Colonial. The government forced that railroad to divest the property in 1940 and it became Northeast Airlines. The railroads could not deliver people as quickly as airlines and were as doomed as transoceanic liners, through economic forces alone.

How many readers of Atlas Shrugged know that the real way the primary transcontinental railroad got built was by the U.S. government stealing (treaties *cough cough*) land from the native Americans and then GIVING it to the railroad companies (through a notoriously corrupt Congress) to provide them incentive for laying track and developing the midwest. If there was a Wesley Mooch, it was the railroad companies themselves, the Credit Mobilier, and all associated. Reality is different than fiction. The northern route was handled with more ethics, but that was not squeaky clean either.

Regulation of railroads occurred for many different reasons, just as regulation of airlines occurred, and attempts have been made to regulate the stock market. Follow pure capitalism to the bloody end, and you end up with one person in complete control. The government, finding one group gaining sufficient power to threaten it, will force changes. The motion picture industry got labeled "opinion maker" and regulated to bring it under control. Such is the nature of governments.

Rand's book, in that manner, was a whitewash of a dirty (and fascinating) period of capitalizm (Z intentional) in the United States.

"Your matrimonial bed issue is what all of us fans of Rand claim is the consistent issue held by critics: it's not the quality of her writing, which is phenomenal, but it's the moral that you dislike."

I disagree. Completely aside from her politics, her writing is stylized and not particularly "dense". I happen to enjoy the style of Sherlock Holmes stories, even though I was aware of their shortcomings as a teenager - ever work one backwards? You'll find the reader is never presented with enough accurate clues to independently solve the mystery, thus insuring that Holmes will always be seen as brilliant. The trick is subtle enough that most readers THINK they have been given all the pertinent information, even on a casual re-reading. Rand employs such tricks in "forcing" (as in magic tricks) the reader along certain lines of thought in her novels. Since many readers simply don't have critical thinking skills, and are overwhelmed by the repetition of theme and rhetoric, she gets away with her ruses. That repetition of theme doesn't translate well to film.

I invite you to re-read the thread, and follow the link to my blog post on Rand. She was an interesting person.

[The Homogenizer]

Originally Posted by harry chickpea

Completely aside from her politics, her writing is stylized and not particularly "dense".

You're asserting the criticism that she is addressing. She believes that things have purposes. And her work had a purpose. To meet that purpose is to stylize. To be free of fluff is to be free of density.

She is criticizing, among others, those whom seek to impute value that is not present. Were the story not stylized, then it would stand as a typical piece of art that lacks direction, a work that relies on the reader's assumption of a promise from the artist but with the promise ultimately broken.

One of the aspects that makes her work so extraordinary for me is that Atlas Shrugged articulated the values, and those values were used in its construction.

How many readers of Atlas Shrugged know that the real way the primary transcontinental railroad got built was by the U.S. government stealing (treaties *cough cough*) land from the native Americans and then GIVING it to the railroad companies (through a notoriously corrupt Congress) to provide them incentive for laying track and developing the midwest. If there was a Wesley Mooch, it was the railroad companies themselves, the Credit Mobilier, and all associated. Reality is different than fiction.

I'm not familiar with the details; I'm comfortable with a level of knowledge that includes the recognition that the U.S., like every organization of humans, has always been corrupt.

My feeling is that Rand's works deny to those whom stole from Native Americans or anyone else the easy path for slithering behind a cloud of righteousness, whether that corrupt person is a corporatist dumping mercury into a lake or a statist claiming that public education is for children.

That's why Rand was never accepted by the Right or the Left; evil hates the light of truth.

The use of railroads as the vehicle for Rand's vision was a reflection of her upbringing and the times, when railroads were just past their peak...

I'm not sure that you contradicted my point.

Rand's book, in that manner, was a whitewash of a dirty (and fascinating) period of capitalizm (Z intentional) in the United States.

No country has been or ever will be authentically called capitalist or communist. They're both theories that rely on false propositions. Therefore, I don't take Rand to be an argument for authentic capitalism but an argument for truth and individualism.