My Book Report - Atlas Shrugged
It won’t surprise most folks that know me and know the basic tenets of Ayn Rands writings that I would enjoy her books. The were bought for me by a mentor of mine and being quite lengthy in volume and content I wanted to get to them when I had time and was ready. I started with the Fountainhead which is her book on the ideal man in Howard Roark. (Remember she was writing in the 40’s and grew up in communist Russia, it was still very much a man’s world - in her next book she creates the perfect woman - carrying much of the same traits.) I simply loved the Fountainhead and the courtroom scene was more than a brilliant piece of writing it was inspirational after a bad day at the office. If you can’t read anything by Ms. Rand - at least read the courtroom scene, it is awesome. A movie was made on the book and Ayn was involved and there is a story that goes something along the lines of the director wanting to shorten the courtroom scene, they then did it behind her back, she freaked and threatened to sabotage the film, its release and promotion so she got her way and the full unedited scene was put in. I haven’t had a chance to watch the movie yet as Netflix doesn’t have it and Amazon says that the studio is not currently distributing the film (originally released in 1949) 
. I may have to get a VHS copy off eBay.
I read the Fountainhead a few years ago and I was ready to move on to her opus - Atlas Shrugged. If the Fountainhead was a bit preachy, this was over the top. The writing was done very well, the ability to get her philosophy across so vividly and clearly using a fiction novel as a vehicle was done very well. I found the book to be long and the summary part of the book, John Galt’s radio address, I suspect would have pass a PhD thesis on the philosophy of Objectivism (course she created that branch of Philosophy). She took 10 years to write the book and if you read it you can see why - it is amazingly intricate, articulate, the plot works and she takes the greatest care to ensure that she is consistent throughout, while peppering you with her thoughts and ideas.
While I think like all extremists she misses the boat a bit by going to far; I do believe her general ideas on society, people and what actually makes the nations that create the lifestyles and opportunities that I admire, are correct. I love the tenet in the book that it is not the labors that go on strike and affect society but the ‘creators’, the industrialist and the people that are sticking their necks to create jobs and things of value that go on strike and allow the unions to grow stronger and more powerful. Allowing the unions to live by the rules that the set and forcing them to understand the repercussions of that, there is no reward for working harder or contributing more, in fact in cases it leads to punishment and those that need more are rewarded more. The industrialists leave general society to fall its own sword while they go off and create their own secluded community where nothing is free, altruistic, and everything has a value. People are not defined by their job but rather what they can contribute and then receive fair remuneration for it. It is fiction so some of it gets out there, and even her romance between characters in the book is ‘Randian’ with immense passion but always brutal rationality.
Completing the book will include you in a conversations with folks that will want to talk about the book, her views, what you thought on the book etc., regardless if the read they book last week, or 20 years ago - I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten just a “Its a good book, I also read it”. Some people seem offended when they catch you reading it, but most often folks that have read it will start to espouse its virtues, or will have hated it and let you know it. There are lots of statements of people saying it changed their view of how they approach the world and I can see how that is possible, although a bit far fetch; and there are plenty of people who can’t believe that she actually believed what she was writing and hate the thought of the book. I think her clarity and strength of ideas is awesome (right or wrong - she gets her point across).
I did find The Fountainhead an easier read and probably liked it a bit better, but I am in scare company as Atlas Shrugged is often the book folks will tell you to read if you are only going to read one. The book is an endeavor but well worth it!
I found this phrase from the book in wikiquote; it gives a good example of her writing style and a section of the book where she gets a bit preachy; there are many items in the book just like it (some much longer.. in fact the radio address is 75 pages!):
“So you think that money is the root of all evil, have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange which can not exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is not the product of moochers that claim your product by tears, or of the looters who take it from you by force, money is made possible only by the men that produce, is this what you consider evil, when you accept money in payment for your effort you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange if for the product of the effort of others. To trade by the means of money is the code of the men of good will. .money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort but money is only a tool, it will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires but it will not provide you with desires. Money will not purchase happiness for the man that has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. Let me give you a tip a clue to means characters, the man who damns money has attained it dishonorably, the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil, that sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another their only substitute if they abandon money is the muzzle of a gun. Do you wish to know whether another that day is coming, watch money, money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. when you see that trading is done not by consent but by compulsion, when you see in order to produce you need to obtain permission from men that produce nothing, when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods but in favors, when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull then by work, when you see corruption and being rewarded and honesty becoming a self sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed. when you have made evil the means of survival do not expect men to remain good, do not expect them to stay moral and loose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral, do not expect them to produce when production is punished and looting is rewarded do not ask who is destroying the world, you are. If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans I would choose the fact that they were the people who created the phrase “to make money” no other language or nation had used these words before. Men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words to make money hold the essence of human morality, yet now the looters credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievement as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt. Your greatest men the industrialists as braggarts and your magnificent factories as the products and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip driven slaves, the draughter???? Who simpers when he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip ought to learn the difference on his own hide. Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one and other then men become the tools of men. Blood whips and guns or dollars take your choice, there is no other and your time is running out”
My aside - lightening the load:
The book is quite long, the format I had was 1070 pages, plus introductions, forewords, discussions at the end and such. I took the book with me on the Haute Route and as I didn’t want to lug the whole book around I lopped off the first 400 pages I had already read and just kept the tail end, I continued to trim the book down in size which increased the velocity at which I was able to read, as it soon fit more comfortable in my bag and then in my back pocket and kept getting smaller and smaller… this does now mean that I need to buy another copy as I want to have this book on my shelf.
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So when I was done a long serious and deep book like Atlas Shrugged - I took it upon myself to try a fluff or brain dead novel. I don’t think I have every read a truly fluff novel and as I had just donate a copy of The Effective Executive, a Peter Druker classic, to Air Canada I was now without a book. (By now Air Canada must have quite a library of my books I hope they are enjoying them.) Without a book I went to an airport kiosk that only had about 15 different books and I decided to buy the lightest fluffiest novel I could find… I purchased Skinny Dip - a comedy/fluff novel on a botched murder of a wife by a crooked biologist - he throws her off the side of a crusie ship on their second honeymoon; with the wife ending up saved by a guy who lives on his own little island while floating on a bail of Jamaican weed in the ocean; he has had 6 ex wives and the book goes through the torment and tribulation they put this dork husband that tried to kill her through….. guess what.. I actually enjoyed it.. I took me 1 week to read - Atlas Shrugged took months 
I’ll remember more of the details of Atlas Shrugged and look forward to flipping through it again.. Skinny Dip could disappear and I would never miss it.. but I still managed to enjoy it quite a bit.
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Next I am on to a book which possibly has one of the worst covers on a book I have seen in a long time. It has received great reviews on amazon, and it was recommended by a friend as something I would enjoy - it seems quite light and doesn’t appear to be something that is going to take a long time to get through.
It will be her first marathon so it should be a tonne of fun! (as much fun as running for 42 km can be)