"Atlas Shrugged" turns 50
Karen DeCoster notes that Ayn Rand's magnum opus was finished 50 years ago this month, and links to a piece in the Christian Science Monitor by Mark Skousen, to whom she is much too kind. Skousen's problem with Rand boils down to the fact that she wasn't a Christian. Well, duh! The anti-Marx had to be an atheist, because there is no room in reason for religion, and because Marxism is, at heart, a Christian heresy in which the State "helps" in the administration of charity so as to bring about Heaven on earth. There is no difference, on a theoretical level between Christian and Marxist economic ethics, though certainly their ethics of means are radically different. Skousen argues that a world filled with Rand's heroes would be an awful place. Given what the world of Cuffy Meigs, Wesley Mouch et al is, I'd like to give the Gulchers the opportunity; we can always have an altruist revolution later if one is really needed. Certainly Rand's personal life was not a particularly good advertisement for her philosophy, but then Karl Marx had a personal servant (paid for by Engels) until he died.
One particularly telling point that Skousen makes is that there are no children in Atlas Shrugged. That's not quite true; there's the child whose mother's face gets slapped after Galt's radio speech. But there are no children who are characters, and no characters who have children. Like Rand, her heroes have no time for that. But you have to wonder why, in a book which is pro-life in the largest sense, there is nobody who is fond enough of humanity to create another human being...not even Cheryl Taggart.
As literature, much has been made of Atlas' warts, and yes, they are there. But part of that is a matter of expectations. Atlas is not an English novel; it's a Russian novel written in English. There's panorama, sweep, ideas, and plot. It is not "a steamy soap opera", as Skousen would have it. If it were a romance novel there's be a lot more romance, more soft-porn, Vasaline-lens lovemaking. To complain that the sex is "mechanical" is to misunderstand its function. One might say that of Hank and Dagny's first encounter, which had been achingly led up to for pages by a direct comparison to the John Galt Line: you know the train will pull into the station, you just don't know when or how. It's a force of nature that brings them together; one might as well admonish opposite poles of a magnet for coming together too quickly. Rand's time dilation and handling of suspense here is masterful.
Love it or hate it, it was probably the single most influential piece of literature of the 20th century. If you haven't read it, you really need to, even (or especially) if you're absolutely sure you'll hate it.
UPDATE: The High Priestess of Objectivist bloggers, Diana Hsieh, hasn't the time to comment...but her readers certainly have.
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