[Ask the Gulch] Atlas Shrugged
Posted by jlpoulton 7 years, 2 months ago to Ask the Gulch
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Dagny Taggart is heiress to a transcontinental railroad built by a 19th century robber baron. Brilliant and ruthless, her first job with the railroad was as night dispatcher at a rural station close to the college where she studied engineering. Twelve years later, her incompetent brother is the president of the corporation. Her position as vice president of operations gives her the leverage to keep the line running.
Her work is her focus. Her first lover abandoned her and his own career to become a playboy. Her public image is of a cold, austere business executive who is unmoved by emotions, either hers or of those around her. Yet she harbors a passion for the perfect man, her ideal.
Meanwhile, the nation has been slipping into an unaccountable economic depression.
It is not just that most of the regions of the world are impoverished, socialized, and nationalized. It is not just the continuing drumroll of regulations from the Washington government. Some additional force is at work, as if shutting off the motor of innovation and invention. Great businesses are closing. Their key producers are retiring, quitting, disappearing. Dagny Taggart senses that a single actor is at work - and she promises to track him down and kill him.
In this vein I cannot resist adding:
Super-heroine Dagny has outstanding men in her life.
Hunk 1 was a brilliant heir to an ancient mega-fortune. When it appeared he had become a dissipated playboy, the relationship ended.
Then there was another wealthy industrialist who built a fortune from nothing by hard work, sound business practices and inventiveness.
As well, two mystery men are continuing themes throughout.
One is known as 'the destroyer' who Dagny intends to find and kill.
The other invented a revolutionary motor then vanished.
Dagny sets out to find the man with this outstandingly creative mind.
The finale unites all the themes.
Apparent contradictions are resolved.
There is violence, rescue, romance and passion.
All of that is explained in The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand. Students of Objectivism also enjoy Advice and Consent, Casablanca, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Camille by Dumas, The Scarlet Letter, many Twilight Zone stories, and even quite a bit of Star Trek.
Just to take Star Trek for an example, the politics and economics of the Federation and Star Fleet are a deplorably collectivist (therefore impossible) utopia. They have no money, but they somehow are able to make economic decisions. It seems to be a command economy. And we never hear of an election. Who are these leaders in the Council, and where do they come from? ... None of that is explained, and all of it is hopelessly cliched. And yet... we have conflicts of values, integrated parallel plots, and a social context in which individual choices matter, and the best ones win the day.
That Atlas Shrugged is primarily a love story (again in Ayn Rand's own words), is lost on the millions of film-goers who were attracted by the political themes, but never saw past the concrete actions to grasp the wider theme and plot-theme. Again, Rand's theory of literature is in The Romantic Manifesto.
[2] Gladstein, Mimi Reisel (1999). The New Ayn Rand Companion. Westport: Greenwood Press. p. 42. ISBN 0-313-30321-5.
[3] Dowd, Maureen (April 17, 2011). "Atlas Without Angelina". The New York Times. Retrieved July 30, 2012.
[4] McConnell, Scott (2010). 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand. New York: New American Library. p. 507. ISBN 978-0-451-23130-7. OCLC 555642813.
[5] "The Making Of The Atlas Shrugged TV MiniSeries Albert Ruddy, Susan Black, Bill Collins". Prodos Institute Inc. 1999. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
[9] Rubin, Harriet (September 15, 2007). "Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism". The New York Times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_S...
See also the current auction of the autographed "Heroic Love" movie poster for Atlas
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
Al Ruddy's interview is not what Ayn Rand wrote herself. He wanted to produce the novel as a love story in a movie and tried to manipulate her into giving up the movie rights without script approval. From both reading the novel and everything she emphatically said about it herself a "love story" is obviously not "all it ever was".
There's action and adventure as genres. Those can be emotionally sterile. James Bond does not fall in love. You can have a romance novel in which the plot moves forward by dramatic action. The Indiana Jones movies offer some of that (but only as a backstory) if you consider his romance with Marian Ravenwood (which was only developed in a later installment).
We the Living, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged would be essays for The Freeman if not for the romance.
Reminds me of when I was taking accounting, I told my boss (head of the accounting department); accounting has "generally accepted principles; math has rigorous proofs." Not sure if he took that well.
We were talking about the meaning of "zero factorial" and he said: "I thought math had universal truths". I answered, "It does, but zero factorial just isn't one of them."
In that vein, many Rand fans endorsed The Watchmen even though Ronald Moore's sense of life would otherwise condemn some of his works. Myself, I also enjoyed the first two-and-a-half seasons of the re-imaged Battlestar Galactica. But Moore's philosophy (or lack of it) got the best (or worst) of him. When The Watchmen came out, I bought the graphic novel before seeing the film. I own a copy of the movie, of course.
Another explicitly Randian Romantic scifi story for children is _The Girl Who Owned a City* reviewed on my blog here: http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
made his own fortune, and never forgot that it was
his."
was afraid of it at first; I was afraid it would disprove some of my comforting assumptions. (Which it did, but by then I was used to it, and that
was okay). I read parts of Galt's speech in the library, and started reading the book on my brother's gymnastic nights,(when my father would take him into Waynesboro, and I went a-
long to go to the library), before I would actually
check it out. But eventually I did check it out.
But I got over my fear, and eventually enjoyed it
very much.
Kidding, though.
We can react by
making some irrelevant joke, or
when given nothing, produce nothing, or
seize an opportunity for great art.