Instant Review: Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged was due at the library today, so I hunkered down and finished the last two-hundred pages. It's an important book, though, so I'll take the time to write my thoughts before trucking it back to the library.

Before I begin, Atlas Shrugged is a very easy book to criticize. It's too ambitious, it's too long, it's too polemical, it's too unedited, and contains some absurdly long monologues that are Ayn Rand's vehicle for expressing her philosophical arguments. I will try to move beyond these elements in my criticism and look for the positive as well.

First the negative: besides the surface elements mentioned above, the biggest void to me was the lack of reader buy-in. As a reader, I simply couldn't get into the illusion of reality that makes fiction tick. Fiction derives its motive power from its ability to present a plausible scenario, a character or situation with which the reader identifies. Rand simply didn't convince me that her dystopia could occur or that the characters presented at so much length were real people with real hearts and minds.

And the positive: the middle of the book is the best part; it's the most real and most believable. It has a good plot (the whole book does, in fact), and it presents very interesting ideas about society. Many of the socialistic platitudes offered by the "bad guys" are frighteningly reminiscent of what you hear today. The story exposes the logical end of the post-modernist pablum we've gotten so used to. She demolishes the idea of need-based entitlement, and exposes the destructiveness of philosophies such as materialism, gnosticism, and nihilism.

In my analysis, the negatives outweigh the positives: Ayn Rand's opus falls short of her goals. Rand wanted to write a book that would fuse her love of fiction and her philosophy into a great work of literature. However, what comes across most strongly is the philosophy. It's too overstated: the story speaks for itself, and the monologues get preachy after a while. Worst of all, she fails to offer a convincing alternative for mankind. Her philosophy is based on the unstated premise that men are gods, that is, unsurpassed, independent, and fully capable. She leaves no room for the weak, and makes no admission of human sin. She makes a good point when she says (repeatedly) that the alternative to the dollar is the gun; she fails to see that love of the former is what most often drives men to use the latter.

Atlas Shrugged is a desperate plea for modernity. Rand was prescient enough to see that the post-modernization of the universities in her time would lead to the post-modernization of all of society in our time; she did not present a plausible alternative. But for all those who hunger for the hard facts, straight lines, and solid colors of the Age of Reason, Atlas Shrugged is a tome that will stir your soul.