This post is about my book 1,000. I'm really glad I picked what I did. Husband was reading it with me, but now he is reading by himself, because I am finished!
After much internal debate, a few half-hearted suggestions from friends and family, and a brief but interesting first encounter with YA Steampunk (which was fun but not worth blog time), I decided to go with Atlas Shrugged. Not because I believe in Objectivism, but because from everything I have heard, the book is unique for its depiction of what freedom and justice really look like.
The book is well worth reading, whether you agree with it or not. Because so many people hate it, it is generally put in a class of its own, or dismissed as political philosophy, but really, this book has close ties to Urban Fantasy and even Steampunk--but I would actually say that it's Anti-steampunk, because Steampunk a lot of the time acknowledges magic, whereas Atlas Shrugged is a direct attempt to prove that nothing happens by magic, but by hard work and ingenuity.
It would be easy here to go off on a political rant instead of doing a review of the book. In fact, I did just that, but fortunately for you, I deleted it before I went too far.
Rand's writing is brilliant in many ways. She provides excellent imagery, particularly in allowing for the visualization of the characters. Every page reads like a scene from a Classic movie. Black and white, high contrast lighting; busy, energetic backdrop. I haven't seen the movies that are being made from this story--I don't see how they could be made in color with 21st-Century actors and still achieve the right tone and visual effect the story needs.
She shares the ability with Tolstoy, another Russian, to give a panoramic view of life in all its complexities. In some ways, it's a lot like Anna Karenina.
However, like George Eliot, she can be heavy. She overstates her points with prose. While the illustrations are apt, the monologues could use some heavy editing. And unlike Eliot, whose heaviness conveys erudition, Rand's can have a tone of condescension.
Before I started reading it this last time (I actually attempted to read it twice before and didn't get very far), I skimmed through the reviews on Amazon. Incidentally, you can learn a lot about something from Amazon by reading the 1-star reviews. That's what I always do, anyway. If the bad reviews are written by petty, uneducated people who are miffed about something, whether it be that the ideas in the book challenge their worldview or the book just didn't get there fast enough, it's probably going to be at least marginally good. The negative reviews about AS on Amazon were mostly written by people who were offended by the author's narrow, judgmental viewpoint. Well, there you go. As soon as you pull the "You're so judgmental" card, especially with reference to fiction, I'm sick of you and more likely to disagree with everything you say. There were many objections that I find to be very legitimate, but most of those were brought up in the positive reviews--such as the fact that she is overly verbose in stating her points, and that she has a limited scope and view of the world.
In acknowledging that limited scope, I'm reminded of a crazy experience I had one time watching a Bollywood film. It was set in Las Vegas and Mexico, and featured two star-crossed lovers--one from India, one from Mexico. I've seen violent movies before. I've seen movies before that depicted corruption of lawmakers and law enforcers. At first I couldn't figure out why I found the movie so much more disturbing than others of that kind--and my sister helped me see that it was probably because the makers of the movie were accustomed to a different type of corruption, and to a political system that is much more murky than what we're used to experiencing as Americans--and that they injected that worldview into their depiction of American lives.
I feel like maybe that is what happened with Ayn Rand as she wrote Atlas Shrugged. She was scarred by her experiences with Russian Communism, and she would have seen anything remotely resembling those kinds of tendencies and thoughts very differently than someone who was born in a non-Communist country.
However, I do not feel that her points are rendered invalid by her experiences. Those experiences and fears are natural and just, and the situations she fabricated are not that far off from reality, so regardless of how much we might agree or disagree with her politically, it is important to weigh the kinds of concerns she brings up and put some serious thought into what is happening around us, as well as how we are perceiving political and economic events.
At any rate, it has given me a new understanding of the importance of taking charge of my own success and allowed me a stronger sense of pride in a job well done--both at work and at home. And for that, I appreciate her genius.
Next book review (potentially): Man's Search For Meaning, by Victor Frankl.
