Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

It took me a solid five months, but I finally (finally) finished Atlas Shrugged at the end of May.  My enjoyment of the book definitely took a downwards turn in the second half; after Dagny left the valley, it was a slow crawl to an inexorable conclusion.  Ayn Rand came up briefly in my Editing and Design class earlier in the semester, and the professor joked that she was an author seriously in need of an editor.  And he was exactly right: Atlas Shrugged struggles under the weight of its own vision, a novel incapable of supporting Rand’s philosophy while simultaneously carrying an appealing narrative.

I’m curious how many people have actually dragged their brains through John Galt’s 80 page speech that endlessly extols the true virtues of man and condemns the mindless parasites of society.  I suppose, in a way, I’m almost proud to have read the entire thing, but by that point I was far past interest and moving forward on sheer stubborn determination.

Now that I’m finished with Ayn Rand, I’ve moved onto lighter, more fun things; I started reading the complete works of Dashiell Hammett, who’s probably most famous for The Maltese Falcon.  Not only is it great pulp fiction from the early years of the 20th century, it’s great fodder for Based on Books.  After Atlas Shrugged, Hammett’s tight, fast-paced narrative and sharp dialogue are a welcome, welcome change.

Things haven’t quite gone as planned.  But that’s par for the course in the big golf game of life, and reading the life works of Cormac McCarthy at the pace of a book a week has left me little time to devote to Ayn Rand and her endless philosophizing.  But I’m halfway there, having reached page 552 a couple nights ago.  Over the hump, around the bend, et cetera.  And so far…well, it’s no Fountainhead.

Where The Fountainhead felt dense and unique thanks to Ayn Rand’s very mechanical writing style, Atlas Shrugged passes into the realm of tedium.  It’s often simply too repetitive, too long-winded to be as great as its predecessor.  The characters, too, feel like slightly less interesting versions of the main cast of The Fountainhead — only Howard Roark is a better protagonist than Hank Rearden and Dominique Francon is a more interesting lean, steely leading lady than Dagny Taggart.  Maybe it’s just the order I’ve read the books in.  But so far, Rand hasn’t deviated from The Fountainhead enough to grab my attention the way she did the first time.

The politicians and typical members of society are still as overbearingly disgusting and small-minded.  And while I haven’t expected certain plot points that have developed throughout the book, the general course of the narrative seems very predictable, which makes the hundreds of pages of blatant delaying action all the more frustrating.

We’ll see if it blows me away in the second half.

I started reading Atlas Shrugged last week, but have only seriously begun committing time to the novel in the past two days or so; I hope to plow through a decent chunk of it before classes begin demanding the majority of my time.  So far, it’s easy to see the similarities between Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, though so far I’d say that Rand’s earlier novel did a better job of espousing philosophy through the characters.  Atlas Shrugged is certainly more overt and heavy-handed, and no one really has the appeal of Howard Roark.

I wish I had the memory and the penchant for philosophy to really remember and totally understand everything Ayn Rand has to say.  She’s a hell of a writer, even if objectivism is…well, a little crazy.  Her portrayal of society in Atlas Shrugged is already contemptuous and fucking frightening — the endless obsession with the “common good” at the expense of individualism is presented perfectly, and even though I’m perfectly aware of what a caricature it is, it succeeds perfectly in making me loathe the weaklings of society.

And I’m barely 200 pages in.  Let’s see how deep this rabbit hole goes.