What I Learned From a Magnum Opus

Tonight, after several months of sometimes intermittent and sometimes intense reading, I finished Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The first thing that struck me when I first started was the artistic writing style and what impressed me throughout the thousands of page swipes required to finish was the artistic writing style.  As a guy who has spent some time writing over the last several months I know that maintaining quality is tough. When I was about 60% into the book I watched a documentary about Rand and Atlas Shrugged.  I learned that she thought Atlas would be written relatively quickly but in actuality it took about 6 years to complete. That’s a long time, but it ended up being a really, really long book and really good too.  

I enjoyed the read a lot. One of the eerie/interesting aspects was how much the book, written over 60 years ago, reflected some of the things going on today.  There were several times during my months of reading when I heard our prominent politicians expressing ideas almost directly from the book.  I found myself thinking, “That sounds just like the bad guys in Atlas Shrugged.” It was weird, but not that weird, considering the divided landscape we are in and the extremely polar political and philosophical climate Rand portrays.

I really enjoyed the book but not everything sat well.  Rand is an atheist and holds a rejection of any supernatural concept as invalid for shaping her philosophy. The hero in Atlas explicitly expressed this position in an extended monologue over “3 hours” of novel time. The moment was meant to be a triumph, a line drawn in the sand, which would initiate the final dismantling of an already crumbling society.  However the clearly articulated philosophy was desiccated and disconnected in the speech where it had been passionate and relevant as it unfolded in the struggles and hesitancy of even the strongest people.  The book reminded us that people are flawed and in those flaws life gets messy. Where Rand’s philosophy falls short is where she fails to see that the messiness of life can yield amazing results.