Atlas Shrugged

How does one write a review of one of the most brilliant yet disturbing novels you've ever read?

The cover on my copy of the book

I'm sure it's going to make my list of top ten books read in 2012.  It's very interesting as a novel--the characters are interesting, there's plenty of intrigue and lots of pathos.  Her writing. . .well, she was one incredibly gifted wordsmith.  The book is filled with foreshadowing (including my previously referenced quote) and figures of speech.  Now that I know what happens, I want to read the book again someday (not soon--it took me plenty of time to read those 1168 pages!) just so I can savor her brilliant  plays on words.  Over and over again she illustrated what was going on in the story with seemingly unrelated or minor details.  For example, during one impasse between opposing men in a laboratory, Rand expounds on the mood:

In the long moment of silence, they could hear the rustle of the animals clawing at the bars of their cages. . .The chief moved his glance slowly, appraisingly, from his face to the two gunmen in the corners.  The gunmen steadied their aim by an almost imperceptible movement.  A nervous rustle went through the room.  An animal squeaked shrilly in one of the cages (1152).

It's just fun to me when an author is so skillful at relating the tension in the room without just telling the reader "the tension in the room was palpable" or some other such predictable phrase.  There are levels to her writing that simply suck me in.

But Atlas Shrugged is much, much more than just an enjoyable and well-crafted novel.  It is the manifestation of ideas and beliefs and the rather sobering outcome of ideas put into practice.  (It was especially fascinating to me to read this so soon after having read Life At the Bottom.  Dalrymple illustrated the problems inherent in many liberal secular humanist ideals with a series of essays sharing his observations of those ideals in practice in the "underclass" of England.  Rand illustrates many of the same problematic ideals in a fictional, somewhat dystopian novel.)  Just a few of the principles she discusses are:

• free trade/capitalism contrasted with socialism/welfare society
• big government and regulation
• ingenuity of the mind vs. a non-thinking society
• workers vs. takers
• value life (of self) vs. death (of others)

Sadly, I doubt many of my followers will run out and read this book even though I would recommend it as well worthwhile.  I've been intimidated by it for the last couple of years, but I'm glad I finally read it.  There are some points and actions in the book I disagree with and it is certainly a book absent the hope of the living God.  The very starkness and bleakness of that lack of hope, however, rather pointed me straight to the cross in gratitude that in Christ my life means more than the picture that was painted.

There's much, much more that I could say about Atlas Shrugged, but Ayn Rand says it ever so much better.  If you genuinely appreciate good writing and enjoy pondering ideas that you almost can't wrap your brain around--don't miss this one!