I see that Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged turns 50-years old today.
I read it when I was a junior in HS — not as an assigned book, but on my own one summer. I thought it was fantastic and couldn’t put it down. I thought that if only every one in the world could just read this book…
Of course, I also thought that MTV was the pinnacle of human achievement at that timepoint in my life.
I can understand how young kids can still be inspired by and — more accurately — hoodwinked by what has been called Rand’s “sophomoric” style. What I don’t understand is adults who still think this is great literature or great political ideology.
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The NY Times has reposted their original review of Atlas by Granville Hick.
National Review posts their original review, too. The piece by Whittaker Chambers first appeared in the December 28, 1957, issue of NR:
Somebody has called it: “Excruciatingly awful.” I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous.
Yeah, I’ve wanted to read that and the Fountainhead just for academic reasons but I’ve heard so many horror stories it seems like some bitter medicine to choke down. Yet, I see the Fountainhead is still the #1 book by architecture students at the school near me.
Scary.
I think a similar reassessment is ongoing for On the Road which also is just turning 50.
I read the book when I was in grade school, as I had watched my Dad read it almost every night until he finished it. It was difficult to read, in the sense that the character development, and complexity of her thoughts, were difficult to follow, but not the idea. What if private enterprise had incentive stripped away? Why would they continue to work so hard, to overcome so many problems, to be innovative?
What if the Greek mythological character Atlas saw no reason to hold the earth in space, and just shrugged?
It wasn’t until much later in life, when I learned more about Ms. Rand’s objectivism, intellect, and fierce anti-communism, that I came to understand her message(s) in this book and others.
At least you didn’t have to read White Like Me: Reflections on Race From A Privileged Son.
Nazar:
Ever read “Black Like Me”? One of my all-time favorites. As is “On the Road”.
Some other reading recommendations: anything by G.K. Chesterton, one of turn-of-the-century England’s most prominent conservative philosophers, is sure to strike a few chords with most readers of this site.
“What’s Wrong with the World” is pretty straight-up, philosophical essay, while “Napoleon of Notting Hill” and my favorite, “The Man Who Was Thursday”, are fictional narratives.
Check ‘em out.