.jeri.

Over my long absence from work, I was finally able to finish reading the mammoth Atlas Shrugged. About eleven hundred pages of the tiniest, scrunchiest font one could imagine, it took me about a year and a half to read because I have been spending so much of my time with audio books these days. It was a challenge to get through because it wasn't much like the type of book I usually read (see: Victorian literature). It was engrossing at first, and swept me away, and then I would be so overwhelmed by the thoughts and ideas it sent rushing through my brain that I would put it down for a long time.

It was the perfect time in life and in history for me to be reading this book, though. I don't think it would have made as much of an impact if I had read it while still in school, with not much of a job history or very many responsibilities. No, this was the perfect time for this book, which is all about men living up to their full potential and not relying on words, government, and laws to bail people out when their empty lives come to fruition. In it, the government jumps into the lives of everyone involved by passing bill after bill regarding business. Instead of letting businessmen earn their worth by the value of their work, a select part of the government decides that all men should have a fair chance, whether or not they have earned it.

All discoveries are to be shared by the people and for the people, and Hank Reardon's secret recipe for steel is forcibly obtained and given to others. Reardon and Dagny Taggart, who runs Taggart Transcontinental railroads, fight the best they can for the integrity of what they do, but the "looters," as the book refers to them, continue to find ways to take advantage of them. The book escalates from steel and trains to the transportation of the entire country, which affects the food supply of the nation, and soon, it's a worldwide affair.

One of the weaker points of the story is that as all three of the main male characters are in love with Dagny. I understand that she's the protagonist and is an ideal woman in the mind of the author, but two men falling for her was enough, and three was a bit much. What I fell in love with, though, was the points Rand was trying to make with the novel. Right now a lot of businesses are failing left and right around us, and there's a reason why - they aren't successful because they're not performing well.

Why aren't people buying American cars? Because they suck! Ric and I should know, since he drives a clunker of an Envoy. Why should the government reward car makers for mediocrity by bailing them out? Shouldn't they be urged to step it up and actually compete with the foreign car makers? If they're bailed out, they don't learn any lessons except that when they fail, they can rely on the government by pleading that people will lose their jobs if they shut down. The same goes for people who bought houses a few years back when the prices were way too high. Ric and I decided to bide our time and wait for the right moment when it was actually prudent to purchase a home, but a lot of people jumped into mortgages without doing any research about how much they would actually need to pay, and what adjustable percentages meant, or how much taxes were. The fact that they're foreclosing is because they didn't research and didn't plan. I can't stand that they say realtors and lending companies took advantage of them. They signed their names to the mortgages but can't live up to the consequences, and when the government comes to their rescue, they are rewarded for their immature behavior. And that's the most political I'll get on this blog.

Rand's novel is a warning against all of this, and it was a refreshing one to read. Unfortunately, about 90% of the way through the book, a central character decides to give a speech that summarizes Rand's entire philosophy of life and all of the ideas that have already been explored previously in the novel, which takes 50 pages (I'm not joking). It is so dry that I fell asleep several times while trying to read it, and finally, when I thought it was reiterating everything I agreed with, Rand boiled down the entire philosophy with condemnation of the idea of original sin. What the crap?! The huge setup and scope of the novel basically fizzle away in these 50 pages for me, and only when the speech is over does it make a recovery, although not as strong of a one as I had hoped for.

Still, though, for the thousand pages leading up to that point, I loved the flowing language and the clear pictures Rand painted, the characters, the ideals, the ideas, the smaller stories within the story, the conspiracies, the pirates, the trains, the copper and steel, the sort of alternate New York and the almost timeless (except for the technology) aspect of the novel, and the cool answer to the famous question "Who is John Galt?" For me, the story climaxed sometime around when Dagny finds out the answer to this question, but the overall experience was completely worthwhile for me.