Deconstructing Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand’s naive ignorance of history, and of how a real business functions–it’s painfully obvious she never ran one–was already subtly visible in the first two chapters of her magnum opus Atlas Shrugg. But nowhere have I found that naivete and ignorance better illustrated than in Chapter 3 of Atlas Shrugged. We’ll get to that later.
We can see by the opening of Chapter 3 why, in the 1930s and 1940s, Ayn Rand looked attractive as a potential screenwriter. Rand’s time in Hollywood is documented in multiple places, but in short: it didn’t work out because the studio people found her difficult and she didn’t like them much either. Nevertheless, while her descriptions of people and things are often overwrought and wordy, you can sense that technical people in Hollywood would find her alluring: she likes to set up scenes that practically beg for a camera, and for costumers and set designers to start scribbling notes. As with the first two chapters, in Chapter 3 (entitled “The Top and the Bottom”) Rand starts us out not with the people so much as their setting, with a vivid description that evokes the mood that she intends to convey:
The ceiling was that of a cellar, so heavy and low that people stooped when crossing the room, as if the weight of the vaulting rested on their shoulders. The circular booths of dark red leather were built into walls of stone that looked eaten by age and dampness. There were no windows, only patches of blue light shooting from dents in the masonry, the dead blue light proper for use in blackouts. The place was entered by way of narrow steps that led down, as if descending deep under the ground. This was the most expensive barroom in New York and was built on the roof of a skyscraper.
Four men sat at a table. Raised sixty floors above the city, they did not speak loudly as one speaks from a height in the freedom of air and space; they kept their voices low, as befitted a cellar.
I can almost imagine a young Orson Welles wanting to make an Atlas Shrugged picture from that passage alone.
Although her prose often lacks elegance, Rand is clearly trying to convey something with every word here–which is true of practically everything in her fiction. Good writers often strive to do this and fail; to give credit where due, Rand doesn’t fail. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would build a skyscraper with a ritzy rooftop bar that you nevertheless have to walk down stairs to get to, and that is so dank and cloistered, but the impression is what’s important: like rats in a cellar, these people at the top of a crumbling and decaying world are meeting to collude in sinister business. Why it’s sinister is not clearly spelled out: we are meant to gather from the conversation alone that these people are philosophically evil.
…this chapter, and previous chapters, further analyzed here.
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Ah, bagging on Ayn Rand’s literary shortcomings. That never gets old. I think her book is as misunderstood by its fans as Wealth of Nations is by them.
Dean:
If you haven’t already you should find a copy of Anne C. Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Slamfu: I suggest reading the entire review, for we’re looking at her literary strengths (and she does have strengths) as well as shortcomings, and also her philosophical and economic thinking. Chapter 3 all by itself proves Rand is ridiculously wrong about capitalism and how it works, and how this book cannot be taken seriously if you’re really interested in capitalism. It’s based on a flawed premise from the word “go.” It is, I might say, based on an OBJECTIVELY false premise.
Dean, you are in for a real treat when you finally come to the philosophical section. The most amazing part of the entire speech is that she did not follow what she wrote!
Deconstruct, huh? Is that what this is, a deconstruction? Looks like a poor review to me.
Mr Esmay may not know that Ayn Rand self-published a monthly letter for 4 years which evolved into a magazine and then a fortnightly “Ayn Rand Letter.” I would consider this a business. Many of the articles were again published into non-fiction books such as “The Virtue of Selfishness.” “Capitalism The Unknown Ideal” and “Philosophy: Who Needs It.”
Recent events in the corporate world such as the obvious decrease in compitition through takeovers and buyouts without any oversite from the government, the occupy wallstreet movement, and the recently disclosed backroom deals to increase the power of large corporations by the current president which all sound like excerpts from an Ayn Rand novel, indicate that if Ayn new little about history, she was an absolute visionary of the future.