Who is John Galt?

As you can tell from the left hand margin, I don’t read much fiction. I see reading as a way to learn things and expand my understanding. I enjoy it. I take notes. I underline. I dog-ear.

Yes, I am a geek, thanks for noticing.

However, right now I am reading a novel; a 50 year old novel at that. You might have read or heard of it because it is selling like crazy right now. I had been hearing repeated references to it, so I finally picked it up. It’s Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Almost 1100 pages long. Ouch. Not exactly easy reading. There are several sections where I just wanted to smack someone and say, “okay, I get it, move on” and other sections where the dialog was just completely unrealistic and so over romanticized that I became nauseous and not occasionally… very sleepy. Then in some cases it reads like a supermarket romance novel with passionate love scenes that are humorous at best.

On top of that, unfortunately I am a very slow reader and just CAN’T skim a book. I feel like if I don’t read every single word then I didn’t really read the book. So it is taking me forever to read this thing. I finally made it to the 900th page last night (and there was much rejoicing… yah), so I am hoping to get a glimpse of how it ends soon.

However, despite that glowing criticism… the PLOT of the book is genius. So genius, it’s frightening. In the early sections it reads like a pseudo prophecy of America’s present with horrifying glimpses of the potential future. While it actually bends toward worshipping self and an almost atheistic slant… it makes an excellent point, so here it is, just in case you don’t want to trudge through the 1100 pages.

Socialism will never work because it encourages laziness and discourages good honest work. On top of that it points out the subversive and devious nature of those who hide their actions behind “the common good”. It points out that when people turn class warfare against the most productive minds in society, then society as a whole will lose. The poor will suffer even more than the rich and the only ones who benefit are the politicians who make the rules. It cries against the unchecked power of the national government. The frightening thing is that the words, phrases, and even some of the actions of the antagonist politicians mirror those that we are seeing today.

From that perspective, Ayn Rand had tremendous foresight and the plot of the book is powerful. Frightening at times, but entertaining. There has been a movie in the works for a long time, but it sounds like they might finally produce it. I don’t know. We’ll see. They would have to cut volumes out of what is there now to fit into 3-4 hours, and they would have to omit several scenes to get a decent family rating, but we’ll see what happens.

In any case, I think I will work on my own writing for a while. Or maybe I’ll pick up the autobiography of the Red Baron that I recently acquired… oooh, now THAT sounds like a page turner!