![]() Her previous loves, Francisco and Hank, were both men she knew very well, and it's just never seemed persuasive to me that she would so automatically choose boring old Galt because of his motor, as if "best invention" is somehow a trump among uber-talented titans of different fields.īut the love triangle created by John and Dagny's mutual attraction does give us one of the novel's most deft moments: If you're trying to show why self-sacrifice is self-defeating, what better illustration than showing that John giving up Dagny for Francisco's sake would destroy all three? Of course, that presumes that the conventions of monogamy persist in Galt's Gulch, which they do. The "love at first sight" way that Dagny falls for him seems bizarre given Rand's insistence that honorable physical attraction is based on an intellectual judgment about a person's worth. Permitted to invite any of the novel's heroes to a dinner party, he'd be dead last on my list. My conversation mates don't seem to like John Galt much, and I must confess that I don't either. or to cite a more central plot point, protagonist Dagny Taggart in open disagreement with all of Galt's Gulch about the means they'd chosen to carry out their project, even after their month-long effort to persuade her that she's helping her destroyers. So we see Ragnar Danneskjold and Hugh Akston in disagreement about the propriety of piracy. One wonderful thing about novels: They can be smarter than their novelist.Īyn Rand the philosopher posits, via a character, that there need never be disagreement among men of reason - that they can just let reality decide - whereas the novelist in her is too skilled to manifest that nonsense in the plot. ![]() I gleaned truths from that story that I'm sure Papa Hemingway would reject, and I suspect the same can be said for the vast majority of people who like Atlas Shrugged enough to recommend it to a friend: They have many disagreements with Rand, and almost all regard her as a better novelist than a philosopher, a hypothesis that can be supported by comparing the sales of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead to her nonfiction fare. I refuse to let John Galt's speech guide what I glean from the book as fully as I would object if Ernest Hemingway had inserted a didactic 30-page speech by Jake Barnes into The Sun Also Rises. "It is right to focus on the speech," Jerome said in his final entry, "for, as I have previously mentioned, the novel is merely the vehicle for the message." Perhaps Ayn Rand would agree, but I don't care. And John Galt would never even deliver his monstrosity of a speech.ĭoes anyone think that the change would cost the novel very many of its satisfied readers? I suspect it would have sold just as well all these years and that it would be stronger for its brevity. Hank Rearden would explain himself succinctly at his trial. Francisco D'Anconia would muse on money in a brief, plausibly conversational way. Say that the longest philosophical speeches were removed from Atlas Shrugged. ![]() From: Conor Friedersdorf To: Michael Brendan Dougherty, Garance Franke-Ruta, Jerome Copulsky Subject: Part III
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