She was pretty good looking before she got that bohemian Russian thing going.
Posted on 02/21/2009 8:12:02 AM PST by Publius
Good point.
In a subplot, John Cusack plays young Nelson Rockefeller who is involved in privately financing a mural by a young communist artist. Cusack doesn't look like Rockefeller but has the accent and mannerisms down pat.
This film is over-the-edge liberal but is beautifully done and covers a lot of your points.
She was pretty good looking before she got that bohemian Russian thing going.
One of my favorite chapters is number Six, a set-piece at Hank Reardon’s house at which some of the foundational ideas of both looter and immovable mover are trotted out in conversation. When first I read this I thought it painfully contrived, but that was before I heard many of these cases made in earnest by real people. Rand didn’t make any of it up; she didn’t have to. To the chapter:
Hank Reardon is a failure as a husband, which isn’t an unmixed blessing because Lillian is a failure as a wife. This one’s headed straight for the rocks, slowly and inevitably. Atlas Shrugged here shows itself a product of the 50’s, the days before the advent of vending-machine divorces wherein a feller can get gutted, skinned out, and hung up to dry in the course of a single morning and still have time for a cup of coffee he can no longer afford. Score one for modern efficiency.
To celebrate the eighth anniversary of this shipwreck of a marriage we have The Party. For Dagny such affairs are misplaced – she says that they should be a celebration, peopled by deserving celebrants. Clearly there is something epochal to celebrate – Reardon metal. And just as clearly there are very few people there who have earned the right to celebrate it or who are even aware of its import.
One who is aware is Francisco d’Anconia, who plays here the role of a satyr before the proscenium, commenting mockingly on the earnest posturings of the other partygoers. The only time he is serious is when he is occupied in his principal purpose for attending, which is taking the measure of the industrialist Reardon.
We've all been to one of these things at one time or another. In these days of computer cultism the geek corner is a fixture at nearly every one of such affairs, geek boys and geek girls, and no matter what the dress each of whom is wearing a little invisible beanie with a propeller on it. When the conversation turns technical you can visualize the propellers turning. To anyone normal the topics are absolutely stupefying and normal people tend to leave them alone. Us alone. Mea maxima culpa.
Hank doesn’t even have that comfort at his joyless affair. I could have helped him if he’d invited me. I’d take him aside and tell him, “Come on, Hank buddy, you gotta man up there. Learn some social skills, like me. If women can fake orgasms we can fake in interest in French impressionism. Let the Drillster show ya how it’s done.”
(I saunter over to a current flame).
“Wow, Mavis, that’s shore a purty drop cloth you got there. What’d the painting look like?”
“That is the painting, Bill.”
“Oh. Uh…” (Blushing, shuffling feet). “Nice.” (Long, painful silence. I slink back to the geek corner, tail between legs, propeller on my beanie drooping).
Which brings us to the topic of Silicon Valley. (Work with me here, I’m in coffee-fueled state of free association). Rand died in 1982, which was just a little too soon to see her imagined world of immovable movers take shape before her, but take shape it did, and I was there to see it. You didn’t see a lot of this sort of party there at the time. Everybody, and I do mean everybody, was too busy.
And so is Reardon here. Breaking off from a hot project to tend the home fires is absolutely one of the hazards of domestic felicity. I don’t think anyone could maintain that state of intensity for long, as Reardon does, even with a toxic home life to avoid. A sad gaggle of Silicon Valley burnouts are what’s left of the people who tried it. I’ll be comparing the world of Atlas Shrugged to that of Silicon Valley at greater length as the novel progresses. For now let us return to The Party and examine the menagerie.
The creature in the first cage is one Dr. Pritchett, a philosopher by trade, the successor to Professor Akston at Patrick Henry University. Check him out:
“Man? What is man? He’s just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur,” said Dr. Pritchett…
A fair enough case, I suppose, but there’s chemicals, Doc, and then there’s chemicals. Ethanol, for example. As a side note, neither Reardon nor Dagny drink. It might have helped.
“But which concepts are not ugly or mean, Professor?” asked an earnest matron…
“None,” said Dr. Pritchett. “None within the range of man’s capacity.”
A young man asked hesitantly, “But if we haven’t any good concepts, how do we know the ones we’ve got are ugly? By what standard?”
“There are no standards.”
Here the Professor has departed the bounds of reason, literally. This statement is a violation of Aristotle’s rule of non-contradiction, (which is, after all, the title of this section of AS). You can't judge by standards that don't exist, and Pritchett has judged. But Pritchett is not simply a fashionable nihilist. One can hear in him some of the more dreary excesses of the school of Existentialism, which Rand saw succeed Aristotle in the real world as well as at her Patrick Henry University. Glance at The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus and tell me if it doesn’t resemble Reardon’s life and that of all of Rand’s immovable movers before Atlas shakes himself free of the burden, before Sisyphus tosses his rock back at the gods.
To Rand this secular hell is the result of the denial of reason. Nietszche stated that in the absence of God there is an inescapable trend toward nihilism. Rand is stating that in the absence of reason one gets the same result.
On a side note, one tends to get other things as well – there appears to be something in the proponents of Existentialism that gravitates toward totalitarianism. Not all of them, to be sure – Camus, for example - but certainly Heidegger was attracted to Nazism and Sartre to Communism. Perhaps that is another result of the denial of God or the denial of reason. Perhaps both. A topic for another day.
There isn’t really much left of the school of Existentialism in formal philosophy these days. It has, however, bled over into the field of social science and constitutes one of the sources of the feminism of Simone Beauvoir and other fields such as Critical Race Theory. Rand presents it as a malign influence in modern intellectual life. One occasionally hears its feminist adherents deride Aristotle as “linear male logic,” as if a syllogism possesses a penis. Rand has no time for that sort of hyperimaginative silliness and frankly it is amazing to me that anyone does.
In Rand’s world a reach for intellectual depth must be accompanied by intellectual rigor. “Things are not what they seem” is a perfectly permissible proposition both to Rand and to Aristotle. Pritchett’s “Things are not what they are,” is not. That’s what “A is A” means.
But this is the way Rand saw academia decaying, Akston to Pritchett, Aristotle to Sartre. And by the way, where did Akston disappear to? And what about the composer Richard Halley, where did he go? And where did Reardon’s foreman at the beginning of the chapter go, and why? Good people, hard to replace. It’s almost as if there's some sort of con…
Speaking of Halley, we note that his immortal Fourth Concerto has been stolen and transformed into sappy movie music, for which the thief, a menagerie display named Mort Liddy, has won an unnamed prize. And in the real world we hear with apprehension that Atlas Shrugged itself may soon be worked over by Hollywood, an irony not lost on the reader of this chapter. If it’s used to sell soap Rand might excuse it; if it’s used to sell socialism she’ll be spinning in her grave.
One last thought from Pritchett: ”The purpose of philosophy is not to seek knowledge, but to prove that knowledge is impossible to man.” I suspect that might be a weak case - it’s knowledge, after all, that enables you to load the rifle when the tiger is coming for you and unlike Existentialist philosophy, tigers are real. We all can echo Francisco’s laughter at this ridiculous poseur.
In this chapter we are introduced to the Equality Of Opportunity bill, whose title (remember, this was written in 1957) echoes the Newspeak grotesqueries of, say, the “Fairness Doctrine” today. This is, in reality, an anticompetitive measure designed to force industrialists such as Reardon to give their assets to government lackeys. It will become significant as the novel develops. From the next cage in the menagerie we hear one of the animals bleating:
“A free economy cannot exist without competition. Therefore, men must be forced to compete. Therefore, we must control men in order to allow them to be free.”
We may be tempted to laugh at this patent silliness, supposing it an exaggeration on Rand’s part, if we hadn’t heard it coming from the television so much of late. The underlying theme of much of the economic “stimulus” legislation is the notion that markets are only truly free under coercion. It is considered impolite to give that notion the horse-laugh it deserves. Francisco d’Anconia is more polite:
“…that nationalization. [James Taggart asks] What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“But surely you don’t want me to do anything about it. My mine and your railroad were seized by the will of the people. You wouldn’t want me to oppose the will of the people, would you?”
That’s flippant, but the assertion placed in the mouth of Bertram Scudder, the author in the next cage, is not:
“Property rights are a superstition. One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it. The people can seize it at any moment. If they can, why shouldn’t they?”
“They should,” said Claude Slagenhop. “They need it. Need is the only consideration.”
So it is in Obama’s America and in every tinpot socialist kleptocracy ever spawned. “To each according to his need” is, of course, Marx, whose doctrines Rand would have seen in application at first hand before she fled the madness. It didn’t work even then. That formulation was, as Trotsky pointed out in The Revolution Betrayed, quite impossible to achieve at that stage of his imagined historical progression. Not, presumably, in the unattainable world of “high” communism, when Party fairies riding proletarian unicorns run the State. Stalin found it necessary to re-codify the proposition to “To each according to his work,” a rather different concept.
But it does prove convenient depending on what one means by “work.” The elite, the “brainworkers,” offer a value to society that is quite out of proportion to their actual sweat equity (just ask them) and must be offered a commensurate reward. That elite populates the menagerie at Reardon’s party and a bigger real-world menagerie seen in the pages of the NY Times, the screens of MSNBC, and in the septic ravings of the Daily Kos, in any of which we might encounter the occupant of the next cage, one Bertram Scudder:
He [Reardon] saw the article, “The Octopus,” by Bertram Scudder, which was not an expression of ideas but a bucket of slime emptied in public – an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a string of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary.
The title “The Octopus” is a reference to Frank Norris’s 1901 novel by that name, a bit of populist propaganda that was romantic and quite unfairly anti-corporate, inspired by the events of the Mussel Slough Tragedy in California. Here Rand, like Ambrose Bierce before her, wasn’t buying into the inflammatory mythology that turned Norris and the Muckrakers into celebrities. Teddy “The Trustbuster” Roosevelt did. It wasn’t one of his better moments.
Finally, as The Party reaches its climax of inanity, there is The Bracelet, a recurring symbol of merit, bondage, and Dagny’s sexual inclinations. Of those we already had a clue, which Rand reinforces at Dagny’s entrance to the party:
The diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained.
Personally I never imagined a diamond bracelet in quite that kinky a vein, but symbolic it certainly is, as both Hank and Lillian Reardon grasp fully when Dagny calls Lillian’s bluff and exchanges it for the genuine chain of Reardon metal. She has, in effect, laid claim to Hank. This affront to connubial bliss is extremely interesting in view of Rand’s real-world affair with the much younger Nathaniel Branden, an early Objectivist follower (whose name appears in “Nat” Taggart, Dagny’s heroic forbear). Rand was writing Atlas Shrugged during that affair, which although nominally approved of was distressing to the spouses of both parties. It isn’t obvious whether art was imitating life or it was the other way around.
And so we and Rand move from an uncelebratory party to end the chapter in Reardon’s painfully uncelebratory marriage bed. Lillian is as cold a fish physically as she is mentally, and clearly Reardon is punishing himself for being with her by being with her. A Sisyphean rock for Hank, perhaps, but it cannot go on forever. Something has to give.
Have a great week, Publius! ;-)
In her interview with Donahue, Rand talks about how much she admires beauty. (Her favorite TV show at the time was Charlie's Angels, believe it or not.) I don't get the impression that she was trying to model the character, Dagny, after herself. If I'm calculating correctly, Rand was in her 50's when she wrote AS, whereas Dagny is in her 30's. I think she crafted the image of Dagny into something she herself would admire in someone else.
You’re right. I should have incremented the body count by two this week, not one. Shame on me.
She was a nice looking young woman.
An interesting and illuminating contrast.
This subject came up a couple of weeks ago. Dagny chained?
Did not Dagny pay for that steel bracelet?
Did Ayn Rand feel chained because of her gender? It seems unlikely, but I try to perceive symbolism where I find it.
I saw nothing that indicated to me that Dagny Taggert was about anything remotely connected to servility, unless it was about profits. Perhaps I read too fast, and miss a lot.
That is possible, but at this point, I am not buying into the notion that she was some sort of a masochist. Hardly.
They had a fascinating trip from one side of the spectrum to the other.
bttt
I agree. If there was a masochist in the bunch, it was her dutiful man servant, Eddie Willers.
Either you misread my post or you are responding to another. I don't see where I implied that Dagny had a masochistic tendency. The point I was making was the possibility that she understood Rearden better than we assumed. She was in control of the situation by simply showing up at the party. Rearden was the one who was uncomfortable with her appearance. To him, she appeared out of place.
Who made the observation about the diamond band on Dagny's arm? If we assume that Dagny was in control, does it matter? It was her decision to wear it. I honestly don't think anyone could or would have told her what was appropriate to wear.
The party scene was frustrating to read. How could so many people stand around and listen to such stupidity and take it all in as if the person talking was the smartest person in the room? I was struck by the young girl, in the white dress, no less, that kept asking questions and did not understand. She seemed young enough to think that these were smart people but smart enough to know that it was all pap and struggled to meld both positions in her mind.
Other random thoughts: Lillian actually hates her husband. Only a failed author would want a limit on printings. Communists passed off crap as "art".
If you go back to the introductory thread to the FReeper Book Club (linkable from Post #2), I put together an alternative history to explain how the world got to be the way Rand thought it would be.
Sounds like listening to the so-called "Talking Heads" today. Somehow they always see things differently than I do. Even when I see and experience things with my own eyes.
Well shoot! I missed the ping , I guess, but here I am. Time to do a little catching up : o
Tatt
There are obvious difficulties with this in a welfare society - what, for example, motivates anyone to produce under this scheme? In order to provide a motivation for production that credo is changed to "from each according to his ability to each according to his contribution." "...in its first steps the workers’ state cannot yet permit everyone to work "according to his abilities" – that is, as much as he can and wishes to – nor can it reward everyone "according to his needs", regardless of the work he does." (Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Ch 3). This is a situation that must be adhered to while mankind is being perfected, during a "lower" state of communism.
That had a couple of interesting effects - it appealed to the scriptural "he who does not work, neither shall he eat," it had precedents within the labor movement before the Russian revolution, and it provided grounds for the justification of greater rewards for Party faithfuls, the "brainworkers," whose contribution in presumably advancing the cause of socialism was placed at a premium over that of producing tractors or food.
Stalin took it one step further in his Constitution, replacing "contribution" with "work." At this point the State has expropriated wealth and distributes it according to its view of the value of one's productive efforts first in maintaining the State and then in advancing the cause of international revolution. It is, in effect, a return to autocracy, as Milovan Djilas pointed out in The New Class, a volume that did not endear him to the nomenklatura then or now. Trotsky attempted to couch the advent of this new bureaucratic group not as a class, but as a "caste," a splitting of hairs unusually fine for even him.
It's all about the maintenance of control and the distribution of largesse, and the emergence of this sort of ruling class is what Rand is presenting in progress at the time of Atlas Shrugged. The people in Washington D.C. so dedicated to the suppression of Reardon metal (more on this in the next chapter) are so strictly as a function of their ability to control its applications, reap the rewards, and distribute those to other ruling class members. Reardon's, Dagny's, and the others' sin is that they are outside this putative ruling class and do not intend to join it. And, in fact, are morally incapable of doing so.
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