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Posted on 03/07/2009 7:48:34 AM PST by Publius
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Special thanks to those FReepers who have participated in these threads. We’re having some excellent and insightful discussions of the book. We’ll rap up in early August, so let’s keep up the quality.
Earlier threads:
Our First Freeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Theme
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Chain
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Top and the Bottom
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Immovable Movers
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Climax of the d’Anconias
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Non-Commercial
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Exploiters and the Exploited
Ping! The thread has been posted.
Special thanks to those FReepers who have participated in these threads. We’re having some excellent and insightful discussions of the book. We’ll rap up in early August, so let’s keep up the quality.
Earlier threads:
Our First Freeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Theme
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Chain
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Top and the Bottom
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Immovable Movers
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Climax of the d’Anconias
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Non-Commercial
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Exploiters and the Exploited
bfltr
that’s correct.
there was the afternoon denver post, the “bankers’ paper”,
and the morning rocky mountain news, the union, democrat paper.
Sounds like the Coastal Commission in 70's Kalifornia (and maybe to this very day, I just don't care anymore).
When I can't take it anymore, I tend to tilt at those who by default think that a person espousing the liberal view of a matter is a pure-as-the-driven-snow "activist", while a conservative MUST have some conflict of interest. Global Warming grants are the perfect example. There is actually MORE opportunity for service of self-interest on the liberal side. Naysayers are constantly vilified. Any sane person looking to sell his opinion to the highest bidder would definitely choose the pro-AGW side, yet it's the anti's that must bear the stain of an assumed lack of integrity.
Another observation (and an incredibly obvious one): The companies run by the protagonists are all named after them (Taggart, Rearden, Wyatt, Marsh, Nielsen, Dannager), while the ones run by mealy-mouths like Mowen or Boyle have vague universal names like "Amalgamated..." or "Associated...". Like I said, this should be obvious, but it just struck me this week.
Not to get too far ahead in the story, but I often wonder why Eddie Willers was not invited to Atlantis? He was not a looter, he was dedicated to his work and a life long friend of Both Francisco and Dagny. But he was left in the world, last seen chasing rabbits around the dead engine of a dead locomotive.
Maybe he symbolized the innocent, “civilian casualty” of the war with liberals.
Well, they do have a history of "targeting" individuals..... first on a small, then massive scale.
I hear project X will have 4 million "shovel ready jobs" soon.
Sounds like deconstructivism to me. Thank God that's finally started to be discredited in academic circles.
I have tried over & over to get thru Atlas. I have never been able to get thru Rand’s ponderous writing style. I get the message just can’t handle the style
I am not the great thinker you are (Wind in His Hair to Ten Bears), but IMO the shell of the building represents what is left once the takers in society get done with their taking leaving nothing but a shell of what greatness once was.
The new offices of the John Galt Line, regardless how tattered they may currently be, represent a new hope for a future that can be rebuilt from the bottom up with hard work and determination.
I was thinking about the “cartoonish” epithet that somebody tossed out somewhere upthread. While they meant it as an insult, it shouldn’t be. Stylistically there’s a fair point but it is intentional and purposeful. It is to mistake starkness for simplicity. The characters are drawn starkly. High contrast. The objective is to evaluate the differences between people, between worldviews, not to get distracted yet in the exact boundaries of where those differences are. Or... allow the context to become a character itself and too much a part of the story.
There’s a timelessness to the story and I think the style is there to support that. It’s “Film Noir”, to me anyway, as it plays in my head. I’m seeing cinema like an old Cagney or Bogart film. Sam Spade. I hadn’t thought about it before but yes, it’s even in black and white! Maybe a splash of color here and there... the blue on Rearden metal... some intense red on Dagny’s lipstick... the brief orange glow of a cigarette... but otherwise stark, dark and mostly colorless. Like a graphic novel. Like Bogart and Bacall.
Starkly drawn characters that don’t blend much with the setting, the decade, the techology at the time... it makes it possible then to tear them out of the story and put them down anywhere in time. The story is being told against this backdrop but it could easily be any other. Casablanca had stark, yes cartoonish characters, but it made for a story that wasn’t locked into a particular place and time but could find an analogue anywhere, in any time.
Where does your tag line come from?
One thing that surprised me about the book is that Ayn Rand knew about the existence of shale oil.
When I first read the book, I’d never heard of shale oil and thought it was a literary device so Ms. Rand could create another strong willed industrialist. It wasn’t until a few years after I read the book that shale oil became news.
So, I suggest that Ms. Rand did her research and knew what she was talking about.
And the chicken tastes better.
The other thing that keeps striking me as I read the book, is how the people don't seem to have any say. No voting, no rioting, no court cases, just sheeple. Surely, someone would speak out against these know nothings. Then I see the union rr workers come back to work under assumed names and I'll thrilled by the rebellion. If only it would catch on.
The rough sex thing puzzles me. Does that mean that is how Rand likes it? Is it some puritanical throw back of guilt?
I actually listened to it unabridged on Audiblebooks. It worked very well for long drives.
57 hours of listening. They read every single word.
She amazed me with her precognition. “Anthem” is a very short read, and is about the aftermath of where “O” and his new boytoy Chavez wish to take us.
Gunner
Whenever Wesley Mouch is metioned I see Barney Frank in my mind.
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