Ayn Rand, Someone Who Got Part of the Picture
So I finally finished Atlas Shrugged. It took two months, lots of coffee, and numerous notes scribbled in the margins, but at last I’ve completed Ayn Rand’s epic. As you may know, the book was number one on the “Top 100” list compiled by Modern Library’s readers in 1998. (Atlas did not make the “official” list compiled by Modern Library’s board, but you can’t have it all.)
In the past, Atlas Shrugged came up frequently enough in conversations for me to consider reading it, even though the book weighs in at 1069 pages in my small paperback edition and will never appear on a “beach reads” list. But I always like to know what the opposition has to say.
I finished the book yesterday, sitting in the Houston terminal on my way home from New Orleans, and now I’m a little uncertain how to articulate my response. Partly because my feelings are mixed. Suffice to say this won’t be a book review. (And if you're not familiar with the book, this may leave you a little lost...)
Was it bittersweet? I certainly found the book bittersweet, which is to say I found glimpses of glory, clues to reality as Christ intends it. “Wyatt’s Torch,” Hank Rearden’s self-defeating struggle for joy, Eddie Willers’ helpless aloneness—such elements convey a sense of what it means to be a created human, struggling for happiness amidst earth’s ruins. However, most lessons were negative, as in “that’s not quite the way things are,” since the biggest piece of the puzzle was missing. But the resemblance to reality was near enough to shed light on life. As in…
Paradise on earth? For me, the “Gult’s Gulch” segment reflected the unadulterated, super-reality of heaven. (No doubt Rand was making implications about “heaven,” but I didn’t take them as she intended.) Dagny Taggert plummets through the clouds in her plane and “awakes” to discover her perfect lover, fulfilling labor, brilliant company, perfectly-suited dwellings, unfading rewards, and joy in every detail of existence, even grocery shopping. This sounds a lot like the heaven I anticipate, the pictures evoked obliquely by Christ. But Rand was an atheist.
As John Piper writes:
So I finally finished Atlas Shrugged. It took two months, lots of coffee, and numerous notes scribbled in the margins, but at last I’ve completed Ayn Rand’s epic. As you may know, the book was number one on the “Top 100” list compiled by Modern Library’s readers in 1998. (Atlas did not make the “official” list compiled by Modern Library’s board, but you can’t have it all.)
Perfectly adapted to their environment, Modern Library Classics are nearly invisible to the casual viewer.
A quick aside: I personally love the classics editions Modern Library publishes. The cover designs and the prefaces by living authors have won me over, and we have quite a few copper-colored books on our shelves. So many, in fact, that it’s helpful for camouflage purposes; when I acquire a new M.L. classic, Lindsay doesn’t notice for weeks, if at all. But back to Ayn Rand.
In the past, Atlas Shrugged came up frequently enough in conversations for me to consider reading it, even though the book weighs in at 1069 pages in my small paperback edition and will never appear on a “beach reads” list. But I always like to know what the opposition has to say.
I finished the book yesterday, sitting in the Houston terminal on my way home from New Orleans, and now I’m a little uncertain how to articulate my response. Partly because my feelings are mixed. Suffice to say this won’t be a book review. (And if you're not familiar with the book, this may leave you a little lost...)
Was it bittersweet? I certainly found the book bittersweet, which is to say I found glimpses of glory, clues to reality as Christ intends it. “Wyatt’s Torch,” Hank Rearden’s self-defeating struggle for joy, Eddie Willers’ helpless aloneness—such elements convey a sense of what it means to be a created human, struggling for happiness amidst earth’s ruins. However, most lessons were negative, as in “that’s not quite the way things are,” since the biggest piece of the puzzle was missing. But the resemblance to reality was near enough to shed light on life. As in…
Paradise on earth? For me, the “Gult’s Gulch” segment reflected the unadulterated, super-reality of heaven. (No doubt Rand was making implications about “heaven,” but I didn’t take them as she intended.) Dagny Taggert plummets through the clouds in her plane and “awakes” to discover her perfect lover, fulfilling labor, brilliant company, perfectly-suited dwellings, unfading rewards, and joy in every detail of existence, even grocery shopping. This sounds a lot like the heaven I anticipate, the pictures evoked obliquely by Christ. But Rand was an atheist.
As John Piper writes:
Ayn Rand equated [duty-driven morality] with Christianity and rejected the whole thing out of hand. But this is not Christianity! It was tragic for her and it is tragic for the church that this notion pervades the air of Christendom—the notion that the pursuit of joy is submoral if not immoral. (Desiring God, Multnomah Publishers, © 1986)
Rand’s philosophy, or “theosophy,” since she clearly sought a God-substitute, would indeed be fitting in a world where God was a controlling tyrant, an impersonal essence or nonexistent (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism). But alas. Hoping for a Godward impulse in Rand was as vain as hoping to find one in…
Her characters. Atlas’ protagonists are fiercely idealistic and stronger than anyone in the real world. When Hank Rearden gives up his one true love, tears came to my eyes, but not to his. Nonetheless, Rand uses her industrial heroes so adeptly that they are a testimony to the breadth of her vision rather than her lack of common touch. Rand didn’t know it, but the archetypes for her protagonists, the death defying “prime movers” peopling her novel, can be traced back to the likes of Abraham, Moses, Noah, Elijah, all the way to Christ. These “men of whom the world was not worthy” defied societies and nations to stand the earth on its head. But apparently she missed that connection.
And ultimately, that’s the final word on Atlas Shrugged: connections missed. Rand got one crucial thing right—our pursuit of pleasure and joy, the best we can find, should be unabashed. But the book is bittersweet because she clearly didn’t get it all. Her hedonism took the form of dynamic sexuality and fulfilling work, but the gifts stumbled her up, and she never saw clear to the Giver. As her characters repeatedly say, “There are no contradictions; check your premises.” When it came to the existence of God, and the nature of pleasure, one wishes she had.
Her characters. Atlas’ protagonists are fiercely idealistic and stronger than anyone in the real world. When Hank Rearden gives up his one true love, tears came to my eyes, but not to his. Nonetheless, Rand uses her industrial heroes so adeptly that they are a testimony to the breadth of her vision rather than her lack of common touch. Rand didn’t know it, but the archetypes for her protagonists, the death defying “prime movers” peopling her novel, can be traced back to the likes of Abraham, Moses, Noah, Elijah, all the way to Christ. These “men of whom the world was not worthy” defied societies and nations to stand the earth on its head. But apparently she missed that connection.
And ultimately, that’s the final word on Atlas Shrugged: connections missed. Rand got one crucial thing right—our pursuit of pleasure and joy, the best we can find, should be unabashed. But the book is bittersweet because she clearly didn’t get it all. Her hedonism took the form of dynamic sexuality and fulfilling work, but the gifts stumbled her up, and she never saw clear to the Giver. As her characters repeatedly say, “There are no contradictions; check your premises.” When it came to the existence of God, and the nature of pleasure, one wishes she had.
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