... In what was probably an attempt to rid the world of
Ayn Rand, I suspect. I couldn't complete even the first third of this painfully obvious and obscenely arrogant novel two years ago when I first endeavored it. But I saw it on the shelf last week at the local library in audio-book form. This version was also abridged, so I went ahead and picked it up.
The
abridged version is a bit of a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because the reader is not subjected to Rand's attempts at erotica and romance with her automaton heroin, Miss Dagny Taggart. However, the reading of the abridged version comes at the price of not fully understanding which character is which and who does what. But this disadvantage is offset in its severity by the fact that it doesn't matter what the characters are doing because they are all the same. Actually they are one of two: either a leech or an industrialist. The upshot of the book is that the industrialists fight a world besieged by Marxist ideology and philosophy. The leeches (or looters as she calls them) foster the adoption of
Marxism and carry out its practical implementation. The industrialists, one by one, tire of being victimized by the leeches and decide to "shrug". By "shrug", Rand means they simply don't engage in commerce any longer. Because these 20+ American industrialists decide to disengage themselves and horde their talent, the economy crumbles.
As a believer in the virtue of capitalism, I agree with at least some of the basic premises the book subscribes: individualism, money as a source of good and not evil, Marxism being liberty's antidote. But my God, the way Rand goes about telling it in this fictionalized waste of 900+ pages... Maybe her ideas were radical in 1957, but in 2006, all but the most leftist Marxist would disagree with 80% of her founding sentiments.
I won't go into the details just what annoys me about this book, but if anyone has read or reads it, share your thoughts, please. Did any of those of you who read it find Dagny to be a complete moron for not figuring out what was going on in the world well before her plane crash? Oh, for those who didn't read it: yes, the railroad Heiress apparently knows how to pilot planes. We don't learn this until she's actually ready to take off. Because like most of us, knowing how to pilot small aircraft is incidental and not really worth mentioning. Did anyone else find it absurd that the world would just cease to function without a handful of talented and industrious people? I am surely not being overly-optimistic when I say that there would be scores of people to take their places - people who step up to the plate, rise to the challenge, and spout off cliche after cliche.
Oddly enough, as much as I hate the condescending tone of Rand, I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading it. After all, it is the fictionalized explanation for her philosophy: objectivism. Which is a pretty cool philosophy, as far as philosophies go.
I managed to get the ambulance near the hotel at the beach but I accidentally slammed it into a palm tree, sending it into the air, spinning into space. And when it landed, the game crashed. Something to do with the float percentage =0. I guess that doesn't turn it into a magical ambulance/boat hybrid. I could save drowning people with it, you know. It did make for a nice stunt bonus.
