Oh no...

Reader, I gave up. Midway through Chapter 4, I realised this book was becoming a serious drain on my reading habits. As a writer, I've never really suffered from writer's block, but I started getting reader's block - that is, I basically stopped reading because I knew that Atlas Shrugged was hanging over my head like the blade from the Pit and the Pendulum.

I would be waiting for my train and would read the advertising posters in French rather than delve into my pocket for the Kindle and Ayn Rand.

So I stopped, and I re-read Of Mice and Men, Blink and Qen to cleanse my mental pallet. Reading is one of the things that make me feel alive, and so attempted to absorb a book that is so patently anti-intellectual was horrific.

Anyway, I'll keep my one-man book club going because I quite enjoy writing about books. The same fate, by the way, befell The Island of the Day Before. I got a few pages in and decided to give the book away. I hope someone else will persevere where I was unable.

Having failed with two Eco books (I've also not managed Faucault's Pendulum), I'm now 2 per cent into The Name of the Rose. So far, it's OK.

Damn, the book returned

So, on Sunday, I thought I'd left my Kindle on a plane and had (half) joked that at least this would mean I didn't have to finish this terrible book. Alas, I found the delicious slab of plastic and silicon and got back on the path of finishing, regardless of the consequences for my own sense of taste.

I've mentioned previously about the lack of humanity in the text, and unfortunately I've now come to the chapter where Dagny Taggart surrenders her virginity to moustachioed twat Francisco D'Anconia. The whole affair is staid and devoid of passion as you'd expect, but half way through, I realised something important, and it's to do with the quality of the prose and the quality of the philosophy.

It's this. 

Atlas Shrugged has no redeeming stylistic qualities. Not one. The writing is uniformly bad, the plotting lazy and slow, the characters half formed like fish made from porridge. For example, think about the language used to describe the interactions of Heathcliffe and Cathy or Rhet Butler and Scarlett O'Hara or even Ross and Rachel. They are cool, sometimes even cold or reserved, and yet underneath the distance is desire. These men push away the women they love through spite, awkwardness or fear. The women push away the men because of pride, propriety or concern for their perception of virtue. They are human.

A good author is able to select words and phrases that can convey these emotions and contradictions: people drawn like gravity, gaps retained through velocity. Rand understands none of this; it's an odd feeling to be offended and angered by a single word choice. But when an author chooses a word or phrase we have to assume that they know what it means or that they don't know what it means.

We'll get to that word in a mo, but just a quick word about Chapter 5.

This is a flashback chapter, and it's a mess. It has this line:

'the face was calm, but something about it made Mrs. Taggart wish she had not wished that her daughter should discover sadness.'

There are quite a few problems with this line. 1. We've not seen Mrs Taggart wish such a thing. 2. The wish/wished muddle is like the writing of a ten-year-old. 3. 'she had not wished that her daughter should discover sadness'. Is a passive sentence to end all passive sentences. 4. 'the face'.?

And so to the most bizarre line of all and the formulation of my theory.

In this scene, Dagny and Francisco are reunited after a couple of years in which they have had no contact (they can do this without any consequence because they're robots, or something).

So they meet in a hotel room, that almost no one can afford. Francisco tells Dagny how beautiful she is and they kiss. ('he kissed her mouth.' as opposed to the back of her head or the inside of her eyelids) In this moment of uncommon desire we get:

'When she looked up at his face, he was smiling down at her confidently, derisively.'

In Fifty Shades of Gray, Christian Gray spends his time beating the crap out of Ana; in Twilight, Edward is obsessed with the idea of killing Bella. And yet neither of these men show naked contempt for their girlfriends. And yet here we have a look of love between reunited paramours described as 'derisive' - a look the strong, confident young woman appears to glory in.

So either Rand doesn't know what it means or she does and is attempting to undermine the strength of her hero or the desirability of Francisco.

I think it's the former, and this leads to my grand unified theory on the success of this book, and it comes down to a phrase from Marx and Engles. They said that, at any given time, the ruling ideas in a society are the ideas of the elite.

The problem has been that, traditionally in art, selflessness is the acme of humanity. Heroes often go from self-centred to the understanding that they are part of something larger. This doesn't tally well with the ideology which emerged from the 60s which was, essentially, I am the centre of the universe, and my satisfaction is the most important thing in the world.

I can't think of another book where this idea is taken so seriously - where selfishness is not just a virtue, but is vital for the success of society as a whole. So let's imagine that you've climbed the corporate ladder, you're at the top of the tree and need some philosophy which will sanctify your desire to extract as much cash from the masses for yourself.

There is but one book available. You know it's shit, that the author is a massive hypocrite, but it allows you to define yourself against something concrete. And so, those with a modicum of power talk up the book, recommend it to their equally powerful friends, and it becomes a bible for the selfish successful.

As theories go, it's simplistic, but I can't understand any other reason why this book would endure. I imagine it's like Ulysses or the Bible, people get a particular cache from pretending to have read it, but no one actually does. 

Atlas Shrugged - chapter 2

He turned sharply and walked on. As the road came closer to his house, he noticed that his steps were slowing down and that something was ebbing away from his mood.

Atlas Shrugged, chapter 2.

This really should be something about The Island of the Day Before, but I left the book in the wrong house (how's that for weird and privileged) and so I pushed through chapter 2 of Atlas Shrugged in which we meet Henry Rearden, the man who Dagny Taggart turns to in her time of industrial need. Like Taggart, he is driven by a need to advance, to profit, and sees family as an appendage that has to be borne like a sack of flour on his back. He has a similar approach to philanthropy as our heroine, but will - out of a sense of familial duty - lend his feckless brother money that he never expects to be returned. Oddly, this act of generosity is bad tempered and goes to suggest (in a universal way) that money spent on a 'cause' is invariably money wasted.

Anyway, let's forget about the politics for a moment, and think about the writing. I've already mentioned that it feels like a draft version that needs editing, but I'm starting to think this dispassionate approach is part of the stylistic world-building that Rand is attempting. She is constantly telling us what is going on, rather than showing, and this adds to the detachment we are forced to feel from the characters and events.

It also leads to overblown sentences like the above. In this scene Rearden has just stopped at the top of a small rise (The dark road had risen imperceptibly to the top of a hill) and looked back over what he has created. It's a scene designed to show us the scope of his ambition and the journey he has taken from scratching around for funds to king of the hill, and yet there is no joy - even though we're told just a little earlier that he is 'always hungry for a sight of joy' - no satisfaction. The prose is lumpen as Rand tries (and fails) to tell us what he is feeling, rather than showing us. The turn above, from the joy of creation to the expectation of disappointment in family should be a pivotal moment, but it just rolls on.

"He turned sharply and walked on. With every step closer to home, Rearden's pace slowed and his mood soured."

That's sharper, clearer and better (I'm so arrogant in my writing!) and actually provides more information than the long-winded juvenile original, where we're supposed to be inside Rearden's head - we're noticing things with him - yet we're also external to the event.

Now I'm not saying that Rand is not human, sub-human or less than human – in fact she puts her finger on a very real human desire for more. What the first two chapters of this book say to me is that she doesn't understand the way humans work, she does 'get' emotion and so can only Pritt Stick the notion of emotion onto her characters, rather than have them actually experience something.

There's another book in which this is also a problem. 50 Shades of Gray demonstrates the same lack of depth in the characters, and the same method of highlighting the thoughts and feelings of people we're supposed to care about. (Ana felt a deep sense of erotic charge, etc). But there's a big difference. 50 Shades of Gray understands it is not a good or significant book; it knows its limitations and works within a set of conventions that would never lead a person to alter their lives to emulate the characters (well, not any sane person). Atlas Shrugged is heavy with its own sense of importance. The prose is thick with portentous visions that are supposed to hail man's achievements and his decline into caring. The characters are meant to inspire readers to change and yet it all means nothing.

It's like listening to someone talking in their sleep.

Reading has always provided an opportunity to experience things that are beyond your situation, or even beyond the realms of possibility. A good book should feel real, significant and enlightening. A good book should feel.

The book is now so toxic and so lacking in joy or emotion that I've actually stopped pulling my Kindle from my pocket in the mornings because I know it's on there and is the first thing on the screen. One morning, I even spent the six minutes of my train journey looking at old text messages (most telling me about the cost of calls in various countries) rather than go back to the book.

Chapter 2 is as far as I got before, so I will push on.

Atlas Shrugged - Chapter 1

"I don't see why we should want to help one man instead of a whole nation."
"I'm not interested in helping anybody. I want to make money."

Declaration of interest

I am not coming to this book cold. In fact, as an inveterate and passionate lefty, I'd say my antipathy towards Atlas Shrugged it pretty much guaranteed. It is, after all, the book that appears to inform the ideologies of the new American right, which posits that 'rational self-interest' is the ultimate goal of man. To me this makes the book an attempt to find a rational philosophical basis for selfishness. And, of course, there isn't one.

A world full of people who only watch out for themselves would end up with - I don't know - 50 per cent of the wealth of a country like the USA being 'owned' by 400 people. That sounds like a prelude to revolution to me.

So, with my interest declared, you can take these reviews - and I imagine there will be a lot of them if I ever manage to finish the book - as you find them. My politics will colour my impressions, just as yours will colour your acceptance or denial of the points raised. We'll get used to it.

In Atlas Shrugged  a group of people (I imagine modern Americans would call them wealth creators) who are tired of taxation and government regulation holding them back decide to go on strike to agitate for better conditions. And so a revolution is launched from the top tier of society against the tyranny of the collective good. Of course, the argument would be that a society of strong self-interested individuals would not need regulation as the market, aspiration and profit would define what stood and what fell, and for those unable to provide for themselves and their families... tough. Obviously, I'm nowhere near this part of the book yet, but the notion that a proprietors strike would cause any problem (unless of course they forced the hand of real wealth creators - workers and consumers - to withdraw their labour in sympathy) to production is bizarre indeed.

Chapter 1

And so, to the book itself. I have finished chapter 1 my first impression is that, in some ways, this is a draft. Like the equivalent of the director of a play blocking out the players before deciding out exactly how and why they should be in those positions in the first place. As though the author has written out approximations of what the characters need to say in order to advance the plot, but then forgotten to go back and make each one a distinctive voice.

This is a big problem because there is an awful lot of dialogue that is unattributed as characters talk, but for the most part you don't realise who is supposed to be talking. Everyone speaks with the same dead cadences. It's so bad during an exchange between the woman (our focalizer) and her father, it becomes necessary to go back over the text, counting opening speech marks.

And the words of these speeches lack depth, emotion, humanity. I don't know if this is an attempt at stylistic sympathy or simply bad writing, but it reads badly and is probably the reason I've never got beyond the first few chapters. It might also be just because Rand was writing in her non-native English, but then, perhaps a native speaker editor could have improved things during the drafting process.

There's also some stuff going on with generation and gender. Miss Taggart and Mr Rearden are the young thrusting industrialists who want to remake the world in the name of profit (Taggart's wealth is inherited, but I don't think Rand is particularly concerned with the notion of meritocracy) and personal advancement. While James Taggart and Rearden's family (all just useless appendages hanging from the scrawny carcass of his mother) are the old guard who are tethered to the idea of looking after either family and community in Rearden's case, or country and workers in Taggart's case. It is the dedication, hard work and willingness to 'take risks' that elevate our two heroes above their feckless families and drive them towards whatever is coming up.

There was an odd formality in the way male characters are discussed here with both James Taggart and Eddie Willers always given full titles, but then Miss Taggart called 'she'. This tallys with the idea of Taggart as the focalizer, but she is not in the initial scenes and so the jump to her on the train (surprise! she's the daughter of the owner) is clumsily done.

And what of John Galt? The first appearances are a rhetorical device that could - I imagine - be construed to mean almost anything and nothing. The characters may have said: how long is a piece of string. Except we know that he is set to be a catalyst of some kind in the coming revolution. As a set up for an enigma, I don't know if it feels so hackneyed because it is, or because I understand that is Rand's intention, or because I know I'm going to hate what he stands for. It will be interesting to find out, but I'm going to predict that he's probably Owen Kellogg.

Ayn Rand and Umberto Eco - I will beat them.

Each year there are two books that I try, and fail, to read. These books are usually measured out in the stuff I will pick up to read or housework I would undertake rather than going back to them. They are probably at opposite ends of the ideological - and maybe even quality - spectrum, but both have so far proved to be unreadable.

I fail for different reasons: The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco is (as far as I can tell for the 34 pages I've managed to read) a dense, rich confection of thoughts, ideas and complex sentences that is, nonetheless, dull beyond comprehension. The second book is Atlas Shrugged by smokey sixties psychopath Ayn Rand, which appears to be naive, slow-witted and clunky.

Because I like doing difficult things - and because I'm now old enough to start thinking about actually being dead - I have decided to read these books together, alternating chapters - that way, each book might serve as displacement activity for the other - and writing down my thoughts, fears, and plans to burn both books once I've finished. In fact, the Rand book is on my Kindle, so I don't even get the pleasure of burning it.

This is, then, a one-man book club that will focus only on two books - both shit in their own way - and will attempt to think, and possibly over-think the meaning of them.

Some posts will deal with a chapter, some might deal with more or less, and some might just tackle an idea or thought that the books address (or fail to address) in detail.