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.