National Review: nothing changes in 50 years...

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

I'm enjoying this discussion.

But I still don't see the pleasure in the parts you highlighted.

And I'm trying. I really am. It just doesn't come.

My take on the Wyatt's torch symbol has been totally different until this discussion. I have seen it as a religious symbol of sorts. Like a blazing cross (but without the KKK connotation). A seal of fate, so to speak.

Or a typical revenge sentiment (presented in many stories) where the person who was harmed kills the person who harmed him, but made sure the last thing that person saw on earth was his face.

(Obviously, I don't see revenge satisfaction as pleasure, although I do see times where pleasure is added to it. But the pleasure is not the goal in my view. An emotional equivalent to evening the scores is--knowing the other felt the same kind of loss as the person did. A kind of feeling of completion.)

Now I see the finger in Wyatt's Torch, but it doesn't ring true to my vision of Rand that this would be her intention. I think she would have considered that to be smutty. But who knows?

Interpreting symbols is always dangerous territory, anyway. The reason symbols are symbols is because they are vague enough to speak broadly to different people when that's what you need.

How about a Freudian interpretation, for example? You have a half-assed train ramming a clogged tunnel deep inside a mother's breast mountain and exploding. There's a flaming penis symbol in the distance to boot.

Repressed sex anyone?

Rape?

Michael

Michael,

I don't know much further to add regarding where I see pleasure. However, I do see revenge satisfaction as pleasure, and the example you give, "where the person who was harmed kills the person who harmed him, but made sure the last thing that person saw on earth was his face," also fits the way I see the Wyatt's Torch last sight. Like someone standing another up to be shot and spitting in the person's face before pulling the trigger.

Another reason I see pleasure is the over-the-top, as I read it, caricaturing of some of the passengers. I think it borders on burlesque. I'm aware that many Rand admirers find it realistic representation. I had not read The Fountainhead the first or second time I read Atlas. By the third time I had, and I was reminded by the passenger descriptions of the take-offs Rand does with some of the minor characters in The Fountainhead.

I also see the religious symbolism you describe in Wyatt's Torch. As Jungians say, "A good symbol is overdetermined."

Ellen

PS: David, thanks, re the "gentle reader."

Did anyone detect glee in my using that?

PPS: Why did Rand include having the Torch as the last thing the (awake) passengers saw if not as a kind of obscenity?

[caroljane]

The notion that Rand the artist purged herself of glee, schadenfreude or occasionally wishing ill upon evil enemies, although ingeniously and brilliantly presented here, does not persuade me. These normal human emotions which she evinced in her life, come through in the authorial voice of Atlas Shrugged, and I heard them on first reading, long before I knew anything whatsoever about Rand the person.

[Guyau]

They could not see the world beyond the mountains, there was only a void of darkness and rock, but the darkness was hiding the ruins of a continent: the roofless homes, the rusting tractors, the lightless streets, the abandoned rail. But far in the distance, on the edge of the earth, a small flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt’s torch, twisting, being torn and regaining its hold, not to be uprooted or extinguished. It seemed to be calling and waiting for the words John Galt was now to pronounce.

“The road is cleared,” said Galt. “We are going back to the world.” (1957, 1168)

There is no crime punished by death in this world, save this one crime of speaking the Unspeakable Word.

We have seen one of such men burned alive in the square of the City. . . . They had torn out the tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer. . . . And of all the faces on that square, of all the faces which shrieked and screamed and spat curses upon them, theirs was the calmest and the happiest face.

. . .

As the flames rose, a thing happened which no eyes saw but ours, else we would not be living today. Perhaps it had only seemed to us. But it seemed to us that the eyes of the Transgressor had chosen us from the crowd and were looking straight upon us. There was no pain in their eyes and no knowledge of the agony of their body. There was only joy in them, and pride, a pride holier than it is fit for human pride to be.

And it seemed as if these eyes were trying to tell us something through the flames, to send into our eyes some word without sound. And it seemed as if these eyes were begging us to gather that word and not let it go from us and from the earth. But the flames rose and we could not guess the word . . . (1937, II)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now I look ahead. My future is clear before me. The Saint of the pyre had seen the future when he chose me as his heir, as the heir of all the saints and all the martyrs who came before him and who died for the same cause, for the same word, no matter what name they gave to their cause and their truth.

. . .

These are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. . . .

. . .

The structure of centuries collapsed about them, the structure whose every beam had come from the thought of some one man, each in his own day down the ages, from the depth of some one spirit, such spirit as existed but for its own sake. . . .

. . .

And they, these few, fought a hopeless battle, and they perished with their banners smeared with their own blood. And they chose to perish, for they knew. . . .

Theirs is the banner in my hand. . . . That for which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men. (1937, XII)

[Ellen Stuttle]

Another reason I see pleasure is the over-the-top, as I read it, caricaturing of some of the passengers. I think it borders on burlesque. I'm aware that many Rand admirers find it realistic representation. I had not read The Fountainhead the first or second time I read Atlas. By the third time I had, and I was reminded by the passenger descriptions of the take-offs Rand does with some of the minor characters in The Fountainhead.

Spelling out why the near-burlesque, as I read it, quality of the descriptions of the passengers gives me an impression of the omniscient voice taking relish in the passengers' impending demise: it reads to me like she relaxed and had a high time mocking an assortment of the types she loathed. Contrast to the sober, carefully detailed exonerating descriptions of the four proximal executioners - the road foreman, the trainmaster, the conductor, the switchman.

Ellen

[caroljane]

To deduce, or impute a philosophy from a work of literature is a favourite pursuit of readers and academics. To assess as literature a work which announces itself as a novel of ideas, which delineates a philosophy, is a comparatively new challenge. To reconcile both with bait-and switch (but it's just a novel! But it's just a thesis!) does not work with Atlas, another reason it will continue to be read and argued about long after we lay down our cudgels.

Carol

Team Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt's torch [...].

I felt compelled to find out if the lower-case t ("torch") was a typo on someone's part (maybe Stephen picked it up from webcopy) or if it was the nearly unthinkable: an oversight on the part of Bertha Krantz, the legendary Random House copyeditor who copyedited Atlas.

All's right with the world. Bertha didn't miss an inconsistent styling. It's given as "Wyatt's Torch" in my copy of the 1957 hardcover, pg. 1168.

Ellen

[Guyau]

Just a typo on my part. "Wyatt's Torch" is what is printed there on that last page of Atlas, same edition as Ellen's.

The greater culpability of tone for the passengers by their beliefs and behaviors, which are in fact and in court so remote they are not rated as causes liable in tort or the criminal law, I do not see as any relish. I see it only as another Socrates pounding the table, saying "These ideas, these you wouldn't expect, these are what matters." Especially, would say Rand and Socrates, the ideas of the passenger who was the philosophy professor.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Serious matters first.

I think that your interpretation is plausible, Stephen.

I think that mine is, too.

And I think that we'll continue with our different interpretations.

I've found the comparison of views interesting.

===

A little sidelight on copyeditor mentality second.

I've wondered for years, ever since I learned, in my own publishing days, WHO Bertha Krantz was, and that she'd copyedited Atlas, if she wanted to tear out her hair over Rand's characteristic comma error of putting a comma between a noun clause and the verb.

Just making up an example. I could find plenty of cases to cite, but I'm tired.

For me, to study how Rand wove a scene, is to feel awe.

Bertha reported to Barbara, when Barbara was researching Passion, that Rand had strong views about comma placement, had to be convinced of any change Bertha suggested, and sometimes couldn't be convinced. I'd love to have tape recordings of the disputes over commas.

Cheers,

Ellen

[caroljane]

Imo

[Brant Gaede]

Commas go where they fit: where, they, serve, a, purpose.

--Brant

not where they fit a rule

Rand 1, Krantz 0 (final)

[caroljane]

Cripes where did my post go? I was going to say, that in AS Rand expended all her literary capital on integrating her grand theme with her masterful plot. The other novelistic qualities, characterization at all levels, atmosphere etc., were so chained to her priorities that this reader did not get the full experience of reading a novel, of entering and experiencing a real fictional world. The fourth wall never came down.

[Brant Gaede]

Cripes where did my post go? I was going to say, that in AS Rand expended all her literary capital on integrating her grand theme with her masterful plot. The other novelistic qualities, characterization at all levels, atmosphere etc., were so chained to her priorities that this reader did not get the full experience of reading a novel, of entering and experiencing a real fictional world. The fourth wall never came down.

Wasn't supposed too. It did in the literary superior The Fountainhead. The Fountainhead is self-contained, an American literary classic. I was vaguely aware as a boy of the title and having the vague sense that that must be what it was and maybe should be read and likely would be by me

--Brant

and Atlas Shrugged is, ironically, her great novel, far greater than the previous one, even though it was almost painting by the numbers

[Ellen Stuttle]

and Atlas Shrugged is, ironically, her great novel, far greater than the previous one, even though it was almost painting by the numbers

Her great literary work. I don't classify it as properly a "novel." Epic myth, deliberately presenting a new mythology.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I think AS is a Russian novel like the cinder blocks from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Maybe with a French twang from a Hugo slab.

Michael

[dldelancey]

I noted earlier Carol's reference to "the death of the novel" and now Ellen's suggestion that AS does not fit her definition of a novel. Would you literary ladies care to expound on these statements? Perhaps Carol defines novel differently as well? (I'm a voracious reader but feel like a literary gnat in your presence, so I'm anxious to be educated.)

[caroljane]

Ddl, voracious reader is the only criterion for being a queen bee in discussing novels! The history and evolution of the novel is a big subject for academic litterateurs, and they have been fretting over it forever, and nowadays with dropping sales and shifting forms, the "literary novel" is in imminent danger they think. So they heap the prizes on the most "literary" they can find, circling the wagons. Genre novels like Atlas, still sell fine.

Just my $.02 CDN

[caroljane]

A novel is just a longish story.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A novel is just a longish story.

Carol,

That's one of the best definitions of a novel I have come across.

Michael

[caroljane]

Thanks Michael! Continuing subjectively, there are action/adventure stories, love stories, mystery stories and horror stories. The best writers of course transcend or blend these categories, Jane Austen for example, often consigned to the "romance" shelves, is sometimes said to have written the first mystery story in English.

[caroljane]

My current re-read list

Vanity Fair - Thackeray

Rilla of Ingleside - Montgomery -

The Praise Singer -rRenault

Apprenticeship of Duddy |Kravitz - Richler

Death of an old Goat = Barnard(this is an excellent mystery that will also delight anyone who likes to see academia and the whole continent of Australia hilariously skewered)

[caroljane]

And Michael, I| think you will agree that a great novel is a not-long-enough story. All my re-reads above, I yearned so for the story to continue and know what happened to everyone, I made up my own continuations.

Richler in fact resurrected Duddy later, maybe by popular demand.

Montgomery had to continue her characters until she was sick and tired of them.

Thackeray as we know, wrote in desperation to a deadline,

[Ellen Stuttle]

I think AS is a Russian novel like the cinder blocks from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Maybe with a French twang from a Hugo slab.

And additional building materials from French swashbucklers (The Three Musketeers, etc.) in Errol Flynn movie style (Francisco generally, Ragnar crashing through the window into the torture chamber, other touches).

I see a strong family resemblance to the Russian "cinder blocks from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky" with the significant difference that both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were masters at producing full-blown characters whereas Atlas's characters are slot-roles to fill needed places in the enactment of Rand's thesis. She even came up with her list of characters by working out needed personae.

Rand's characters move to her dance. By contrast, Tolstoy moved to Anna's in writing the book Rand called the most evil story in literature (I'm not sure off-hand in which essay that is, so as to check the exact quote).

Ironically, as I understand the "message" of Anna Karenina, it's like that of We the Living in the respect that Tolstoy is indicting the society in which a being such as Anna is destroyed. I think that Rand got the "point" of the book backward.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jane Austen for example, often consigned to the "romance" shelves, is sometimes said to have written the first mystery story in English.

Reminds me of something in a novel by William Buckley. A mediocre one, I thought, and I don't remember the title or any of the story except this:

One of the characters is enticed into reading Pride and Prejudice, which he expects to find boring as just a period piece women's romance tale, and he finds himself on tenterhooks of suspense wondering how the story will work out, especially the relationship between Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Carol, how many times have you read Vanity Fair? I have the impression that's one you reread often.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

I would like to say I'm the source of calling Atlas Shrugged a "Russian novel," but I'm not. I first heard that from a dork I knew at Boston University in my college days. I can't remember his name anymore.

He was one of the people who mocked me when I arrived fresh from Christmas vacation, full of my first experience with Rand--which was a scorching read of Atlas Shrugged in two days of blinding ecstasy. I arrived back at college full of sacred mission, wanting to spread the word, barely able to contain myself, and a ton load of shit came raining down on my head. Boston was a hotbed of left-wing anti-Vietnam war activists at the time.

I could tell this guy was joining in, not ring-leading, so when I got him alone, I said the things I heard from him and the others about Rand were unrecognizable from what I had just read. Then I asked him if he had actually read her. He said no. So I made him promise to read Atlas and later tell me if he still believed what he had been saying.

A couple of weeks passed and our conversation went something like this:

ME: Did you read Atlas Shrugged?
HIM: Yeah. Just finished.
ME: Well?
HIM: Well what?
ME: Well, do you still think your criticism was correct?
HIM: No. You were right.
ME: Then you like Ayn Rand?
HIM: No. Not very much.
ME: Well what do you think about Atlas Shrugged?
HIM: It's a Russian novel.
ME: A Russian novel?
HIM: That's right. A Russian novel.
ME: What the hell's a Russian novel?
HIM: Read one and you'll see.

And that was that. I couldn't get anything else out of him. We later drifted and I never saw him again. Still, that exchange kept bothering me, so I thought I would take his advice. I started with Dostoevsky. He said read a Russian novel, so I read one to see if I'll see. He was right. I ended up reading several and I saw.

Apropos, this reminds me of a story that happened when I went to Brazil. It involved Dostoevsky. I've written about it before, so I'll quote the post:

... here's one: The Possessed by Dostoevsky (with my initial interest in Dostoevsky being based on a Rand recommendation, of course). This one has stayed in my mind because of a strong personal emotion. I read this when I was about 21. I had recently arrived in Brazil to play in the symphony orchestra and could not speak a word of Portuguese.

Here is the passage that marked me. For lack of time, I will quote from the synopsis in Wikipedia:

Shatov's murder is made especially devastating since it occurs right after he seems for perhaps the first time in his life to be happy. His murder occurs shortly after his estranged wife suddenly reappears in the town pregnant with Stavrogin's child, and the two start to plan a future again together, with Shatov overjoyed to reunite with his wife and be the father to the illegitimate child.

I remember this dude Shatov being presented as a very dark character throughout the book, one which the reader does not sympathize with. He's even ugly if I remember correctly.

In this episode, Shatov discovers that his estranged wife is pregnant with the child of his worst enemy, Stavrogin. She knocked on his door one lonely night in need, begging to be helped. Stavrogin had dumped her and she needed care in her condition. She is not even coming to Shatov because she likes him.

Still, she was one of the few people who had given him love in his life, even if imperfectly and only for a few weeks. So he turns the town upside down getting her medical attention and looks after her with all the tenderness in the world. He starts planing to build a life with her. She even starts liking him for real. The reader gets hot for a happy ending.

Shatov's murder occurs when he goes to meet another character to tell him he is leaving the political movement (anarchism if I remember correctly). The irony is that they kill him to get him out of the movement.

When I read this, I had already been in Brazil for about 3 or 4 months. I was in an apartment I had just leased with help from an orchestra patron in a small 4-5 story building. It was on the ground floor and there was a garden outside my bedroom window. Birds-of-paradise, lemon grass and some other tropical plants.

Since the orchestra was new and the bureaucracy was old, I had not started receiving my wages yet. So no furniture. I think I had one wooden chair and that was about it. I was sleeping on a thin single matress on the floor with my books and clothes lined up against the wall.

A fact I did not consider when I took this place was that there was a dentist's office in the other apartment on the same floor. I remember trying to focus when I practiced my trombone, but constantly being distracted by the sounds of a dental drill and screams of pain. Weird and creepy. I couldn't even speak to my neighbors because of the language. I felt as if I were living in Dostoevsky's world back then.

One night it was already dark out when I was reading The Possessed, the above passage, in bed. In other words, I was on the mattress on the floor making do as best I could. This was my new home and I was trying to make it cozy.

When I read a work of fiction, I don't just read. My mental images are so strong that often I don't consciously see the words in front of me. It's like a movie playing in my mind, except stronger. I'm there. I'm living the story.

I became really tied up in Shatov's plight. I started liking the guy. It got to where I was rooting hard for him to succeed, to leave the political movement and avoid the trap being set for him. Unfortunately, Shatov got to the park, met the person, had a few words, then looked up in the dark and saw the gun pointed at his head. He realized he didn't have time to explain, so he yelled, "No!"

At that moment, right before the gun went off, I heard a fast clacking-like sound and looked up from the book. There was an orange fluttering form in the air about the size and shape of a tennis ball. I watched in wonder as it slowly floated to the ground and instantly transformed into the biggest cockroach I had ever seen. The thing zipped across the floor and went right underneath the covers with me.

Woah!

I had never seen a palmeto bug before, much less heard of one that was able to fly. So I didn't know if this little monster would bite, was poisononous, or what. All I knew is that it was really ugly, really big for a bug, and it was in bed with me. Together with Shatov, I yelled, "No!" and leaped up with my heart thumping out of my throat. The covers flew off in one direction, the mattress in another and the pillow in another.

As they settled, time stopped. I looked around. The bug was nowhere to be seen. I could actually hear my heart beating.

I was only in my underwear, so I needed a weapon. I tip-toed over to the wall and picked up a flip-flop that I was using for house-shoes at the time. My entire fight-or-flight hormone system was in overdrive. From that point on, I spent the next two hours hunched over, stalking that damn bug from room to room.

I slowly lifted a corner of the covers off the floor to peek underneath, then the pillow, then the mattress, the books, my trombone case, whatever could be used as a good hiding place. When I finally uncovererd the cockroach, beep beep, it instantly darted off and I was right behind it, trying to scurry doubled over and stumbling all over the place, pounding the floor time after time with my trusty flip-flop. That sucker could run, too.

This went on and went on and went on. There would be a long stretch of quiet stalking, a burst of furious chasing and machine-gun-like thwacking, then silence. Then again... and again...

After a while, it started getting really aggravating. I was tired and frustrated. I didn't want to go back to sleep, not on the floor with that thing running loose in the apartment. Who knew what it was. Wouldn't this torture ever stop? This wasn't supposed to happen.

But I am persistent if nothing else. In a heroic finale of masterful flip-flop-manship, I finally beaned the bug.

Splat!

A bunch of white gunk squished out from underneath the flip-flop and one of its broken antennas kept wiggling for bit before stopping. Yech! How was I going to clean that up? Was it poisonous?

I took a deep breath, slowly exhaled and looked up toward the ceiling, but seeking the heavens. I said to whatever gods of chaos might be out there, "Why did you have to spoil the book for me?"

I never read another Dostoevsky work after that.

I just reread that and, yup, that's the just the way I remember it. I can still see that damn bug flying.

It's odd, too, because I really haven't read anything more of Dostoevsky. I might remedy that. In fact, I did get The Brothers Karamazov for my Kindle. I have had the print book, too, for a while, but I think I'm spoiled to the short pacing of Internet writing and reading. Dostoevsky in this one writes long, big-ass two-page paragraphs (or longer) full of long, big-ass sentences. To top it off, the book I have has extra-wide lines. It's merciless on the eyes and attention span. On the Kindle, the page width is small and I can adjust the font size, so I might dig in before too long.

Michael