Atlas Shrugged Producer John Aglialoro on Ayn Rand's Enduring Impact


Recommended Posts

Since I just re-read the whole sequence yesterday, I can say it isn't done according to "war is war" procedure. Using that procedure, they'd have killed the guard at the door using a silenced rifle with a telescopic sight, and probably likewise with the other four guards around the perimeter - and no leaving Dagny to approach the guard at the door by herself and maybe be shot.

Ellen

The problem with that is making too much noise, raising alarm. Commandos are quiet. Dagny (a well known celebrity) walking up to the front door and calmly, quietly scrambling the guard's mind was a tactical solution. It's melodramatic and unreal, but the entire book is.

A silenced rifle? that never misses from 400 yards?

What they did, with the three guys separately or together (details weren't specified) getting close enough to the other guards to tie up and gag three of them (one was killed, unspecified as to how and by whom) wouldn't have made more noise than shooting with a silenced rifle from a distance? And who said 400 yards? And Ragnar was one of the attack group. I'd expect him to be a really good marksman.

And even if they were going to have Dagny try to talk her way past the guard at the door, why did they leave her on her lonesome, no one in the bushes with a gun aimed at the guard in case of need?

Makes these super-brilliant characters look dumb, imo.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 375
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

That was well done, Ellen. I also liked the scene where the bad guy cop was taken down by a long gun. Absolutely cold blooded. Absolutely an execution.

--Brant

edit: oops!--the wrong movie: I was thinking of Legends of the Fall

I liked Legends of the Fall quite a bit. Many wonderful touches of characterization along with the "family saga" aspect. (I like family sagas as a type of story.)

~~

Michael,

Speaking of throughstories, The River Wild is interesting in that regard with the emotional development in the character played by Meryl Streep.

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would have played the scene exactly as written. War is war, suspension of civilian values.

WARNING: STRONG VIOLENCE

The bad guys gave up their advantage by all their fear shooting. It gave her several openings. Look at all the bullets they wasted.

--Brant

well done, to say the least

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's see if I can embed a vid

www.youtube.com

The easy way in default BB code is to copy and paste the video URL -- simple and works fine

-- otherwise post something (a comma, a character, or a complete thought) edit the post, click HTML, paste embed code

I usually don't futz with HTML unless I want to use a PNG image or control the text spacing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did not presume that you think it's fair. I specifically said that it "doesn't actually sound like you." I asked questions about what you thought. I applied logic to your previous statements and asked for clarity.

Jonathan,

Well then, I'm glad that's cleared up.

I'd work on that style a little, though. So, do you mean to say you eat babies? That doesn't sound like you. I'm just asking for clarity by using logic.

:smile:

And what I'm saying, translated to your wavelength, is that in judging the pure writing technique, the scene doesn't succeed as a final turning point of what you see as Dagny's throughline. It's forced and not-well-thought-through.

It certainly does succeed and, from what I have seen so far, it is well-thought-through. I'm just looking at things you are not. Before I say mine, though, I admit the realism is not top-notch. But I don't find it off to the point of a howler or completely unrealistic. I would put it at implausible but possible realism-wise.

Now, according to my throughline of psychological change, Dagny is going from loving humanity as a general default to walking out on it, knowing full well she is going to leave innocents behind to their destruction. For this she has to kill something inside herself. I find the externalization of this with the guard perfect.

People who had been killing her values all her life were the ones who refused to make right moral choices. Not the villains, but the average Joes who were amoral and sellouts. They went along to get along and if that meant someone else suffered and died, that wasn't their problem. Inside herself, Dagny had to kill any vestige of caring about that person before she could join the strike because she knew that, once she left, many such people risked starving to death and other nasties.

But that's a hard thing to kill in yourself. And it's tricky to admit it even once you do. So she literally became cop, judge, jury and executioner. As cop, she commanded the guard to step aside, as judge, she sentenced the guard to make a moral choice on his own with his life at stake, as jury she deemed him guilty of toxic evasion and as executioner, she shot him down in cold blood.

She proved to herself that she didn't care anymore, could join the strike and leave those people--including the innocents with them--to their destruction.

In the throughline I am looking at, it didn't matter if the guard knew Galt was being tortured or what Galt meant to Dagny. At that moment, the guard symbolically represented all that was wrong with the world to Dagny--the reason why Galt could be tortured in the first place--and she literally killed that thing that was wrong with the world, after questioning to make sure it really would not get out of her way.

I am pretty confident I am going to find a huge linear string of events leading Dagny precisely to that conclusion and action once I dig into this throughline for real.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's see if I can embed a vid

The easy way in default BB code is to copy and paste the video URL -- simple and works fine

-- otherwise post something (a comma, a character, or a complete thought) edit the post, click HTML, paste embed code

I usually don't futz with HTML unless I want to use a PNG image or control the text spacing.

Not helpful for my level of ignorance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brant,

When you are watching a video on YouTube, look right underneath it. There will be the title, the poster, then three phrases:

Add to

Share

. . . More

Click on Share.

A new little thingie opens up with a URL inside a rectangle. That is called a shortcode.

Copy/paste that URL into your OL post and, once you click "Post," it should automatically embed the video.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

People who had been killing her values all her life were the ones who refused to make right moral choices. Not the villains, but the average Joes who were amoral and sellouts. They went along to get along and if that meant someone else suffered and died, that wasn't their problem. Inside herself, Dagny had to kill any vestige of caring about that person before she could join the strike because she knew that, once she left, many such people risked starving to death and other nasties.

Michael, I think that's actually spot-on, very well articulated. The woman on the frozen train who called her a common carrier.

What tipped her was Galt being arrested -- after that it was espionage and war, until Galt was freed.

Eddie Willers perceived instantly that she had been transformed.

-------------

Something that should be discussed more fully (and has been bungled too many times) is why Dagny decided to refuse Galt and return to the outside world which obviously had nothing to offer and she knew it. "Let me be the only victim" was a cover story -- like putting Hank's mind at ease, another transparent excuse, however much she empathized with Hank's distress and wanted him to be freed (freedom not hers to grant or withhold).

Francisco saw that Dagny and Galt were one, and it's not denied, but neither was it a done deal. She wasn't that easy to win, not even if she wanted it with her whole being. She had to be conquered, and it couldn't happen in the blissfully peaceful Gulch. John understood.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did not presume that you think it's fair. I specifically said that it "doesn't actually sound like you." I asked questions about what you thought. I applied logic to your previous statements and asked for clarity.

Jonathan,

Well then, I'm glad that's cleared up.

I'd work on that style a little, though. So, do you mean to say you eat babies? That doesn't sound like you. I'm just asking for clarity by using logic.

:smile:

If you had said that you don't characterize baby-eating as unfair (like you said that you don't characterize Dagny's actions with the guard as unfair), I wouldn't be insulting you if I asked if you meant that you thought that baby-eating was fair. It's not a judgment or an attack, but a simple, logical follow-up question.

Before I say mine, though, I admit the realism is not top-notch. But I don't find it off to the point of a howler or completely unrealistic. I would put it at implausible but possible realism-wise.

That's all that I'm saying: the realism is not top-notch, and non-top-notchiness has consequences in a realist novel.

In the throughline I am looking at, it didn't matter if the guard knew Galt was being tortured or what Galt meant to Dagny. At that moment, the guard symbolically represented all that was wrong with the world to Dagny--the reason why Galt could be tortured in the first place--and she literally killed that thing that was wrong with the world, after questioning to make sure it really would not get out of her way.

I am pretty confident I am going to find a huge linear string of events leading Dagny precisely to that conclusion and action once I dig into this throughline for real.

The problem is that the novel is a realist novel, not to mention a very individualist and moralist one, and therefore it does matter if the guard knew that Galt was being held and tortured. Dagny's symbolically killing "what is wrong with the world" isn't effective if she takes out her frustration on an innocent -- someone whom she too hastily judged as being in the category of "what's wrong with the world." If the guard's innocence or guilt doesn't matter to her through-line, then she might as well have killed and eaten a baby as the culmination of her through-line.

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that the ideal culmination of Dagny's through-line would have been if she had blown out the brains of someone who was overwhelmingly, viciously guilty of evil, like her brother.

Galt: "Let's let him live with the knowledge of who and what he is. That's a fate worse than death."

Dagny: "Nah."

Bam! (with less concern than she'd have for killing an animal).

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that the ideal culmination of Dagny's through-line would have been if she had blown out the brains of someone who was overwhelmingly, viciously guilty of evil, like her brother.

Galt: "Let's let him live with the knowledge of who and what he is. That's a fate worse than death."

Dagny: "Nah."

Bam! (with less concern than she'd have for killing an animal).

J

I don't think that having Dagny shoot James would be a culmination of the throughstory Michael is talking about. James has been cast as negative character from the first chapter of the book, before Dagny appears in person. And as opposite to Dagny from her and his childhood on. She never had any cause to feel concern for James Taggart.

[Edit: The original last sentence, "She never had any cause for concern about James Taggart," was misleading as to my meaning. See Jonathan's reply in post #226 and my explanation in post #232.]

I'd like to make clear that it isn't the moral issue with the shooting of the guard that bothers me. It's the logistics (and the grade-C movie quality) of the way the whole sequence is handled. The logistics become stupider, and less plausible, each time I think of them.

For instance, a point Brant brought up with his misremembering. Why isn't there a fence?

And the absurdity of only one door to a building that has unused laboratories and the kind of equipment needed for running the torture device. Did Rand never visit a science facility? All such places I've ever been to (multiple of them) have at least one loading entrance.

~~~

Don't forget Rand set this as the polar opposite of a different form of realist novels, Naturalism.

Michael

Rand didn't set up categories as "realist" novels with "Romantic" and "Naturalist" subdivisions. She set up "Romantic" and "Naturalist" as polar opposites, with the differentiator being the recognition of "the faculty of volition" by the first and the denial of that "faculty" by the second. See her article "What Is Romanticism?"

There's a development in Rand's terminology which leaves loose ends, and produces an artificial division, since she says that plot is the consequence of recognizing volition - but loads of novels typically classified as "realist" both have plot and recognize volition, and I wouldn't say that works generally classified as "naturalist" are devoid of plot, though the principles of plotting used are different from Rand's. She seems to have started with the general notion of "Romanticism" as having non-realistic features, and wanted to emphasize that her "Romanticism" was a vision which she thought could be - i.e., that there really could be heroic persons such as she presented. But as she went on in writing her articles, she extended her meaning of "Naturalism" until it becomes the opposite of the presence of plot.

Ellen

Edited by Ellen Stuttle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ellen,

Of course the main division is between Romanticism and Naturalism and it is based on volition.

I was framing my comment within the context of Jonathan calling AS a "realist" novel. I wasn't talking in broad abstract mode. I was more narrow. It's a way of talking. Romantic Realism is the polar opposite of Naturalism (being that the aim of Naturalism was to make a snapshot of reality, as Rand herself constantly said). If I want to take that broader, then I would say why is Romantic Realism the polar opposite of Naturalism? Because according to Rand Romanticism itself is the polar opposite of Naturalism.

We all know volition is the chief distinguishing characteristic between the two. That's Objectivism 101. (But maybe some readers don't know, so maybe it's good you mentioned it.)

I agree with you that Romanticism versus Naturalism sets up an artificial division, principally since it is so hard to classify works that way. This confused me a lot back in college because the courses I took talked about Romantic music (Berlioz, Schumann, Chopin, etc.), but nobody talked about Naturalism. And, for as hard as I looked and studied, I couldn't find Rand's notion of volition in the music as a fundamental characteristic as opposed to, say Baroque music or more modern music, say, Hindemith. :)

So I looked at literature. I read some of the Naturalist authors she said she admired for their writing technique, like John O'Hara, and saw the characters exercising volition all over the place. Nobody acted with the underlying self-pitying "I couldn't help it!" image that I got from her rhetoric.

It took me years to get out of that tangled confusion. :)

I'm not so sure Naturalism meant the opposite of the presence of plot to her. It might have at the end, but I still don't see it. I think it meant more that the plots were so loosely structured it was difficult to find causality between the events--that the selectivity of the plots were based on journalism standards of reporting things as they happened rather than choosing only those aspects that would lead logically to a climax. I see the fundamental division more in these terms: Rand's purpose of writing fiction was to present the ideal man and the purpose of the Naturalists was to present man as he existed at a specific moment in time in a specific environment. I know I can find quotes to this effect.

My point with Jonathan was that the America in AS is a mythological America. If we want to start nitpicking, America, even at that time, had strong trucking and airline industries, so the failure of a railroad would not leave people starving, etc. Basing the entire heartbeat of the American economy on the railroad is fantasy. A major power grid failure (like with an electromagnetic pulse attack) would leave the USA more in the condition she projected, even back then. In other words, things in society, even business, work loosely in AS when compared to reality.

Another example. I can certainly recognize elements of characteristics in American businesspeople and politicians that correspond to her characters, but I don't see a clear division between producers and looters--not even when a person is clearly on one side or the other. I mostly see mixed folks. (Bill Gates anyone?)

Also, there is one facet of bad guys wielding power--sadism--missing from Rand's treatment. This is where jerks in power bend others to their will and spiritually feed on watching them suffer. Even in the torture scene with Galt. Where are the villains laughing in Galt's face and taunting him? James Taggart, who had a nervous breakdown over seeing his own true motives, was not taunting Galt. If I remember the passage, he kept referring to Galt in the third person. (I'll have to check that to be sure, but I remember it that way.)

I could go on and on. So I don't see a major defect in the guard shooting scene because the details do not conform picture-perfect to reality. To me, that scene might be the limit of how far toward clumsy Rand pushed the mythological part, but it is still within the bounds of the AS mythical America.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rand was rushing for the exit to finish the novel?

--Brant

Judging by the quality of construction of The Fountainhead and the number of years spent developing Atlas Shrugged, it seems plain that Rand was a deliberate story architect -- compared to say, Raymond Chandler, who had little interest in plot as such and reveled in stylish execution (he admired Hammett for "scenes that had never been written before"), or Scott Fitzgerald, who turned tremendous literary ability into snapshots of life observed and its deeper truths, or Mark Twain, who amused himself and bent characters into salted pretzels. You can see equal diversity of approach in the carefully engineered films of Stanley Kubrick, uber-stylish Hitchcock, visually rich and vapid vision of David Lean, and screwball Buster Keaton.

About Rand in particular, everything proceeds from a single abstract question -- which she rightly said was inspired by her admiration of Victor Hugo, a social reformer who constructed elaborate epics that hector and illustrate one theme over and over and over (in Notre Dame de Paris: μοίρα "fatality").

I like Hugo, but he's a pain in the butt. A screenwriter colleague of mine has written a very good, new adaptation of Notre Dame, which she asked me to critique and make suggestions ("notes" as they are called in the trade). So far, I helped her streamline the first 22 pages to advance the action and draw people more quickly into the story. But the bulk of her 139-page script is still sitting on my desktop, waiting for me to plow through it as promised -- a not unrewarding task, because a good, new adaptation is needed, but also like eating slimy canned spinach with vinegar over and over. I'd much rather think and talk about Ayn Rand today.

Atlas Shrugged had an enormous impact on me at age 23.

She had gone out to buy eggs for breakfast, leaving him in bed, half-asleep with a coffee cup on the nightstand. He was still there when she returned, propped up against the wall on two pillows, reading a paperback. “Hungry?” she chirped. He nodded and glanced up to say he was happy to be with her again.

Carla smiled and went to the kitchen to make breakfast, singing quietly and teasing her cat with rhetorical, grown-up human questions. When the eggs were ready and the plates were filled, she called to him and asked if he wanted to eat in bed. When they finished, she kissed his bare shoulder and took the dishes away.

About an hour later, there was nothing else to do. She came to the bedroom door and teased him about being a Lazy Good For Nothing. He nodded in agreement and continued to read.

All day and most of the evening, Carla brought him coffee and juice, lunch and supper, cigarettes and marijuana, tempting him in every conceivable way to put down the book and play with her. She tried his favorite music. His favorite blouse. The rattle and clatter of opening and shutting the bedroom window and the closet doors in the hallway.

He embraced her when she came to bed, kissed her forehead with tenderness, and continued to read. It was a very thick book, she placidly observed. The next morning when she awoke, he was still reading it. “Didn’t you sleep, honey?” she yawned with amusement, since he was such a silly, disorganized boy who forgot to do the normal things, like eat and sleep.

Another day was absorbed by the book. When she kicked him out of bed at noon, he took up residence on the back porch, tipping an old chair against the window and stretching his legs over a metal table in the sun. “I’m not the maid, you know,” she chided him, and he agreed to get his own lunch. An hour later he slapped two slices of cheese and a blanket of ham on a roll, one-handed, while he calmly turned a page and continued reading. “Is it good?” she asked, trying to be included. He mumbled ‘uh-huh’ and went back outside.

On the third day, she made his favorite dinner. He was on page 1011, very near the end. He came to the table with tension and excitement written all over his face. She had never seen him read a book before.

At midnight, she watched him stand suddenly, turn the last two pages, lift his head and then forcefully plunk the finished book on a table at his side, like a spear thrown in the dirt. He looked straight ahead, seeing something distant and elevated, high above the world in which they lived. Tears streaked his cheeks, and he was strong and proud. He turned toward her, sensing her need to understand what had happened. “I never knew,” he said with candor, his eyes ringed with fatigue and with fresh powers. “No one could have known,” he added, saying it as a personal message to her that felt like forgiveness and acceptance.

[First Feature, pp.48-49]

Atlas is not great literature. It is the story of human power, of industry and invention and the 2% of mankind who carry the rest of us, like mythical Atlas with the world upon his shoulders. Moreover, it is perhaps the only novel in history that explains sexuality and romantic passion as the highest possible rational value, among those who have earned it. That was a real eye-opener to me, which took 30 years to integrate. Atlas Shrugged is not a philosophical mousetrap of ethics or ethically-justified government, despite the fact that Rand's definition of "the sanction of the victim" was a profound, almost unprecedented insight that could have conceivably saved the world, which it did not. It saved me about as quickly as I was able to make real in my own life the principle of earning the right to love, finally achived 30 years later.

The wider influence of Rand's ideas has not been negligible. I'm satisfied that Atlas inspired Margaret Thatcher, for instance.

In any case, I'm trying to answer Brant's suggestion that perhaps Rand was "rushed" to complete the manuscript, and therefore bungled Dangy shooting the guard, which sophomores question as an ethical lapse, somehow oblivious to the fact that war is war, which Rand understood better than any of her overfed, pampered, latter-day suburban American admirers. Miss Rand wasn't rushed or flustered into a half-baked finish. It was carefully engineered, like Hugo's beautiful, innocent Esmeralda swinging at the end of a noose and Quasimodo's murder of Frollo at the end of Notre Dame, to cap the premise he started with: fatality.

QUASIMODO

(weeping)

All that I have ever loved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not "a half-baked finish," but the goal line was well in sight after 13 years. I simply don't think she spent enough time on the part starting when Dagny approached the guard to when the complex was taken over. If there had only been a fence and a guard shack then Dagny could have had her conversation and shot the guard as soon as that would have made it possible to retrieve the key through the fence.

All this is folderol about guard shooting is minor in the Atlas Shrugged scheme of things. If a Rand-basher wants better mileage we can focus on why didn't the AS heroes get word to Hank that Dagny was okay? That would cover two of the three seeming biggies, the third being the tunnel blowup. I think there's no more blood in this rock.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brant:

I was thinking about what kind of birth control Francisco and Dagny used...

Or, Hank, or, Lillian.

Or, Galt and Dagny.

Seems archetypal characters in Atlas never get pregnant.

A...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brant:

I was thinking about what kind of birth control Francisco and Dagny used...

Or, Hank, or, Lillian.

Or, Galt and Dagny.

Seems archetypal characters in Atlas never get pregnant.

A...

What's the problem? You don't want to knock somebody up?

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brant:

I was thinking about what kind of birth control Francisco and Dagny used...

Or, Hank, or, Lillian.

Or, Galt and Dagny.

Seems archetypal characters in Atlas never get pregnant.

A...

The archetypes of the Good Guys in AS are the Spirit/Idea children of The Mistress who chose to be biologically barren.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jonathan,

Actually it's romantic realism (Rand's own term), with strong elements of detective story, mythology and science fiction. Don't forget Rand set this as the polar opposite of a different form of realist novels, Naturalism.

Yes, when I said "realism," I was responding to your statement that "the realism is not top-notch," and with full awareness that we're both referring to Rand's notion of a specific type of realism -- Romantic Realism.

Anyway, confirming or clarifying that it is Romantic Realism that we are indeed talking about doesn't change anything, but actually supports the idea that Dagny's actions should be volitional, rational, heroic and just.

My point with Jonathan was that the America in AS is a mythological America.

The mythology doesn't change anything. Within Rand's imaginary world of AS, rationality, fairness and logical consistency are virtues that the heroes practice, including Dagny. So her deviating from those virtues, due to "not top-notch" writing, stands out. It's an issue of internal consistency within the novel, not an issue of comparing the novel's fictional America with the real America.

If we want to start nitpicking...

I'm not "nitpicking," and I'm not interested in starting. I'm offering a valid, substantive, intelligent criticism.

...America, even at that time, had strong trucking and airline industries, so the failure of a railroad would not leave people starving, etc. Basing the entire heartbeat of the American economy on the railroad is fantasy. A major power grid failure (like with an electromagnetic pulse attack) would leave the USA more in the condition she projected, even back then. In other words, things in society, even business, work loosely in AS when compared to reality.

I'm not comparing the fictional world of AS to reality. The standard of judgment is not a novel's consistency with reality, but with itself. The novel creates a world of its own, with its own metaphysically given facts, rules and standards. The scene of Dagny's judging and shooting the guard is not internally consistent with the given facts, rules and standards of the imaginary world that Rand created. That inconsistency is what makes that scene "not top-notch [romantic] realism."

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now