National Review: nothing changes in 50 years...

[merjet]

Ellen,

There is a big difference between saying (1) somebody deserved to die and (2) somebody had some guilt or responsibility for his or her own death. An example is somebody who is killed climbing Mt. Everest or racing a car versus the Tsarnaev brothers (the Boston Marathon bombers).

[Guyau]

The causal relations of the ideas held by the adult passengers to the crash, quoted in full by Michael in #92, are remote ones. They are remote causes. Rand had already given the sequence of proximate causes. Those proximate causal agents and the companies causally implicated are the ones who would be brought to court under tort and criminal liability, as in the BP rig explosion and oil release or as in the recent rail catastrophe in Canada. That is our real-world justice. The justice Rand points to concordant with guilt of the (adult) passengers in their mistaken ideas and behaviors---which mistakes Rand here takes as not innocent error (cf. Galt's speech)---is only a poetic justice. It is, as someone pointed out earlier, a capsule of the whole Atlas strike story. A horrible ruin is coming to the society by the removal of men who live by reason. It is a tale with a moral. It is not an admonition to go on strike nor a prescription for reforming the justice system in the direction of “to the gas chamber go.”

It is not true in the real world that passengers holding these views and killed in a wreck of their train would all have a moral failing in holding those views. It is not true that a strike such as John Galt organizes can be brought off in the real world. It is not true in the real world that the population divides so sharply between those who live by reason and those who do not. It is not true that capitalism is made possible by a handful of outstanding characters; the economic wellbeing enjoyed in this country requires millions of cooperating, rational actors. With the possible exception of that last “not true,” I think it is plain that the author understood and took her reader to understand these falsehoods in the real world are to the purpose of an experience in fiction with a message for real life (thinking here of readers who read the whole thing). Some sympathetic readers did not get these falsehoods of the story and asked idiotic questions such as whether they should go on strike. Other readers, unsympathetic ones such as Mr. Chambers, pretended that the message for real life was “to the gas chamber go.”

Ellen has correctly observed that the penalties in the poetic justice of the train crash are disproportionate. That is also true of most casualties of the collapsed society. I think both are dramatizations of the causal structure Rand wanted to convey about the real world---think or not, life or death---and the new morality she wanted to rest upon that structure. In our real-world justice, we are free to set proportionate penalties, but we have no choice about the fundamental contingency of human life. Harsh as it is, there is fact beyond human wish or design stated in the verse "The wages of sin is death."

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, perhaps it is your marketing-writing focus that causes you to forget that novelists generally do not employ those persuasion-tugs techniques in their writing (unless they are aiming to a paint-by-numbers surefire seller - which usually backfires, unless the marketing of the novel is intense). The novelist expresses his story in his own voice, as best he can. That is all.

Carol,

Are you kidding me?

Great novelists are masters of persuasion tugs. They have to keep the reader turning the pages and not put the book down.

Just because they are not covertly trying to get the reader to buy a product, that doesn't mean they are not covertly trying to get the reader to buy anything. The biggest buy of all is called "what happens next"? The persuasion trigger is called curiosity.

I just finished this book: Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies by Sol Stein.

Here are some of the authors he edited (but the list of eminent authors is looooong): James Baldwin, W.H. Auden, and Lionel Trilling. He's also written some great novels himself, but I'm supposing this based on the reviews and my read of his writing book as I have not read a novel by him yet.

Everything in that book is about persuasion tug techniques for writers--starting with the title and going all the way through to how to add them during revision. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Michael

This doesn't explain Rand's success as a novelist compared to these others. It helps explain basing out in a successful peer group.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

It is not true in the real world that passengers holding these views and killed in a wreck of their train would all have a moral failing in holding those views. It is not true that a strike such as John Galt organizes can be brought off in the real world. It is not true in the real world that the population divides so sharply between those who live by reason and those who do not. It is not true that capitalism is made possible by a handful of outstanding characters; the economic wellbeing enjoyed in this country requires millions of cooperating, rational actors. With the possible exception of that last “not true,” I think it is plain that the author understood and took her reader to understand these falsehoods in the real world are to the purpose of an experience in fiction with a message for real life (thinking here of readers who read the whole thing). Some sympathetic readers did not get these falsehoods of the story and asked idiotic questions such as whether they should go on strike. Other readers, unsympathetic ones such as Mr. Chambers, pretended that the message for real life was “to the gas chamber go.”

Which is why we need art--in part--to show us things we would not otherwise see. As for the "last 'not true'," one has to go deeper and see the structure of the society that makes and allows productive, peaceful, rational action by 'hoi polloi'. For this country it was a few English heroes who risked--even gave--their lives for human rights as explicated by the Founding Fathers. Or consider the simple discovery of antibiotics or the germ theory of disease. Etc. The heart of "The Strike" is the refusal of productive, rational people--even a truck driver--to be sacrificed for 'the greater good'--whatever the hell that was supposed to be. What was not really explicated on was the sacrifice of those who went on strike for 'the greater good' as they understood it from their perspective determined by their rational understanding. In that sense, Rand missed the boat; she missed it for the sake of her art. Thus Objectivism never fully made the transition from Atlas Shrugged into the real world and, frankly, blew up in the faces of its main explicators.

--Brant

selfishness comes from individual thinking and right determination carried over to non-rights' violating action as a gift to others in generosity from personal economic and psychological surplus (profit through trade) which can conventionally even be seen as sacrifice and perverted into forced sacrifice for the benefit of a ruled collective--i.e., the rulers who in turn sacrifice their essential humanity for power, religious and/or political--i.e. thinking is atomistic but a person isn't because people need people, but that thinking must be respected by all and sundry by respecting those people or they denigrate themselves by denigrating truth

[merjet]

Thanks, Stephen, for a good term regarding the train crash -- poetic justice.

[PDS]

This is an extremely interesting thread. I have learned something about why Atlas Shrugged just never appealed to me all that much, especially in proportion to The Fountainhead.

That's interesting in regard to something I was wondering about on the Christology/Randology thread about what one or the other of the Donway brothers, in a summer of 2000 car ride in Vancouver, called Fountainhead Objectivists - folks who first came to Rand via The Fountainhead. I wonder if on average Fountainhead Objectivists exhibit fewer O'ism-related problems than Atlas Objectivists.

I think you've said that The Fountainhead was the first of Rand's books you read, but I don't recall your mentioning before that Atlas didn't appeal "all that much" to you relatively.

Ellen

If I were an Objectivist, I would definitely fall into the "Fountainhead Objectivist" camp. This thread is first I have heard of this term, and I think it actually explains a lot about people, especially their sense of life.

I have always viewed a thorough understanding of The Fountainhead as a necessary precondition to a decent understanding of Atlas Shrugged, i.e., to put it with a dash of exaggeration, that Atlas Shrugged is simply a very long and sometimes tedious footnote to The Fountainhead. We The Living would constitute some very nice, conflicted and artistic throat-clearing for The Fountainhead. Anthem was the equivalent of an artistic genius using nice brushes and canvasses for the first time, enjoying painting for painting's sake, and not trying too hard with the subject of the painting. This may be stating it too strong, but I don't think Rand believed her own bullshit when she wrote The Fountainhead.

I have a pal from college who first read TOE, before anything else. He is now an orthodox (and tenured) member of the Objectivist professoriet. I'm just a working stiff who still finds Objectivism very interesting.

We live our lives in chronological order, whether we like it or not. Sequence matters.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This doesn't explain Rand's success as a novelist compared to these others. It helps explain basing out in a successful peer group.

Brant,

The hell it doesn't. When Rand went into persuasion mode, she was a master manipulator of emotions.

It is true that Stein is not a fan of "purple prose," which he calls writing that is overblown. This means too many adjectives and adverbs, jarring metaphors, descriptions that are too melodramatic for the situation, and so on.

He did not mention Rand, but writers of his orientation generally consider this to be one of Rand's greatest shortcomings--and it is. Here is a good example:

Rearden's hand rose, swept down and slapped Francisco's face.

The scream came from Dagny. When she could see again—after an instant that felt as if the blow had struck her own cheek—Francisco's hands were the first thing she saw. The heir of the d'Anconias stood thrown back against a table, clasping the edge behind him, not to support himself, but to stop his own hands. She saw the rigid stillness of his body, a body that was pulled too straight but seemed broken, with the slight, unnatural angles of his waistline and shoulders, with his arms held stiff but slanted back—he stood as if the effort not to move were turning the force of his violence against himself, as if the motion he resisted were running through his muscles as a tearing pain. She saw his convulsed fingers struggling to grow fast to the table's edge, she wondered which would break first, the wood of the table or the bones of the man, and she knew that Rearden's life hung in the balance.

When her eyes moved up to Francisco's face, she saw no sign of struggle, only the skin of his temples pulled tight and the planes of his cheeks drawn inward, seeming faintly more hollow than usual. It made his face look naked, pure and young. She felt terror because she was seeing in his eyes the tears which were not there. His eyes were brilliant and dry. He was looking at Rearden, but it was not Rearden that he was seeing. He looked as if he were facing another presence in the room and as if his glance were saying: If this is what you demand of me, then even this is yours, yours to accept and mine to endure, there is no more than this in me to offer you, but let me be proud to know that I can offer so much.

She saw—with a single artery beating under the skin of his throat, with a froth of pink in the corner of his mouth— the look of an enraptured dedication which was almost a smile, and she knew that she was witnessing Francisco d'Anconia's greatest achievement.

Rand liked to place descriptions that mean the opposite together. This is a standard technique of hers for creating tension. In small doses, it works well, but she often overdoes it. For example, Francisco shows no sign of inner struggle, yet shows all kinds of signs. He pulls his body "too straight," but it seems broken (so how could he pull it?). And so on.

I can provide one example after another like that all throughout Atlas Shrugged, often with two jarringly opposing adjectives separated only by a comma (not in this example, but I can dig up a few if you like). This constant juxtaposition of opposite descriptions is overblown writing.

But even more, there are certain highly-charged conclusions Dagny comes to that are too speculative and melodramatic to feel real. For instance, there is a lot of nasty violent threat hanging over a slap. A slap! Francisco was holding Rearden's life in balance by his sheer willpower. Because of a slap!

OK. Let's consider it. There are some people like that. But where in the book does Francisco show himself to be so rage-filled he would literally kill a man over a slap? People who do that have violent hair-trigger tempers, but this is the opposite of Francisco up to that point in the book--and after. And there's this. How would Dagny know Francisco was a killer who did not tolerate insult? She didn't, she couldn't, and it's hard to believe she truly believed that. This makes Dagny's conclusion seem like purple prose.

Another purple conclusion is that Dagny knew she was witnessing Francisco's greatest achievement in resisting his urge to kill Hank. Over a slap?

This setting is not the deep South during dueling days of the early 1800's.

I find Rand's description of Francisco's pride and zealousness in his sacrifice to his ideal (and to Galt) to border on religious fanaticism ("yours to accept and mine to endure" and "let me be proud to know that I can offer so much").

This reminds me of a woman I read about in Nazi Germany who said she hoped when her pregnancy cane to term and she mothered a new little Nazi, it would be unbearably painful because she wanted to suffer a lot for her Fuhrer. She wanted to give that to him.

This sentiment makes me uncomfortable--it's the emotional glue that binds cults and wars together, but still, that's not the part I find purple.

The purple component is Francisco went into religious sacrificial rapture over a slap.

Like I said, I can find lots of shortcomings like this in Rand's fiction. These are great moments for the reader unique to Rand's genius.

(Say what?!! There, I just went purple. Juxtaposition of radical opposites rocks. But I really do love this stuff, warts and all. Rand goes way too far in finding larger-than-life meaning in small things--some of it so far out it loses resonance, but by making these edgy close-ups, she shows the reader a process--how to engage his mental perspective when looking at small things and make them far more interesting and exciting than they normally are.)

So, to that extent (since this analysis is my own and not anything I read somewhere), I agree with the criticism of purple prose. But I also understand that some people like purple. I happen to be one of them.

Now, back to the persuasion point. If you go through Stein's book, you will see that Rand, technique by technique, carefully crafted her impact on the reader to get him to feel exactly what she wanted him to feel. Starting with the very names of her characters. Mouch or Toohey, for example, come with negative subconscious emotional connotations. And that's just the names. Rand worked over every detail she could like that in her writing.

Someday it might be interesting to go in depth about the covert persuasion techniques employed by Rand. Hell, in one of her letters, she bragged that as a propagandist, she had been trained by masters in Russia. (I can find the quote if you like.) And don't forget that one of her first mentors in Hollywood was Cecil B. DeMille. If anyone understood how to sell emotion to the masses, that guy did.

In her nonfiction writing workshop, she highlighted that she was writing what she called "middle" articles--ones that are not too technical so they didn't interfere with persuasion. How's that for consciously chosen subliminal bonding with the reader?

If we want to understand Rand's success as a writer, I believe we have to understand her as a writer just like other writers, not as some goddess creature who descended from the stars revolutionizing everything for all time to come, even how to use "and" and "but."

I have a lot of good things to say about her as a writer (her throughlines, for example, are fantastic, even the emotional throughlines, as is her use of suspense, reveals, climaxes and so on). There is a lot good to say and some bad. I prefer to say it by comparing her work against the normal standards of writing--which are taking me a crapload of effort to learn--than by an us-against-them frame.

That is beyond the scope of this post, but I will be discussing this stuff a lot more in the future.

MIchael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, I merely pointed out she was above and beyond those other authors no matter what techniques they generally could and did employ. But she cut way deeper, my question is how and why, and her two great novels remain in print not for decades but generations. That she might be better able to use some of those doesn't enough explain, I think, her staying power. Aside from that, her narrative power was incredible.

--Brant

you quoted me without seeing what I said IMHO

[Darrell Hougen]

Thanks, Stephen, for a good term regarding the train crash -- poetic justice.

Yes. And, if that were Rand's intention, then it would not have been possible for Rand to make any of the characters on the train more sympathetic. So, I withdraw my earlier suggestion. Well, not really, but the scene works the way it was written. It works as poetic justice.

Darrell

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

There is a big difference between saying (1) somebody deserved to die and (2) somebody had some guilt or responsibility for his or her own death. An example is somebody who is killed climbing Mt. Everest or racing a car versus the Tsarnaev brothers (the Boston Marathon bombers).

Merlin,

You seem not to be reading what she wrote, although you posted the statement:

"...there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them."

She doesn't indicate "some guilt or responsibility." The wording isn't, "there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet had no guilt or responsibility..."

And I think the examples you give are a whole different context. She doesn't indicate anything about the passengers taking a calculated risk, and this being the source of the guilt or responsibility.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Thanks, Stephen, for a good term regarding the train crash -- poetic justice.

Yes. And, if that were Rand's intention, then it would not have been possible for Rand to make any of the characters on the train more sympathetic. So, I withdraw my earlier suggestion. Well, not really, but the scene works the way it was written. It works as poetic justice.

Darrell

I've reread the whole long build-up to the scene. It does occur to me that maybe why she engaged in spun-out caricaturing with the description of the passengers is that she was trying to convince herself that they deserved what they got, that she was reluctant to send innocents into that tunnel. Just an hypothesis, not testable.

Today's Sunday (Larry's and my "day of rest"), and I have some appointments tomorrow. I'll get back to the thread when I can.

Ellen

[merjet]

You seem not to be reading what she wrote, although you posted the statement:

Ditto. Where did she write that the passengers deserved to die?

"...there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them."

She doesn't indicate "some guilt or responsibility." The wording isn't, "there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet had no guilt or responsibility..."

She didn't say they were wholly guilty or responsible, and they obviously were not, so my including some was appropriate.

And I think the examples you give are a whole different context. She doesn't indicate anything about the passengers taking a calculated risk, and this being the source of the guilt or responsibility.

I was quite aware of that difference. My example was to show that "deserving to die" and "responsibility for one's own death" are far from equivalent.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael, I merely pointed out she was above and beyond those other authors no matter what techniques they generally could and did employ. But she cut way deeper, my question is how and why, and her two great novels remain in print not for decades but generations. That she might be better able to use some of those doesn't enough explain, I think, her staying power. Aside from that, her narrative power was incredible.

--Brant

you quoted me without seeing what I said IMHO

Brant,

I didn't realize you were talking about longevity of popularity.

But speaking to that, I believe Rand had her writing chops like any normal writer (as per Stein and other writing gurus), she also had a religion aspect in the way she did the mythology + philosophy (the Bible, the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, etc., have all been bestsellers for centuries). and, on a subconsious bonding part with the American audience, I believe she covered most of the elements in studies of mega-bestsellers like Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers by James Hall.

I believe these elements--and, of course, the fact that she succeeded in providing a moral description of the essential American character that was both true and flattering (or better, for a good chunk of it)--all combined to contribute to her longevity. You will not see a combination like that in many books.

Michael

[caroljane]

Also, there are two organizations devoted full-time to publicizing her ideas and her books. That can't hurt.

[Darrell Hougen]

I've reread the whole long build-up to the scene. It does occur to me that maybe why she engaged in spun-out caricaturing with the description of the passengers is that she was trying to convince herself that they deserved what they got, that she was reluctant to send innocents into that tunnel. Just an hypothesis, not testable.

Today's Sunday (Larry's and my "day of rest"), and I have some appointments tomorrow. I'll get back to the thread when I can.

Ellen

Hi Ellen,

I don't think Rand was trying to convince herself that the passengers on the train got what they deserved. She was trying to convince the reader. She was trying to convince the reader that attempting to live by taking the unearned is evil. As Stephen said above, their mistakes were not "innocent error," so killing off those people was poetic justice.

The people on the train may have had other redeeming qualities, but they were all guilty of justifying mooching and looting. All of the adult passengers were guilty of upholding a system that is ultimately anathema to human life and they paid with their lives. That is poetic justice.

Darrell

[Guyau]

I think the main reason for Rand’s decision to cast the scene as poetic justice (for the adults) is for her philosophical exposition in the book. I’m pretty sure all of the doctrines Rand visits with the views and behaviors of various awake passengers, and of all the sleeping ones (except the children), have been visited already in the course of the novel. This recitation through one passenger, then the next, is recapitulation, but now the bromides are stated as antecedents to which the crash is the ultimate consequence. They are all brought together here and causally linked—asserted to be causally linked—with this catastrophic consequence.

The most fundamental erroneous views, and perhaps causally most remote of these remote causes of the disaster, are given to the philosophy professor on the train. These views have been encountered earlier, expressed in the books Why Do You Think You Think? (Floyd Ferris) and The Metaphysical Contradictions of the Universe (Simon Pritchett).

One reason for casting the scene as one of poetic justice (for the adults; she did not cast it so for the children) is that it allows recapitulation of crucial false views while also painting those views as having physically evil consequences. That is half way to sealing the decision for an occasion of poetic justice. The further, sealing reason would be to condemn people holding such views as morally corrupt. Looking at the views and behaviors, which are reproduced in #92, it looks like most would be errors Rand would take for not innocent in real life (and not innocent in her fiction, given its relation to real life). But not all. I imagine she would count the view that one has a right to a job as usually an innocent error, because, as she stressed in her later nonfiction, the concept of rights is difficult. Perhaps Rand had not been fully fast on the distinction between physical and moral evil when writing that scene. Alternatively, perhaps Rand’s understanding of the complexity of the rights concept developed further after Atlas, which would exemplify a point made by David in #106.

The scene with the passengers on their way to doom, partly, if remotely, caused by themselves, is a substantial preview of what Rand will roll out in full in Galt’s speech. It is also part of the stage setting of that speech, with its morality of life and its morality of death. Just before the speech, Rand lays in her final moving preview and enactment, the last moments of Tony’s life in Rearden’s arms.

By the way, James Taggart’s character has been displayed prior to the tunnel disaster in part by his postures concerning rail accidents and the potential for them. Early on he is annoyed with office bother over a freight rail accident, beneath call to his attention. In his first conversation with Cheryl, she begins to voice the logical conclusion that he might have preferred the Rearden metal bridge on the John Galt Line to have collapsed. He snaps back angrily “I didn’t say that!” Preview and preparation for assertion of the death premise in Galt’s speech and in James Taggart’s final scene.

[Brant Gaede]

Also, there are two organizations devoted full-time to publicizing her ideas and her books. That can't hurt.

Her readers have always been the main force of publicity--word of mouth. Still, you are right.

--Brant

Edited September 23, 2013 by Brant Gaede

[Selene]

. In his first conversation with Cheryl, she begins to voice the logical conclusion that he might have preferred the Rearden metal bridge on the John Galt Line to have collapsed. He snaps back angrily “I didn’t say that!” Preview and preparation for assertion of the death premise in Galt’s speech and in James Taggart’s final scene.

Precisely Stephen.

For me, the sanction of the victim concept, and, the truly difficult concept that these individuals truly desired to end it all, and, still struggled to ensnare productive life forces for one last scam which would allow their entitiy sirvival, even if it was for one more year, month, week, day to the very hour.

Those two (2) concepts saved my life in more than a few situations.

A...

[caroljane]

I agree that word of mouth is the main driver. Still the school program is pretty significant. According to ARI's website 1.4 million Free Rands have been distributed so far. Considering that the assigned books in high school are the only novels many people ever read, even taking into account that some students will not like them, that is a lot of mouths to spread the word.

[caroljane]

Speaking of which, has there been an upsurge of Atlas sales since the movies?

[Guyau]

Carol,

In recent years, Yaron Brook of ARI has put forward an historical account wherein ARI's essay contest had been the major reason for the continued decent sales of Rand's books for new readers up to the time of Obama's 2008 election. I don't know if the amount of credit ARI gives itself for the continued good sales of Rand's novels through that twenty-five years or so is overestimated. Following the first election of President Obama and the rise of the tea party, there was a surge not attributable to ARI's program, as Brook recognizes. One reason I had always hoped (with dread) someone might make a motion picture of Atlas was just to experience it, but another was the thought it might put Atlas back on the best seller list. (Reading Atlas can definitely be a good thing personally for readers like me, however modest or meritorious might be its cultural impact.) If I recall correctly, that best-seller return did occur for a while on account of the Part 1 film.

I don't know if people will have stopped reading Rand's novels in another generation or two. Certainly organizations of any significance promoting Rand's books and philosophy might vanish by that far into the future. While I don't know, I doubt reading of Rand's novels will stop even that far into the future, even without such organizations, and I expect many will read with considerable personal recognition and sympathy.

[caroljane]

I agree with that, Stephen. Not that I am comparing them, but you know the way I mean this -|Scientology and Objectivism are often compared by others. Yet with all the huge wealth and muscle of that organization, Battlefield Earth has in no way had the continued sales or impact of Atlas Shrugged.

[anthony]

Ellen, Did I ever say that scene didn't disturb me? For many reasons, AS wasn't my favourite novel.

Too..didactic, I suppose, too large a scale. Like War and Peace.

But those things about a society had to be said, and Rand was the one to say them. They are holding true about my society, in an accelerated fashion.

"Rand's Relish", though - I never recognised, more of a sadness and desperation that time is running out for a great nation. That I understand too well.

Just three posts previous on the thread, you wrote this:

Yes, I still read the scene as having a quality of relish in the authorial description, as I've also said.

Ellen

On the basis of "the first cut is the deepest"- right?

I got over it.

What was it you were saying you "got over," if not seeing "a quality of relish"?

As to whether you've ever said the scene didn't disturb you, I don't know. As I told you on the "Romanticist Art Is Not..." thread, I've historically mostly skipped your posts because the typography is hard on my eye troubles.

On this thread you've leveled charges against persons who do find the scene disturbing, but then you indicated that you found the scene disturbing yourself and got over it.

So, if not a felling of descriptive "relish," what was it in the scene which disturbed you?

Ellen

I don't quite know if this is artlessness on your part, but you realise you're equating "disturbing" with Rand's "glee" or "relish"? How many ways may one be "disturbed" by an outcome in a novel without presuming "relish" on the author's part? You've read widely, I gather, and must have been emotionally disturbed in many ways by many tragic outcomes, as I have. You got over it, I assume. Authors play God, and that's all there is to it.

What is most unique here, is that an 'accidental' mass tragedy, which would have been rendered 'meaningless' in most novels, was given significant meaning by Rand i.e. she questioned (and answered) how accidental is any outcome that originated with fatal errors in thought : and that's the problem Steorts I think seems to have - to him, she made a gratuitous moral judgment on the victims. It wasn't their end that disturbed him, but that Rand had the arrogance to judge them - to depict the causality that led to their deaths. Moral judgment by an individual is not going to be forgiven by thinkers of that stripe.

[Ellen Stuttle]

So, if not a felling of descriptive "relish," what was it in the scene which disturbed you?

I don't quite know if this is artlessness on your part, but you realise you're equating "disturbing" with Rand's "glee" or "relish"?

No, I'm not. I'm asking, if it wasn't a feeling of descriptive relish (in the passengers' deaths), what was it in the scene which disturbed you?

How many ways may one be "disturbed" by an outcome in a novel without presuming "relish" on the author's part?

Many, which tells me nothing about the way(s) you were disturbed.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I don't know if people will have stopped reading Rand's novels in another generation or two. Certainly organizations of any significance promoting Rand's books and philosophy might vanish by that far into the future.

I expect Rand's novels to be read as long as there's interest in great literature, and Atlas Shrugged to generate study after study of its extraordinary construction.

Ellen