The Fountainhead Vs. Atlas Shrugged

[Spearmint]

But even in that case, I think the mind-body dichotomy might be involved, in that they consider the action of fiction and the ideas of philosophy to have nothing to do with each other.

This is rather patronizing; as I said to Fred, the issue isnt that 'fiction and philosophy shouldn't be mixed', but rather the style in which they were mixed. Consider works by people such as Sartre, Doestoyvsky, Kierkegaard, and countless others - these people managed to put their philosophies across in their fiction without using 100 page speeches.

[Fred Weiss]

This is rather patronizing; as I said to Fred, the issue isnt that 'fiction and philosophy shouldn't be mixed', but rather the style in which they were mixed. Consider works by people such as Sartre, Doestoyvsky, Kierkegaard, and countless others - these people managed to put their philosophies across in their fiction without using 100 page speeches.

These authors weren't presenting an entirely new philosophy and they weren't trying to explain the motivation behind an extraordinarily radical event which would amount to an enormous upheavel of a culture.

Incidentally, when I first read Atlas I skimmed the speeches just to get their gist. I knew I could always go back and read them more carefully at a future date. On subsequent readings I knew they could be read separately in For the New Intellectual - and in fact I had. But that is not an argument against their inclusion in the novel. Atlas can - and should - stand alone as its own story and its own statement - and I can just imagine what you'd say if it required a "companion volume" of speeches to accompany it.

Fred Weiss

[Thoyd Loki]

Spearmint,

I'd have to be one of those 10%, I'd say I gulped that down as if of a dying thirst.

It is a 60 page speech. And there is not a single rule of literature that AS violates by the inclusion of the speeches that makes it less of a piece of literature. It has certainly got a theme (the widest), the theme is ruthlessly carried out in a very detailed plot that is tied up entirely at the end, the characters are fully developed (and consistent, although that is the same point), and the style is (going to cheat here) excellent.

If you ever care to do it as a mental exercise. Go through Galt's speech and (except for historical references that the reader will have to bring to the table) every point that is made in that speech has been acted out in the novel. It is almost like a mi- no, it is a lesson in epistemology. Concretes-abstractions-concretes.

It has to be just a personal preference on your part. How about a thousand page novel with absolutely no dialogue at all? Why not?

[MinorityOfOne]

If you ever care to do it as a mental exercise. Go through Galt's speech and (except for historical references that the reader will have to bring to the table) every point that is made in that speech has been acted out in the novel. It is almost like a mi- no, it is a lesson in epistemology. Concretes-abstractions-concretes.

Onkar Ghate did a course on Galt's Speech which did just that. It's available through Ayn Rand Bookstore.

[AwakeAndFree]

Personally, I found that unlike practically any other Objectivist fiction writer, Ayn Rand managed to write Galt's speech in perfect harmony with the story. It was long, it demanded a great effort and focus, but it was not out of bounds. I enjoyed the novel much more because of it, and it was an important and necessary part of the plot.

No one goes on a strike without giving his motive, his reasons. And to do that Galt had to give the speech he gave, nothing less and nothing more.

That's why I consider Atlas Shrugged a masterpiece, and most of the other non-Ayn Rand Objectivist fiction nice at best, terrible at worst.

Objectivist fiction writers have to fight the (seemingly irresistable) urge to give their character's a firey Objectivist speech, which is not related to the plot.

It's like they say to themselves: "Oh, yeah - and he needs to speak a little about Epistemology, mention Capitalism a few times, and call the antagonist a mystic for no apparent reason."

[Betsy]

That's why I consider Atlas Shrugged a masterpiece, and most of the other non-Ayn Rand Objectivist fiction nice at best, terrible at worst.

Me too, but that's because most Objectivist fiction writers are trying to write philosophy rather than fiction and their emphasis is on presenting ideas more than telling a good story.

In time, the storytellers will emerge and, if I live long enough, I just might be one of them.

[Bill Bucko]

... most Objectivist fiction writers are trying to write philosophy rather than fiction and their emphasis is on presenting ideas more than telling a good story.

Miss Rand observed: "... abstract ideas are proper in fiction only when they are subordinated to the story. Not when the story is artificially devised to expound some thesis. That is why propaganda writers fail. That is why propaganda stories are always so false and dull." ("Letters," p. 159)

As some of you know, I was quite disappointed when a certain highly distinguished Objectivist professor (Andrew Bernstein), seemingly unable to switch mental gears from teaching to storytelling, took his hero Swoop and made him into a teaching tool ... i.e. in effect treating him as an object of sacrifice, rather than an end in himself. I defy anyone who likes the published version of "Heart of a Pagan" to go back and compare it, sentence by sentence, to the vastly superior version that appeared in "The Atlantean Press Review."

[Free Capitalist]

At the risk of setting myself up, I will say that I agree with Spearmint in that Galt's Speech is not entirely appropriate in its length. That length, far from being irrelevant as someone said, is completely relevant to a work of fiction. A speech can only be so long before it becomes an impediment to the plot; Francisco's money speech is what I consider to be pure brilliance in essentializing, long enough to cover its subject adequately, and short enough to remain a logical part of the plot. Galt's Speech is not a logical part of the plot by any stretch of imagination, unless you believe that Galt is the kind of orator that will keep people listening to their radios for 3.5 hours. And they weren't just listening to 3.5 of an inspiring philosophical lecture. He basically called them looters and moochers for most of the time, along with providing justification for his accusations. His speech could not have been pleasant for the nation to hear for over 3 hours without interruption, and he couldn't have gone on the radio without knowing that.

Some opinions expressed here have made it look like a sin that a reader wants the action to move along, for the plot to resume unwrapping, for the story to continue developing. I think that's a wholly ridiculous attitude, and I hope no aspiring fiction writer takes a hint from posts like these. I want exciting books to read in the future, I don't every book to be like OPAR.

At *most* you can say that it's true that Galt's Speech was far too long to be a logical part of the plot, but you can forgive that because of what it contains, and in order to have Galt's philosophy explicitly stated somewhere in the book. If it has to be stated somewhere, it might as well be done there. But it simply doesn't work to say that Galt's Speech was an effective fictional vessel to move the plot along. So I guess I'm one of the 90% Spearmint mentioned who originally skipped Galt's speech, but one of the few Daniel mentioned who are not non-Objectivists.

[coffee-beans]

Something I noticed when I finished The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged was that the villains seemd to be the focus of The Fountainhead, and the heros seemed to be the focus of Atlas Shrugged. Ellsworth Toohey and Peter Keating were definately more sinister than James Taggert, and Galt and Dagney were far more powerful than Roark or Dominique. I wonder if this shows a conscious shift in emphasis on Rand's part, from the evils of altruism/collectivism to the virtues of egoism/individualism. I did read the novels in correct order, and found the latter building on the former in substance and style.

[A.West]

I read Galt's speech when I first read A.S., even though I was only 9 year old at the time. I even absorbed some of its ideas, mostly that one's mind and reason was of the utmost importance in your life. I didn't understand it all (probably not even most of it), but I did at least put in an effort. I never even considered skipping it. It provides the resolution to most of the moral questions raised previously, for goodness sakes, and thus it is moving the plot and action along, at least for someone who was perceiving the moral/philosophical questions that arose among the characters. To skip the speech is to me like skipping the ending of a mystery novel, and I think that to not read the speech is to not read the novel.

At age 9, Atlas Shrugged immediately became my favorite novel, jumping ahead of "Watership Down" at that time. So then I excitedly started reading "The Fountainhead," and found that I could not understand it at all, and put it down after about 20 pages. Even at age 15, when I returned to The Fountainhead, I found it more difficult to read, because I saw it primarily as a psychological character study, with Dominique being a difficult character for me to understand at that time.

[Free Capitalist]

I don't know about others, but the reason I originally skimmed through Galt's Speech is because

1) it felt like much of what Galt has been saying was repeated already previously in the book. I felt like I already extracted much of the Speech's content from before, so the speech felt redundant.

2) The second reason is that Galt's speech is repetitive with a number of basic points repeated a number of times from different points of view.

Galt's Speech wasn't solving a mystery for me, because all of my mysteries have been solved by a) Francisco and Ragnar's speeches before, and by the entire visit of Dagny to the Valley, and all of her encounters with its residents.

Galt's Speech did make everything explicit, what was made previously explicit combined with what wasn't yet stated earlier in the novel. That's why I said I could make an excuse for it because it is an important part of the Objectivist corpus of writing. But I see nothing wrong with skipping it upon the first reading.

[AMERICONORMAN]

Free Capitalist,

Yes you set yourself up because you are no longer so cool in my book. (But you probably don't care about that). What your comment does tell me is that Objectivists still need to learn much about the art of fiction. How about if you look at the speech as mainly directed at Dagny, as Galt's final act of seduction? Surely a philosopher would want someone who could stand his philosophizing for 5 hours or a whole day! That speech is what finally got Dagny to go to Galt's ghetto apartment.

I think you undermine the intellectuality of the reading public. But Rand overestimated the intellectuality of the reading public; she thought that Galt's speech was enough. To really explain her philosophy, she would have had to include OPAR in the novel instead of her short speech.

It is possible to write a whole novel in a stream of consciousness state, fully inspired, and it still have a remarkable plot and be mainly action. But that is almost impossible. You cannot write without be guided by some idea. The idea (theme) is what distinguishes novel writing from history or journalism; that that theme is exposed by a dramatic plot. When a fiction writer who happens to be a philosopher writer decides to write a novel where she presents a new moral code, it is impossible to do with pure action. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do that, so long as one succeeds.

I'm glad that Ayn Rand didn't write with the consideration that some reader might fall asleep when they get to her "repetitive" speech.

You're not immoral, Free Capitalist, you are merely wrong!

Americo.

[ChristopherSchlegel]

I know Objectivists from several different catagories on this issue.

Some regard the speech as an integral part, but either, skipped it on first reading or after reading it once, upon re-reading the novel, skip/skim it. Some regard it as overkill. Some re-read the speeches more often than the entire story.

Being a musician, I always thought it was exciting how Rand took all of the various concretes/actions of the book and had Galt's speech present them in conceptual form. It is true that "all the ideas are already presented" to a degree. BUT, to use the musical analogy, it's like she was taking all the themes and fully, explicitly restating them & integrating them toward the conclusion.

It may be stretching the analogy too far, but, to me without the speech it would be like a Beethoven sonata-allegro structure without the recapitulation.

Christopher Schlegel

[Free Capitalist]

Americo, if you notice, I never asked for "pure action" in a book. And in fact you're wrong about history, history is not about simply a listing of dates and events in monotonous order. Greek and Roman historians often stop the flow of their history to interject an observation of some moral point that the the current behavior of men illustrates, and that's why I love them far more than what's being written today. Similarly for Atlas Shrugged, if you go back and read what I said above, I loved when AR stopped the progression of the plot a little, in order for Francisco to berate the opulent partygoers on the nature of money. Speeches like that, or the one by the homeless bum about the 20th Century company, are tours de force and I would never want to take them away. They fully belong in a work of fiction.

Galt's Speech takes this to extremes however, and doesn't simply pause the plot - it freezes it. If you actually do go through the labor of reading the speech from start to finish, you no longer remember what happened before it, and need some time to get used to the story resuming afterwards.

So, if AR actually did end up writing a book on Objectivism I would consider Galt's Speech nearly redundant, and would advocate cutting most of it out because it is not only internally repetitive but reiterates many of the themes explained by other characters (or Galt himself) earlier in the book. I would leave a very small stripped down core of new ideas and new essentializations that are unique to the speech alone.

But since she never wrote a book on Objectivism, I am glad that she at least wrote this much, and if it had to be somewhere, I'm glad it is in that book, and at that point in the story.

[A.West]

If you actually do go through the labor of reading the speech from start to finish, you no longer remember what happened before it, and need some time to get used to the story resuming afterwards.

Speak for yourself when it comes to memory, re-orientation, and reading capabilities on this matter. I've experienced no such difficulties. And I'd describe it as "indulge in the pleasure" rather than "go through the labor" of reading the speech.

[Bill Bucko]

Speak for yourself when it comes to memory, re-orientation, and reading capabilities on this matter. I've experienced no such difficulties. And I'd describe it as "indulge in the pleasure" rather than "go through the labor" of reading the speech.

Hear, hear! I totally agree.

Galt's speech is colorful and full of drama. It is not just a philosophic, but a literary tour-de-force.

[Randrew]

I read Galt's speech when I first read A.S., even though I was only 9 year old at the time.

Oh--my--god. I think we have a record here!

Seriously, West: how did you do it? Were you lucky enough to have parents who wanted to teach you about Objectivism, or were you just one of those precocious young-uns who devours every great book he can get his hands on?

Which reminds me: are there any parents out there who have (successfully or unsuccessfully) introduced their children to Objectivist literature, and if so, at what age? I'm sure it depends on the child, but I would think that the best time would be right before high school.

Oh, and about the speech: I am one of the 90%. Then again, when I got to the speech, I was listening to it on tape during a long car drive. Needless to say, that was NOT an easy task, so I had to skip most of it on first reading. Besides, I already had the "feel" of the philosophy, and I couldn't wait to see how the story ended!

I don't think there's anything wrong with skimping on the speech on first reading, with the understanding that the reader will then go back and read it in detail, as I did. It is indeed a literary "tour de force," containing an excellent summary of the philosophy and such brilliant lines as "...reversing a costly historical error, declare 'I *am* therefore I'll think.'" When I first saw it, I thought it was long, but after the fact I actually think it's *compact.*

(Btw: when you quote someone, as I did above, how do you insert the informative blurb about who said it and when, and how do you add the little target arrow to the side? I couldn't find this info on the forum site.)

[A.West]

I read Atlas non-stop in a week or two during summer break between fourth and fifth grade. I had been reading longer and longer books in fourth grade, and wanted to read the biggest and best one I could find. My mother had Atlas Shrugged in her library and it looked like about the biggest book available besides the Encyclopedia Brittanicas, plus I really liked Greek mythology so found the name interesting. My mom is a professional mystic but still said nice things about Ayn Rand, but she's far, far from being an Objectivist.

I came back to it every year or two, and at age 15, surrounded by a sea of non-Objectivity, and looking for answers about life, I was able to grasp the significance of Atlas Shrugged, and began really studying Objectivism.

[AMERICONORMAN]

Free Capitalist:

When I mentioned a pure action story, I mentioned it to sympathize with your preference for action in a story. I was aware that you liked the earlier speeches. I like action in stories, however, I know the importance of ideas in the writing process.

The process of writing between a historian and a fiction writer is different. If you consider what a historian has to be loyal to, he has to be loyal to the facts, whether they be actions or ideas in written record; he cannot make up the facts. The fiction writer has the liberty to make up all the facts (actions) he wants. However, he has to be loyal to some idea, so that the action is coherent and cohesive, whether that idea is implicit or explicit. A sense of life makes fiction possible; a sense of like makes the EVALUATION of history possible.

(Perhaps I will post an essay on this topic soon).

Now, in the case of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand had it as her purpose to present a new philosophy; it was the other side of the same coin of presenting her IDEAL man. The theme is: the role of reason in human existence; and the presentation of a new moral code. John Galt is a philosopher, hence, he gave a long speech.

Maybe most of the world fell asleep while hearing it. But many had to listen; because it was the answer to the dread exemplified by the phrase, "Who is John Galt?" The world is crumbling; he's telling them why.

But Galt does not want to save the world. His express purpose is to destroy it. He's already succeeding and he's almost finished. What is left are two people he wants: Rearden and Dagny. So long as THEY hear it, it is fine to have such a long speech; they are certainly people who have the capacity to endure it. Both of them are already on their way to understand it. (And just imagine the citizens of Atlantis listening to this as well; it would surely be a wonderful lecture; and quite ironical).

Maybe 90% of people listening to that speech cannot grasp its entirety; but they SHOULD (it's romantic fiction). And just imagine how long and of what nature the President's speech would have been. The Atlanteans take over the air waves and give them a speech that they have never heard in their life time, and mankind has never heard in all recorded history.

And besides, consider it a practical joke on the evil people in America. But Galt is much more benevolent than that; it will more than likely be an act of generosity for those who want to save themselves. For most it may be pearls before swine; but not for Dagny and Rearden.

So Free Capitalist, how much shorter do you want the speech, which parts should be cut, etc.?

Benevolently,

Americo.

Americo, if you notice, I never asked for "pure action" in a book. And in fact you're wrong about history, history is not about simply a listing of dates and events in monotonous order. Greek and Roman historians often stop the flow of their history to interject an observation of some moral point that the the current behavior of men illustrates, and that's why I love them far more than what's being written today. Similarly for Atlas Shrugged, if you go back and read what I said above, I loved when AR stopped the progression of the plot a little, in order for Francisco to berate the opulent partygoers on the nature of money. Speeches like that, or the one by the homeless bum about the 20th Century company, are tours de force and I would never want to take them away. They fully belong in a work of fiction.

Galt's Speech takes this to extremes however, and doesn't simply pause the plot - it freezes it. If you actually do go through the labor of reading the speech from start to finish, you no longer remember what happened before it, and need some time to get used to the story resuming afterwards.

So, if AR actually did end up writing a book on Objectivism I would consider Galt's Speech nearly redundant, and would advocate cutting most of it out because it is not only internally repetitive but reiterates many of the themes explained by other characters (or Galt himself) earlier in the book. I would leave a very small stripped down core of new ideas and new essentializations that are unique to the speech alone.

But since she never wrote a book on Objectivism, I am glad that she at least wrote this much, and if it had to be somewhere, I'm glad it is in that book, and at that point in the story.

[AMERICONORMAN]

Regarding my last post, I made a mistake: Rearden leaves just prior to the speech. But it makes it more clear to me that the speech is a mating call to Dagny Taggart.

Americo.