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Atlas Shrugged film to be released in 2011
- Artifex 16y agoRight in time for election season.
- grandalf 16y agoDo you think one particular party would benefit? I don't.
- jbooth 16y ago"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
- lionhearted 16y agoIt's got some flaws, but it's one of the most pro-individualism, pro-production, pro-creativity, pro-persistence, pro-hard work, anti-politicking, anti-corruption works of all time. Her characterization of the people she's opposed to is a bit juvenile, but there's a lot of really good and valid stuff in there too - it's the only book I know of that acknowledges the phenomenon where a man works really hard to provide for a bunch of people who think he's not doing enough (Hank Rearden). Also, the opening chapter where everyone is looking to cover their ass and Dagny says she'll accept responsibility if something goes wrong introduces a very strong female protagonist who does business, travels, and lives her life in a strong way. It's not high literature, it's got some flaws, but it's got some great messages - it'd be a shame people who have contradictory politics just throw all those great messages out.
- jbooth 16y agoEcch. Let's stick with the Lord of the Rings comparison. If Ayn Rand wrote it, Aragorn and Gandalf would have just hopped the first boat west and let the world fend for itself, because hey, what's the world done for them? If you were born in America with access to a good education, you're in the luckiest 1% of anyone who ever lived anywhere, and that's all before your 10th birthday. The message of Atlas Shrugged, that these people are 100% self-made and the world owes them something for their hard work, is entitled bullshit.
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- yummyfajitas 16y agoThe message of Atlas Shrugged, that these people are 100% self-made and the world owes them something for their hard work... As I understood it, the message of Atlas Shrugged is that no one owes anyone else anything except by voluntary agreement. The only people who owe Dagny anything are her passengers, and they owe her only train fare. (The only exception being that everyone owes a small amount of tax money to pay for public goods, e.g. police protection.) You should really read a book before criticizing it.
- jbooth 16y agoWell, first off, yeah, so if you're born into the situation that I described above (which I was and I'm pretty most HNers were), I think it's pretty entitled and childish to pretend that your accomplishments are yours alone and you have no obligation to the society that produced you. But sure, technically, you don't legally owe anybody anything. Second off -- if you're the boss, you take responsibility. Any CEO who wants to "go galt" can go right ahead -- they'll be replaced easily enough. There's a fundamental misunderstanding about capitalism -- someone's always ready to replace you. If you're the type of guy to whine about not being appreciated and "go galt" to teach people a lesson, you probably didn't deserve responsibility in the first place -- responsibility is all about being under appreciated.
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- mhd 16y ago> where a man works really hard to provide for a bunch of people who think he's not doing enough Isn't that the plot of every Charles Dickens novel ever?
- aaronbrethorst 16y agoThat and Arrested Development.
- LargeWu 16y agoIf that's all you took from her philosophy - being an individual is good, working hard is good, etc. - then you missed a lot of the detail. To Rand, the ultimate measure of one's self worth is how much money you are making vs. how much you could be making. Building a company up, then offshoring all of your labor to China is more moral than keeping your operations local, because it will lower your costs, and therefore increase profits. And profits, to Rand, is the only thing that matters, as long as you aren't stealing from somebody else. Similarly, in Rand's book it would be moral for, say, hedge fund managers to make risky bets on bad mortgage-backed securities, even if such a house of cards would eventually cause huge harm to the world economy, as long as the hedge fund managers make money doing so. In Rand's world, there are no such things as externalities. There is only black and white, good and evil. It is a fairy tale land where everybody is always capable of making rational decisions with perfect information. Markets are always perfectly efficient. Within the context of her writings, her philosophy works because she gets to define the axioms. But it all falls apart when one realizes that the world is far more complex than she imagines it to be.
- davidw 16y ago> It is a fairy tale land where everybody is always capable of making rational decisions with perfect information. Markets are always perfectly efficient. Well, just as the Marx fairy tail is studied, I think the Rand fairy tail (and it is) is good for thought too.
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- yummyfajitas 16y agoTo Rand, the ultimate measure of one's self worth is how much money you are making vs. how much you could be making. Rand gave up $0.07/copy in royalties to make sure Galt's speech was included in the book. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/189415/word-count/nicole-gelinas http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/189415/word-count/nicol... Roark, in the Fountainhead, also turns down money (and shuts down his company) to preserve his artistic vision. I really don't know where you got this idea from.
- ojbyrne 16y agoI read Atlas Shrugged and immediately followed it by (re)reading The Grapes of Wrath. Both are horribly doctrinaire (with opposing viewpoints), so it made for an interesting contrast. Steinbeck can at least put a sentence together.
- grandalf 16y agoExample of a particularly bad sentence? I'm curious b/c although I'm a native English speaker I was not put off by Rand's prose.
- ojbyrne 16y agoNice placement of a semicolon: "That's not of any importance, even my life and work are not of any importance to me right now, nothing is of any importance; except I must find him." "The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while." What? "What she felt in that moment contained, as one nameless part of it, the knowledge of the beauty in the posture of his body as he held her, as they stood in the middle of the room high above the lights of the city" Again, what? "This is the world and the core of it, this is what made the city – they go together, the angular shapes of the city and the angular shapes lines of a face stripped of everything but purpose – the rising steps of steel and the steps of being intent upon a goal – this is what they had been, all the men who lived to invent the lights, the steel, the furnaces, the motors – they were the world, they, not the men who crouched in dark corners, half-begging, half-threatening, boastfully displaying their open sores as their only claim on life and virtue – so long as he knew that there existed one man with the bright courage of a new thought, could be given up the world to those other? – so long as he could find a single sight to give him a life-restoring shot of admiration, could he believe that the world belonged to the sores, the moans and the guns? – the men who invented motors did exist, he would never doubt their reality, it was his vision of them that had made the contrast unbearable, so that even the loathing was the tribute of his loyalty to them and to that world which was theirs and his." Open sores? Why not just choose a suitably racist epithet. A 50 page speech? Would anyone listening to that (other than in the fake world that the book is set in) actually be awake? These I got from just googling around, I don't have the book handy. I'll leave you with a quote from an actual writer, Salman Rushdie: "No. I am not--and have never been--influenced by Ayn Rand. In fact, I pity anyone who is influenced by Ayn Rand. It's almost as bad as being influenced by Dan Brown." And finally you can go read George Orwell on why the kind of prose that Rand writes, isn't just bad, it's evil. The same way Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are evil: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm "As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."
- grandalf 16y agoNote that most people who aren't fans of Atlas Shrugged resort to making dumb, belittling jokes about it rather than articulating an argument. The internet is full of parodies, etc., but there really aren't many people who dislike the book and are also capable of persuasively arguing against it without resorting to religious authority or mocking sneers (or both). Why? Probably because most people haven't read the book. It's not the easiest read. There are great audio versions, but audiobooks are generally viewed with disdain by literary types...
- lzw 16y agoWhen I first read the book, I started looking for criticism to see if I'd been tricked, or if she'd played on my emotions to make me think something was reasonable or logical that wasn't. I have found some obscure philosophical arguments that seemed to be based on a misunderstanding or different interpretation, or making a mountain out of what I think is a molehill. But those are in the minority. Almost all the criticism I've found seems to take a very shallow, "soundbite" perspective. eg: to presume that the book opposes charity, advocates meanness or evil, etc. Near as I can tell, there is a huge cult who hates Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, and the reason seems to be that her book clearly and logically demolishes the philosophy they espouse. They cannot address it honestly because that would bring up the actual issues in their philosophy and likely many people would see that Atlas Shrugged shows them to be fallacious. So, instead, they attack her with ad hominem and derision and refuse to be honest about what the book actually said.
- gamble 16y agoThe sequel is already covered: http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
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- aaronbrethorst 16y agohttp://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/8/12hague.html http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/8/12hague.html
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- aaronbrethorst 16y agoFive weeks of principal photography on a five million dollar budget (http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/07/20/atlas-shrugged-adaptation-full-of-compromises http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/07/20/atlas-s...). Sounds like it's going to be hilariously bad.
- malloreon 16y agoThe director is also an actor who has to date only directed 12 episodes of the WB tv show he starred in.
- lurkinggrue 16y agoGoing to have a separate film for that long-ass speech?
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThis movie is supposedly part 1 of a trilogy, so yes.
- cparedes 16y agoHere's some arguments against Ayn Rand's philosophy that aren't exactly shallow: http://noblesoul.com/orc/critics/ http://noblesoul.com/orc/critics/
- lzw 16y agoAny worthy philosophy will have academics debating the meaning, meerits and logic of it. That bothers me not in the least. If any of the critics you see from leftists who attack it used these arguments than I'd respect that. However, they just assert some nonsense and then engage in adhominem and it is really pretty tragic.
- shadowfox 16y agoAre you making this statements with regard to criticisms from the link above or in general?
- Hates_ 16y agoThe cast seems awfully young considering how I had always imagined them to be while reading the book. I had pictured this early 20-century group of "captains of industries" to be mid-forties to late-fifties at least.
- joeycfan 16y agoThey are NEVER going to do justice to the book. (Especially chpt. 30)