Life Imitates Art: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

For my latest trip to Cambodia and Hong Kong, I was looking through my bookshelf for some reading materials to take with me – there’s nothing better than spending that long flight catching up on books and watching a good movie or two.

My eyes fell upon the art deco-like cover of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged on the bottom shelf. I will be honest – I can’t stand really long books, and at 1168 pages, this is certainly a long one. Perhaps its all in my head – a good book is an easy read, regardless of the length. I think I just get intimidated by lengthy novels. You might ask what it was doing in my house? Well, I have seen it recommended so many times that I was a tad bit curious. Anyway, I packed Atlas Shrugged into my rucksack and prepared to dig in during my latest travels. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into….

The Premise

Keeping in mind that Atlas Shrugged was first published in 1957, it is somewhat unbelievable to get your head around the events happening in the novel as they bear such an uncanny resemblance to today’s world. The book is based in a draconian version of the United States, where the economy is over-industrialised and everything seems to be based around production, output, consumption. There are energy problems, things that are being produced are wearing out, and there is massive government corruption. Several countries have been turned into people’s states (which isn’t as nice as it sounds). To top the cake, there are pirates and mass nationalisation of industries. Starting to get creeped out yet? I’ll not ruin the ending of the book for you – you’ll have to get it and see for yourself – but some perspective on the current situation couldn’t hurt, could it?

I’m not the only one who sees the similarities

I thought I was onto something good, but I’m not the only one. I literally shrieked with glee when I was browsing through a copy of The Economist on my return flight from Hong Kong. The cover story? Atlas felt a sense of deja vu. Unbelievable! A short except from the story mentions, as I, that:

Rand’s 1957 novel of embattled capitalism is a favourite of libertarians and college students. Lately, though, its appeal has been growing. According to data from TitleZ, a firm that tracks bestseller rankings on Amazon, an online retailer, the book’s 30-day average Amazon rank was 127 on February 21st, well above its average over the past two years of 542….Tellingly, the spikes in the novel’s sales coincide with the news….Whenever governments intervene in the market, in short, readers rush to buy Rand’s book. Why? The reason is explained by the name of a recently formed group on Facebook, the world’s biggest social-networking site: “Read the news today? It’s like ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is happening in real life”. The group, and an expanding chorus of fretful bloggers, reckon that life is imitating art.

Powerful Writing

As a writer, I read a lot. All the ‘famous’ writers will tell you that – Stephen King often says this. But I could only dream of writing such descriptive yet digestible prose that Ayn writes. She goes to such lengths to describe the facial features, emotions, feelings, and other facets of every character’s personality that I feel as if I have known them all my life. And that goes for all the characters – and they are plenty of them. When Dagny Taggart makes some pretty profound discoveries about herself, I gasped just as she did. When Hank Rearden was put into a difficult spot, my stomach churned in sync with his. And when the crazy government passed another lunatic directive, I smirked the same along with Ken Danagger and Francisco d’Anconia.

I totally forgot all about the length of this book; I felt as if I had dived into the ocean, looking for the lost city of Atlantis, and kept swimming marathon-style, knowing there was a reward at the end. (Those of you who have read the book will appreciate the irony in this statement.)

Are you convinced?

Hopefully you’re convinced – now go out and get a copy! Sure, I get a few pennies if you use the US or UK Amazon links below (RSS readers click through to see) but you’ll get far more than that from reading this book.

Photos courtesy of scogle and barcoder96.

Have you read Atlas Shrugged? Please weight in down in the comments. If you haven’t read it, go do so and then come back. Don’t worry, we’ll be waiting.

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