Blogging Atlas Shrugged: Overview of Part I

This entry begins a project I've wanted to do for some time. In the coming days, there will be an essay regarding each of Atlas Shrugged's 30 chapters. The novel is broken into three, 10-chapter parts. At the completion of section I, I will post the section II overview before addressing each individual chapter. 

ATLAS SHRUGGED was Ayn Rand's flawed masterwork, containing passages, plots and page-after-page that are triumphs of the human spirit, only to nose-dive at the beginning of its third part. The novel's great flaw is that is supplies the reader with any number of Larger Than Life characters, but insists in the aforementioned third part that there is one man who is greater than all of these characters established early on, and when we finally meet that character, the vanished inventor of a legendary engine, he simply cannot live up to the hype.

Part I, though (heretofore referred to as NC) is a different story. Dominated in its first half by Francisco D'Anconia, and its last passages by a mystery, it is a novel in itself, brilliant and epic and fascinating.

The first time I read ATLAS, I fond the first 200 pages not exactly dull, but nowhere near the spark contained in THE FOUNTAINHEAD. The more I've read the book over the years, the more that come to understand that first feeling, and the more I've come to disagree with it. The three driving characters of ATLAS's first part are Dagny Taggart, the Vice President of Operation for Taggart Transcontinental, the nation's largest railroad; Hank Rearden, a wunderkind metallurgist who started his fortune from nothing with Rearden Ore, and has invented a new super-metal, a blue-green substance he calls Rearden Metal; and, though he's give a fraction of the space as Taggart and Rearden, there is D'Anconia, for my money the most brilliant character Ayn Rand ever wrote. Gail Wynand was her most complex, Elsworth Toohey her most viciously evil, but there is nobody in Rand's universe that holds a candle to Francisco.

Francisco, on first reading, is an enigma. Heir the world's largest fortune, everything he touches turns to gold. He was Dagny's first love, and their childhood and adolescence was spent together, fantasizing how they would some day multiply their family's fortunes. As Dagny went to work as a teenager on her father's railroad, Francisco traveled the world, and before he'd graduated from college had bough his first mine.

And then, something happens. What happens is not set up as a mystery, but it is the first revelation of the mystery that is at the heart of ATLAS. Francisco, one of the world's wealthiest individuals, becomes "a worthless playboy" and leads Dagny's brother James - one of the novel's only fleshed out villains - and some other "looters" (as all villains are referred to in ATLAS) into a crackpot scheme into Mexico, where James's misguided branching of the railroad into the desolate Mexican badlands ends with it being nationalized, as well as Francisco's mine that he sunk $15 million into. That action - Francisco willingly losing money and taking a lot of people with him - is appalling to both Dagny and Rearden, Dagny because she sees Francisco as a shell of his former self, and Rearden because he finds the "man without purpose" abominable; Rearden recognizes Francisco's ability, his potential and his value immediately, and finds his actions far more deplorable than that of the world's looters.

***

Re-reading that first section, I've told you a lot without telling you much. Most of you who I know who read this site have read this book, but I'll continue as though you're bathed in ATLAS ignorance.

The book's theme is basically Rand giving Socialism and Communism the thought they really deserve. Socialism is most wickedly sketched out in NC's final passages, when Dagny - in search of the man who invented the motor - tracks down the former owners and investors of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, only a decade earlier one of the most successful industrial concerns in the country, but now a deserted plant in Wisconsin, one of the first states in the country that feel the true effects of social planning. The factory owner died, and his heirs instituted a policy of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," ie Socialism. What happened at this factory is only hinted at in NC, though we do finally come to learn that when the scheme was implemented, the engineers in the company's lab quit, and coming upon one of these engineer's widows, Dagny begins to learn about the man who invented the motor, a young man who was only 26 when he finally developed his idea. Without getting into it, I will say that in Part 2, when the whole story of the Twentieth Century Motor Company is revealed by a - for lack of a better term - noble hobo, it is horrifying.  

The book's examination and subsequent rebuke of Communism are more far-reaching and much more subtle. Throughout NC, several laws are passed in Washington, but the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule and The Equalization Bill are the indicators of things to come. The idea is that men in Washington who were either failures in their respective fields, bureaucrats who long for nothing more than power and corrupt industrialists like James Taggart want to limit competition in the name of the greater good, but primarily to line their own pockets. They use healthy competition as the excuse, when all they really want is a certain kind of economically-insured monopoly in their respective areas.

The laws are aimed at Colorado, where the figure of Ellis Wyatt - a brilliant (all the heroes of ATLAS are de facto brilliant, but I feel compelled to keep using that term) chemical engineer who has squeezed oil from fields no one thought possible. Taggart Transcontinental's Rio Norte Line was unreliable thanks to the all the resources going to Mexico, so Wyatt started using the Phoenix-Durango, and both concerns grew more prosperous. The first act - the ADED - ruins the Phoenix-Durango, and the second attempts to ruin Ellis Wyatt. SPOILER ALERT - SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU ACTUALLY PLAN ON READING THE BOOK

While Dan Conway of the Phoenix-Durango gives in and goes along with the with ADED Rule lobbied for by James Taggart, Ellis Wyatt has no intentions of going so quietly. NC famously ends with the chapter Wyatt's Torch, which is a reference to Wyatt setting his oil fields on fire, disappearing, and leaving only a sign that says: "I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It's yours."

SPOILER ENDED

***

So what does all this mean? After you've read it the first time, the clues are so obvious as to what is taking place, you feel rather stupid for missing it the first time around. I will say, for my own part, only that I figured out the identity, but not the intention, of John Galt in the early pages of the book.

Let us consider some of Rand's writing here. Fifty-three pages into the book, we are introduced to Francisco, and his subsequent appearances throughout the text are the novel's show-stoppers, specifically his in/famous speech about money in Part II.

[Rand's characters deliver three famous speeches in her two famous works. In THE FOUNTAINHEAD, there is Howard Roark's defense in his second trial, and in ATLAS, there is Francisco's rebuke of the woman who says that money is the root of all evil, a half-hour monologue examining the premises of such a common statement; finally, there is John Galt's way-too-long speech that is sort of the climax of Part III, a speech that I actually have read word for word one time, but a passage that most people - even Galt lovers - skim.  

What's funny when reading Francisco's speech is that people still say money is the root of all evil, and people like me still cringe when they say it, and when motivated we still use Francisco's beautiful argument as to why such a thought is poppycock.]

On page 53, Rand writes: "At the age of twenty-three, when he inherited his fortune, Francisco d'Anconia had been famous as the copper king of the world. Now at thirty-six, he was famous as the richest man and the most spectacularly worthless playboy on earth. He was the last descendant of one of the noblest families in Argentina. He owned cattle ranches, coffee plantations, and most of the copper mines in Chile. He owned half of South America and sundry mines scattered through the United States as small change."

First, I want to point out the use of the term "noble." Rand - one of the most careful writers of philosophy to ever live - chose every word carefully. Reading a biography of her, it was humorous to hear her editor talking about the unenviable task of going through ATLAS's massive text, and Rand vigorously defending every word cut he wanted to make. Much reference is made to nobility and royalty in her writing, but their common meanings are not even in her usage's ballpark. We learn that Francisco's family, complete with coat-of-arms, is noble not because of stolen titles, but because of a wealth that was earned by hand by his ancestor that fled Spain for his life and started a new one in South America. Each subsequent ancestor had increased the family's worth by 10 percent, and Francisco was expected to increase it by 100 percent. Francisco is the book's most interesting character for any number of reasons, but the fact that he comes from the book's sole famous family that has always produced and never looted only adds to his complexity, and all of this is what makes his turn as a playboy all the more confusing on first reading.

What's particularly funny about Francisco is that even though he is the world's wealthiest man, he talks about economics only in philosophical terms. Rand uses Francisco to get the tenets of Objectivism out there, and the deepest philosophical talk in NC comes from Francisco, while it is Dagny, Rearden and the various men in Washington who tackle the various issues of Capitalism.

It is a shame that the book didn't start with Chapter V, "The Climax of the D'Anconias," for it is possibly the best chapter in the entire book (you'll have to excuse the seeming skipping around here, because I'm just going page-by-page through my margin notes). It is here where we learn of Dagny and Francisco's childhood together, the history of D'Anconia family, and Francisco's meteoric rise to economic dominance in his early twenties. By getting Francisco's past, we also get Dagny's, a character that is conflicting to me, because her greatness is so desired by Rand, but when Rand injects her creepy Objectivist Sex Ethos* using Dagny, the character often comes off as deeply sad.  

[This is not the term Rand uses for it, but that's basically what it is. Objectivism will forever be tainted by those who wish to taint it because Rand's two heroines - Dominique from THE FOUNTAINHEAD, and Dagny Taggart - have such bizarre sex lives. Dominique, recall, lost her virginity to Howard Roark, who raped her, and her love for him was cemented. Dagny's affair with Rearden is started near the climax of NC, where Rearden calls her a whore after they've had sex. She laughs at him, understanding, so forth. Question: why do these strong women let men brutalize them the way they do? Rand's views on sex have an infinite Creep Factor.]

Anyway, we learn that Dagny was forever competing with - and losing to - Francisco, who beats everyone at everything all the time. At Dagny's debutante ball, we learn how beautiful she is - to the happy surprise of her mother - and how disappointed the girl is with the fake happiness of everyone at the ball.

The story of Francisco hinges on something troubling him. He's become a stranger to Dagny when they're young, and he portents much trouble in the world. On 112, he states, "Dagny, don't be astonished by anything I do ... or by anything that I may ever do in the future." A key to understanding what Francisco is getting at comes on the next, page, when he asks, "Dagny, what would you say if I asked you to leave Taggart Transcontinental and let it go to hell, as it will if when your brother takes over?" She replies, "What would I say if you asked me to consider the idea of committing suicide?" This key difference in outlook and understanding is what begins the real mystery hinted at in NC; why are all the competent men of the world disappearing? In NC, Francisco doesn't disappear, but he seems to quit what drove him. Other men just disappear. Hugh Atkson, a great philosopher and the last advocate of reason, retires from university life to sell hamburgers. Midas Mulligan, the most preposterously successful banker in the U.S., disappears. The inventor of the motor disappears. Ted Nielsen, the motor-maker whose innovation began the sinking of Twentieth Century Motor Company, disappears. And then, as stated earlier, there's Ellis Wyatt, who not only disappears but does so behind a wall of fire.

It is from this point, this conversation, that everything changes. Francisco changes into a worthless playboy while Dagny works harder and harder. As Dagny constructs her Rio Norte Line made of the controversial Rearden Metal - NC's epiphany - Francisco wrecks other people's marriages and throws outlandish bachanals. Francisco tries to warn her of this repeatedly, but Dagny won't listen. On 115, he states, "Don't wait for me, Dagny. Next time we meet, you will not want to see me. I will have a reason for the things I'll do. But I can't tell you the reason and you will be right to damn me..." And so forth.

***

Rearden and Francisco finally meet at the anniversary party Rearden's wife Lillian hosts. Rearden finds Francisco deplorable by his public actions, but their conversation, which weaves in and out of Chapter 6 is fascinating, and it hints at what is to come, especially considering Francisco's speech in Part II is aimed directly at Rearden, who has a conscience he cannot bear, a family who hates him, a sexual guilt a mile wide and really is in love with nothing more than his work.

Other characters seem to come and go haphazardly, but that's the point of NC. We learn about Ragnar Danneskjold, the Norwegian pirate who was rumored to have gone to Patrick Henry University, Francisco's alma mater and the place where Hugh Atkson taught. We're also introduced to Dr. Robert Stadler, also a former teacher of Francisco's who is now the head of the State Science Institute. Stadler was the wunderkind of physics in his day, developing a theory of cosmic rays that all modern physics was based (think Einstein here). As the book states, "At the age of twenty-seven, Dr. Robert Stadler had written a treatise on cosmic rays, which demolished most of the theories held by the scientists who preceded him. Those who followed, found his achievement somewhere at the base line of any inquiry they undertook. At the age of thirty, he was recognized as the greatest physicist of his time. At thirty-two, he became head of the Department of Physics of the Patrick Henry University, in the days when the great university still deserved its glory. It was of Dr. Robert Stadler that a writer had said: 'Perhaps, among the phenomena off the universe which he is studying, none is so miraculous as the brain of Dr. Robert Stadler himself.'" Stadler's introduction and presence throughout the book is one of the eeriest, saddest things Rand wrote. Most of her villains are cut/dry evil, just as most of her heroes are unquestionably brilliant and noble. Even moreso than Gail Wynand, though, it's tough to know what to think of Stadler, especially in the early stages of the book. The end he comes to is disturbing, to say the least, and I suppose he serves Rand's purpose of showing that not everyone who is brilliant is also good. Stadler is not particularly evil, but he's just not, well, good.

And there you have Part I. Apologies for the jumpiness of all this, but there's so much to evaluate, discuss, etc., I imagine I'll end up fusing all three parts together when I'm done and attempt a more coherent contemplation.

This piece was originally published at cbrookskurtz.com on May 12, 2006.