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Atlas Shrugged Part 2 – Ayn Rand Murdered My Critique Group

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I love critique groups. I’m gonna be like James Rollins who is a bestselling writer and still has a critique group. Um, not a fan of James Rollins. We wouldn’t critique well together. Where would I hide the body after I murdered him? Just kidding. Not really. Jealous much? Yes. Get to your point. Sorry.

Ayn Rand couldn’t have put Atlas Shrugged through a critique group. As literature, it is iffy. But I went over that in my first Atlas Shrugged explosion posing as a blog post. Don’t read it. It is a scream because I had just finished the book.

I can imagine it, me and Ayn, at a table, my chicken-scratch on her pages.

ME: Ayn, um, every character is pro your ideas or against. I mean, every single one of them. They really aren’t characters, but just talking heads. Cardboard either painted white or painted black.

AYN: I’m trying to make a point.

ME: You took your point, strapped me to a dentists chair, drilled out all of my teeth, lubed up your point and rammed it down into my small intestines. I can still taste your point. And that yucky rubber taste of the dental dams.

AYN: Get out of my way.

ME: Um, not in your way, but your characters…

Then she’d slap me, and I’d cower. Every embarrassing. But seriously. Atlas Shrugged’s characters are like super heroes. No, seriously. You could totally do a comic book, a Justice league of America meets Wall Street cross over. Dagny Taggart, Hank Reardon, Francisco d’Anconia, and John Galt. Versus the moochers, the looters, and Solomon Grundy. And maybe the Joker. Larger than life.

I’ve met entrepreneur uber-successful people. They are humans. Humans don’t belong in Atlas Shrugged. It’s all about archetypes because it’s not about real life. Otherwise, the whole thing would crumble because Ayn Rand’s ideas are limited. But I’ll post more about that later. I’m having breakfast with a pro-John Galt and an anti-John Galt.

So Ayn brings in her 50 pages of John Galt’s radio speech. Oh, man, and here is how that goes:

ME: The speech is really long, and you repeat all of your ideas, and it is completely unnecessary.

AYN: Frak you.

ME: Ayn, no, seriously, I get your point. As plot, you need a speech because it drives the entire climax, but come on, 50 pages? No, give me a couple of paragraphs, blah, blah, blah. And would Dagny really go to look for John Galt?

AYN: Get out of my way.

ME: I’m not in your way. All I’m saying is that it completely stops the book. It’s a slog, getting through that wretched speech.

AYN: I reject your God. And your comments. I’m world famous. You are a looter.

ME: All I’m saying is…

AYN: Get out of my way!!!

ME: Yeah, you keep saying that. Oh, I feel like I’m reading your book because you keep repeating your ideas over and over and over.

Then we fight with knives. There can be only one. I could take Ayn Rand, though, in a knife fight. I’m pretty sure.

I liked the story of Atlas Shrugged. I mean, the 100 pages of story in the 1000 page book. And I liked the writing. I have a friend who says that’s why Ayn Rand was so dangerous. Her writing was so good. But everyone in Atlas Shrugged has an airplane. So to be successfully, you have to be completely selfish and know how to fly an airplane. Gotcha. Okay. But again, Atlas Shrugged transcends critique groups, the rules of writing, the whole thing because it is beyond all that. It’s like Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash transcends country music. Yeah, Ayn Rand versus Johnny Cash. They would fight with sledge-hammers. If Johnny Cash were drunk, I’m thinking Ayn would bash his skull in, bash it right the frak in.

Saturday Music Club Reviews Part 2 – Surreal David Lynch Vampire Movies

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Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks – I gotta say, I think we’re having a rennaisance of music, new music, music for the masses, music for crazy kids who can still dream. I find myself turning off my satellite radio, yeah, I got it, yeah, but I turn it off to listen to 93.3, Area 93, denver’s “alternative” radio. You want alternative? Listen to Munley. You want corporate pop rock that dresses up as cutting edge, listen to alernative. Sheesh. However, all that said, there are some wicked cool songs on that there radio station. And commercials. Love commercials. I heard this song on the radio and liked it. I like echoeyness of it. Echoes. Echoes. Echoes. It has that big reverb sound, like the kids are watching a Sergio Leone movie. Or listening to Primus. Don’t know if the lyrics mean anything. Maybe that the kids are smoking and like guns? Pumped up kicks? What the hell does that mean anyway? And dumb name for a band. They should have called me. I would have named them something like Thirsty Circle, or The Symphathies, or Dirge Jungle. Ah, kids these days.

Bassnectre – Bass Head – Normally, when artists go silly, especially electronica artists, the silliness doesn’t work. This song, though, Bass Head, is silly. It’s a stupid attempt, and it’s because it’s stupid is why it works. If you tried to take this song seriously, you’d have to first get a lobotomy. This has that whole tweeker beauty heavy thing going on. Worked for now. A little long, I gotta say. And I’d prefer a more intenese flavor, but it’s a dumb fun kind of song. Well, when I say long I mean about twice as long as it should have been. I’ll keep it. I might cut it, but I’ll keep it. For now. It wasn’t the genius that Timestretch was, and for that, I’m dying a little in my desire.

Tanya Tucker – The Man That Turned My Mama On – Dang, I like this song. I’d like to hear the Kasey Chambers cover for this song. I like how it has that 70’s electric guitar thrown in. Kinda like a nerd at a honky tonk, at this stage. but I have a soft spot for 70’s country. Reminds me of riding in the back of trucks, believin’ in Jesus, and mama’s biscuits and gravy. I like the story aspect of the song because funny thing about women, especially the lady-type of women, it’s all about timin’ and a certain atmosphere. Any other time, the lady in the song would have slapped that travelin’ man in the face, but not that night, not right then. That’s why I could never pick up women. I was too self-absorbed and not senstivie enough to intuit that vast complexity that is women.

Tanya Tucker – San Antonio Stroll – 70’s country-story songs. God, I love ’em. However, this was a repeat. This was classic SMC from the aught’s. Love how Tanya Tucker squeals the word, “blue” and the rhyming, “through”. Dang it all, this is real music, I’ll tell you what.

Tom T. Hall – Faster Horses (The Cowboy and the Poet) – My dad used to sing the lyrcis of this song, but he’d always get ’em wrong. You know, here’s the thing about this song. Oh, before that, the horns. Oh yeah, those 70’s horns. Or where they 60’s? Love the horns. Totally unnecessary. Dagnabbit. In the end, yeah, I was a writer, and my soul was all on fire. Now? Well, more and more, I’m seeing life in terms of the sensual and the senses. Maybe I’m moving from poet to cowboy. If only I were so lucky. But I love pretty girls, cigars, a good meal that is bent on killing me. And money. Lots of money. And yet, if I go down that route, no girl is ever pretty enough, no cigar is smooth enough, and the food is never all that good. I always want more and more and more and more. So in the end, gotta have more. But maybe that’s because my life, in a lot of ways, is so horrifically comfortable. As a cowboy, livin’ hard, maybe you appreciate things a whole lot more. Ah, my new book is all about cowgirls and country music and biscuits. The working title is “Dandelions, Guns, and Little, Lost Souls” and yeah, it’s epic. Gonna be work for me to keep it under 100,000 words.

The Five Blobs – The Blog – 1958, The Blob came out. Another SMC classic from the aughts. You know, I bet there is some guy who scored with the ladies by saying, “Yeah, the saxophone at the beginnning the The Blob song? Yeah, that’s me.” I remember the scene where the blog rolls over some hapless jack and all is left is bone. I have image indelibly imprinted on my head. This song? It’s fine. It’s musical kiche. Did I spell that right? It’s a knick-knack with a saxophone from the 50’s. Dang, how do you spell kiche? Google has let me down. Damn you google? Here comes the blob. Happy Halloween.

Dwight Yokum – Johnson’s Love – This song is about a ghost? I thought it was about a Texan who loved a girl, but she loved her dog more than him, and so he got sad and drunk and got hit by a train. Just kidding. I always liked this song, and funny, I’m generally ALL about lyrics, but this song, I guess Dwight Yokum tricked me with that lonesome whine. And for the record, I love whiny country music. I love whiners. ‘Cause I is one.

Bright Eyes – Devil Town – Dang, this is all so very Violent Femmes. No, really, or old timey Paul Westerberg. I got me a little drawl on account of my new book I’m workin’ on, my epic steampunk girly-strogen story. So bear with me. I really dig this raw, echoey sound, and the repititive lyrics totally works for me. Hold on, I gotta check if this is some variation of the Violent Femmes. Nope. Conor Mullen Oberst is the guy. Again, this is derivative, but is that bad? It must be a pejorative because Christ, if you said my books were derivative, I’d be hunting for Drano and a razor blade. But in the end, I like this because it is so very Violent Femmesy. And echoey. And raw. I’d love to see this song in a surreal, David Lynch vampire movie. Prolly never gonna see that, I reckon. Shucks.

A Just Read Review – Atlas Shrugged – Kill My Mediocre Soul

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Reading Atlas Shrugged is an event. Why? I mean, really, it’s an iffy novel. It’s a thousand pages of iffy story, iffier characters, and come on, the climax reads like b-movie Ian Fleming. And the dry, stupid, unnecessary John Galt speech? Please. It was skim-city and I was the mayor. And yet…

Reading Atlas Shrugged is an event because it’s more than novel, it’s a philosophical treatise, it’s passion, it is an enormous literary masterpiece. It is one of the most important books ever written with some damn fine prose. Damn fine prose. I sound stuffy, like I should be smoking a pipe in front of a fireplace. Damn fine, mate, pip, pip, jolly good.

Reading Atlas Shrugged is like being strapped to chair, drenched in water, and electrocuted and brain-washed, with toothpicks keeping your eyes open for days on end like in the movie The Island from the 1980’s. It is propaganda disguised as a novel. It is probably the most subversive book I’ve ever read. It is a book that begs to be burned. It is a suicidal book. It is anti-Christian, anti-communism, anti-novella. And yet, it is inspiring. This is a book that challenges you to change, and sticks needles in your genitals to make sure that change happens. And if you resist, it fights you, fights you to read it, fights every belief you have, fights you until you are exhausted. It had to be 1000 pages. It uses every word as weapon.

If I wanted to take over a country, I would burn Atlas Shrugged, then kill all the lawyers, and then give people free Taco Bell and free cable T.V. I would rule forever.

I love to read the classic novels because they are classic for a reason. If you haven’t read Goethe’s Faust, you are cheating yourself. Don’t read this insipid blog. Go, now, find a classic book, get some coffee and read until your mind explodes.

Reading Atlas Shrugged exploded my mind. The book is simple. It repeats it’s themes over and over again. We all just have 24 hours in a day. What are you doing with your time? What are you doing to live? And what is stopping you? And if you are letting things stop you, well, I’m not. Get out of my way. I’m going for it. I’ll climb over your corpse to get there. Frak you.

Atlas Shrugged is relentless. Like I said at the beginning, it is an event. And maybe that is what literature is, en event. Not just a nice little story that grabs my little attention for a few little minutes. Man, lots of books are like that. And even writing a little book is hard. But to write something that moves heaven and earth–that takes courage. More and more, though, I’m reading my own writing and I can do better. I’m getting frustrated with the chained writing I’m doing. At some stage, I’m gonna have to throw off the chains, and churn out pages that rage. But it’s hard to write books no one can read. I did that for awhile. But I wonder if I could marry the explosion of my early books with the control and plotting of my later novels. In the end, Ayn Rand wouldn’t care about the art of the book, only about the sales. It’s about money, production, success, celebrating life by creating, innovating, selling, and driving forward. Kill the mediocrity inside you.

So, I am reeling from the event of Atlas Shrugged. You’ll get more. The bomb has gone off. It’s gonna take me any number of blog posts to pick up the pieces.