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.