Posted: 3/1/2009 3:45:41 PM EDT
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It's 'Atlas Shrugged' all over again
THE ECONOMIST Books do not sell themselves: That is what films are for. "The Reader," the book that inspired the Oscar-winning film, has shot up the best-seller lists. Another recent publishing success, however, has had more help from Washington, D.C., than Hollywood. That book is Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." Reviled in some circles and mocked in others, Rand's 1957 novel of embattled capitalism is a favorite of libertarians and college students. Lately, though, its appeal has been growing. According to data from TitleZ, a firm that tracks best-seller rankings on Amazon, an online retailer, the book's 30-day average Amazon rank was 127 on Feb. 21, well above its average over the past two years of 542. On Jan. 13 the book's ranking was 33, briefly besting President Barack Obama's popular tome, "The Audacity of Hope." Tellingly, the spikes in the novel's sales coincide with the news. The first jump, in September 2007, followed dramatic interest-rate cuts by central banks, and the Bank of England's bailout of Northern Rock, a troubled mortgage lender. The October 2007 rise happened two days after the Bush administration announced an initiative to coax banks to assist subprime borrowers. A year later, sales of the book rose after America's Treasury said that it would use a big chunk of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to buy stakes in nine large banks. Debate over Obama's stimulus plan in January gave the book another lift. And sales leapt once again when the stimulus plan passed and Obama announced a new mortgage-modification plan. 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. Some were reminded of Rand's gifted physicist, Robert Stadler, cravenly disavowing his faith in reason for political favor, when Alan Greenspan, an acolyte of Rand's, testified before a congressional committee last October that he had found a "flaw in the model" of securitization. And with pirates hijacking cargo ships, politicians castigating corporate chieftains, riots in Europe and slowing international trade –– all of which are depicted in the book –– this melancholy meme has plenty of fodder. Even if Washington does not keep the book's sales booming, Hollywood might. A film version is rumored to be in the works for release in 2011. But by then, a film may feel superfluous to Rand's most loyal fans; events unfolding around them will have been dramatization enough. From The Economist magazine. Copyright 2009 Economist Newspaper Ltd. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/401893_recession02.html |
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1993 or so it was #2 on the Library of Congress' 100 most influential books behind the Bible. I read it 25 years ago and read it again every couple of years. It will be mandatory reading for my kids. Here's an article from the WSJ from January. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html#printMode |
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Quoted:
Good book; I'm in it now. I have a piece of paper that I'm using as a book mark, and on it I'm writing page numbers where I find interesting quotes, ideas, speeches, etc. It's a great book. If anyone has a .txt copy of the dialog (or speech whatever you want to call it) by the worker of the factory that was socialized I'd like to get a copy. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Good book; I'm in it now. I have a piece of paper that I'm using as a book mark, and on it I'm writing page numbers where I find interesting quotes, ideas, speeches, etc. It's a great book. If anyone has a .txt copy of the dialog (or speech whatever you want to call it) by the worker of the factory that was socialized I'd like to get a copy. I'm not there yet.... |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Good book; I'm in it now. I have a piece of paper that I'm using as a book mark, and on it I'm writing page numbers where I find interesting quotes, ideas, speeches, etc. It's a great book. If anyone has a .txt copy of the dialog (or speech whatever you want to call it) by the worker of the factory that was socialized I'd like to get a copy. I have the entire book at a big-ass ol .txt file Hit me up on IM. ... I also have it as an 7.xxx gig mp3 
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"It was . . . it was something that happened at that first meeting at the Twentieth Century factory. Maybe that was the start of it, maybe not. I don't know . . . The meeting was held on a spring night, twelve years ago. The six thousand of us were crowded on bleachers built way up to the rafters of the plant's largest hangar. We had just voted for the new plan and we were in an edgy sort of mood, making too much noise, cheering the people's victory, threatening some kind of unknown enemies and spoiling for a fight, like bullies with an uneasy conscience. There were white arclights beating down on us and we felt kind of touchy and raw, and we were an ugly, dangerous mob in that moment. Gerald Starnes, who was chairman, kept hammering his gavel for order, and we quieted down some, but not much, and you could see the whole place moving restlessly from side to side, like water in a pan that's being rocked. 'This is a crucial moment in the history of mankind!' Gerald Starnes yelled through the noise. 'Remember that none of us may now leave this place, for each of us belongs to all the others by the moral law which we all accept!' ‘I don't,’ said one man and stood up. He was one of the young engineers. Nobody knew much about him. He'd always kept mostly by himself. When he stood up, we suddenly turned dead-still. It was the way he held his head. He was tall and slim-and I remember thinking that any two of us could have broken his neck without trouble-but what we all felt was fear. He stood like a man who knew that he was right. 'I will put an end to this, once and for all,' he said. His voice was clear and without any feeling. That was all he said and started to walk out. He walked down the length of the place, in the white light, not hurrying and not noticing any of us. Nobody moved to stop him. Gerald Starnes cried suddenly after him, 'How?' He turned and answered, 'I will stop the motor of the world.’ Then he walked out. We never saw him again. We never heard what became of him. But years later, when we saw the lights going out, one after another, in the great factories that had stood solid like mountains for generations, when we saw the gates closing and the conveyor belts turning still, when we saw the roads growing empty and the stream of cars draining off, when it began to look as if some silent power were stopping the generators of the world and the world was crumbling quietly, like a body when its spirit is gone-then we began to wonder and to ask questions about him. We began to ask it of one another, those of us who had heard him say it. We began to think that he had kept his word, that he, who had seen and known the truth we refused to know, was the retribution we had called upon our heads, the avenger, the man of that justice which we had defied. We began to think that he had damned us and there was no escape from his verdict and we would never be able to get away from him-and this was the more terrible because he was not pursuing us, it was we who were suddenly looking for him and he had merely gone without a trace. We found no answer about him anywhere. We wondered by what sort of impossible power he could have done what he had promised to do. There was no answer to that. We began to think of him whenever we saw another collapse in the world, which nobody could explain, whenever we took another blow, whenever we lost another hope, whenever we felt caught in this dead, gray fog that's descending all over the earth. Perhaps people heard us crying that question and they did not know what we meant, but they knew too well the feeling that made us cry it. They, too, felt that something had gone from the world. Perhaps this was why they began to say it, whenever they felt that there was no hope. I'd like to think that I am wrong, that those words mean nothing, that there's no conscious intention and no avenger behind the ending of the human race. But when I hear them repeating that question, I feel afraid. I think of the man who said that he would stop the motor of the world. You see, his name was John Galt." |