Let me start this preliminary book review by saying that I am extremely confident in my ability to give an accurate and sincere review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged despite having only read about 200 pages thus far.
Out of a hefty 1070 pages (all in dishearteningly fine print), the portion I have conquered may not seem like much; however, Rand's writing is so predictable that I do not feel guilty about discussing it. Nor do I feel comfortable waiting until I am finished to vent about her frustrating writing; if I don't have some sort of catharsis, I'm probably never going to finish the essay I have to write about this book, and will cheat myself out of $10,000 of prospective scholarship/car repair money in the process.
Aside from the heinously selfish philosophy of objectivism that she propagates throughout her story-- which I will delve into later-- the major problem I have with Rand's work is that it's too awkward to be believeable. Mechanical and strange, none of the interpersonal interactions occur in a way that I have ever seen replicated in real life, and frankly, I'd be scared if they did. A good portion of her dialogue is devoted to her characters spouting off about topics such as capitalism, literature, and morality. These conversations are never embellished in a way that makes them resemble something real.
On top of that, her characters, while usually likable in a detached way, fall flat under the overlying complexity of the society she is attempting to create. Even if she manages to be successful in persuading her audience to like her characters, she is likely to make them like the wrong ones. Nearly all of her "good" characters are portrayed as meticulous and domineering sociopaths that are too absorbed in their work to focus on any other outside force, except for maybe their painfully awkward lover (the protagonist, Dagny Taggart, has hooked up with two men thus far, both as introverted and cold as she is, which makes absolutely no sense given the context of their personalities).
By contrast, the characters that she casts as her "villians" are actually quite respectable. Try though she might to make me dislike her bumbling crew of well-intentioned, altruistic businessmen, Rand fails to convince me that I should prefer her greedy and apathetic good guys to her selfless bad ones.
This, of course, is probably all attributable to the problems I have with her philosophy. Called objectivism, its primary tenants are that reality is an absolute, reason is man's basic tool for survival, a man's moral purpose is to act in his own self-interest, and that laissez-faire capitalism (and, therefore, free trade) is the best way to govern a nation.
I could take or leave all of her frequently-espoused philosophies were it not for the third tenant; the idea that it is a man's moral duty to act in his own self-interest is absurd. Being a pragmatist, I tend not to enjoy listening to anyone who tells me that there is one specific moral way to act. However, it becomes simply unbearable when such a way includes ignoring the needs of a fellow human being.
Rand's philosophies decry altruism and promote greed for seemingly no good reason (I have to read one given in Atlas Shrugged), and the way she constructs her book in accordance with her views is irritating to me. While I plan to review her book more thoroughly when I finish, so far Atlas Shrugged has proven to be a static, predictable, and infuriating read with no real redemption in character, plot, or philosophy.
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