As all 5 or 6 of my regular readers have probably noticed by now, the past week or two have been pretty slow on ol’ captainmojo.com. I just haven’t been in the mood to write much of any significance. I get these spells every couple of months, where I would rather just read than write. Well I’ve just been through one of these spells, catching up with some of the reading I’ve been meaning to get through for years.

Among the history and science fiction books, I spent the last several days slogging through Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Holy Jeebus is that a tome. I know it was her masterwork, but God damn it woman, bigger is not always better. 1074 pages of 7 point type. John Galt’s speech, the climax of the book, is 52 pages long and just restates all the other revelationary monologues found throughout the book. It was a philosophy lecture, which would be great in a philosophy book, but this was fiction, and all of her ideas in this speech could have easily been condensed with some clear writing to about 20 pages.

About 50% of the book is mind-numbingly slow. It’s chock-full of endless inner monologues and self analysis, some of my least favorite aspects of modern writing. The mind is the center of Rand’s philosophy, so a certain amount of this introspection is needed, but the same themes are beaten into your head time and again. Yup, the thinking heroes are filled with a love of life, while the socialist idiots trying to take over are, in reality, vile anti-life scum. Reason is necessary for human survival, and rational selfishness is a virtue, gotcha. I figured all that out after the first five inner monologues, and I pretty much agree with you Ayn, so I really don’t see the need for the following 300 reminders.

The dialogue is so-so. Rand doesn’t seem to believe in subtlety, which is fine and all, but casual conversations are never supposed to sound like a logic book. And if one more character uttered Rand’s catchphrase, “check you premises” I would have screamed. One character, fine, but it seemed like every smart character came up with the phrase spontaneously. Everyone said it in the same condescending tone. Christ, I don’t care if they were right, that irritated the shit out of me. And in the edition I read (the 25th anniversary edition), there were dozens and dozens of typos. Not just missing commas and shit, but misspelled and randomly placed words, as if the editors just blindly ran the book through word’s grammar check, accepting it all.

However, aside from the typos, the other 50% of the book is pretty damn good, inspiring even. Rand could be a decent fiction writer when she kept things moving. The actions and events of her story illustrate her ideas far better than the ponderous speeches and minds-eye lectures. This is equally true of her shorter works like Anthem. Her egoist philosophy is something I agree with, for the most part, but philosophical novels are meant to be relatively easy introductions to ideas, but this one is a goddamn chore.