Just before a much awaited journey to Kerala, I rushed into the Strand Bookstall and bought a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. An hour into the journey, I realised two things about the book. One, the font was so small that one could not read it during a journey without running the risk of a very bad headache. Two, sometimes a headache is too less a payment for devouring genuine art. Very rarely do we come across books, the reviews of which stop being comments on the author's vision and end up being reflections of the reviewers' ability to decipher greatness. This was one such book.
Most of us have heard about the mythical hero Atlas who carries the burden of the heaven on his shoulders. Set in the United States, with the rail-road industry as the backdrop, 'Atlas Shrugged' is a fictional tale of a time when all the leading innovators and creators (collectively, Atlas here) decide to stop their acts of serving a world which bore the cost of mediocrity at the expense of genius. The title in itself is a masterpiece; not many of us would be able to find a more beautiful usage of metaphor in any form of literature.
Who is John Galt? This is a question that will linger years after one has read this book despite the fact that very early into the book, it stares right at the reader’s face that John Galt represents all innovators and creators, the people who run the 'turbine of the world' in Ayn Rand's glorious words. John Galt when he could no longer stand mediocrity being regularized and excellence being punished decides to call strike on such a world. Dagny Taggart, the brain behind the largest rail network in the country and Hank Rearden, a self made man who has the formula for the world’s most reliable metal are as much the heroes as John Galt.
How John Galt goes about his strike is left for the readers to find, no spoilers here. Fiction and philosophy have not always been good companions. Ayn Rand combines it beautifully in this masterpiece of hers. Objectivism, her fabled philosophy finds a vent in the speech that John Galt makes to the world. Pure capitalist meritocracy is what Ayn Rand advocates and not without sufficient reason. Some may not subscribe to her views, but the views are expressed by means so radical that one stands up and takes notice.
So much being said about what Atlas Shrugged is, it becomes equally important to highlight what Atlas Shrugged is not. It is not one among those quick fix, read it and forget it kind of books available in heaps in the market. It is not one of those self help books that tell you things you already knew. This is a work that will easily find a place among the must-reads of all time. A collector’s item it definitely is. The next time you walk into a book store, make it a point to buy it. My book-shelf was a poorer place till Atlas Shrugged found its place there.
Oh! Rating Atlas Shrugged on a scale of five; Quantifying genius is blasphemous and let’s leave it for another day..
