Chapter One: The Theme

The story begins with a bum accosting a dude named Eddie Willers on the streets of New York City, laying down some sob story about how awful his life is and that a dime for a cup of coffee is all he needs to get through the day. Eddie's got no time for this motherfucker or his life story, until the bum asks "Who is John Galt?"

Now Eddie's legitimately annoyed. The question bugs the shit out of him, but when he asks the bum why he asked it, the bum's just like "Get over it bro, you got that dime or not?" So Eddie gives him the dime, probably because Eddie at this point fears for his safety. The bum hardly seems to care, however, which Eddie finds strange. We're going to be seeing a lot more of that kind of thing in this story; everyone in this world seems to be constantly confused about what other people are thinking and why they do the things that they do (perhaps there's even more truth to Sam Harris' jibe than I thought).

So now that Eddie is left alone, he can resume walking to work, which I don't really understand, because it's twilight. Eddie strolls down fifth avenue, which he enjoys, because "only" one in four shops are boarded up, so we already know we're dealing with a crapsack world here.

It also turns out that Eddie Willers is an angsty guy, because at around this time of day he tends to feel a sense of dread that's been intensifying over the last few years. Reminiscing about his childhood, we learn that Eddie is 32 years old and that he grew up with the children of his father's boss, the owner of a railroad company called Taggart Transcontinental. When he was a little kid, there was this big ass oak tree that Eddie loved to climb. The oak tree was all huge and strong and shit, with enormous roots that jammed down into the ground so hard that Eddie was like "Yeah, man! This tree's gonna be around FOREVER!" Then one day, lightning struck it and the tree fell over; the next day, Eddie saw that the inside was all rotten and hollow, which shook his faith in the world or whatever. Then to feel better, he decides to think about his teenage years in the friend zone of his dad's boss's daughter, Dagny.

He finally arrives at work, and walks into a splendid office building with gleaming marble floors. Eddie feels relieved and thinks "Yeah, man! This railroad company's gonna be around FOREVER!"

Eddie heads directly into the office of the president of the company, Jim Taggart. Rand spends like half a page telling us that he's ugly, so he's clearly either evil or stupid (spoiler alert: he's both). Jim's not in the mood to talk to Angsty Eddie, but Eddie shows a surprising amount of spine and tells him it's important. Then, Eddie looks at a map of the U.S. on the wall with all the rail lines marked in red, "like arteries". One line is stretching from Wyoming to El Paso, called the Rio Norte line. Eddie tells Jim that there was a wreck on the Rio Norte today, and Jim's like "Whatever." Eddie tries to tell Jim that shit like this is happening literally every single day, and that the whole Rio Norte needs to be replaced, but Jim assures Eddie that he'll do just that as soon as they get the steel they need from Associated Steel, owned by Orren Boyle.

Incidentally, most of the villains in this book are ugly and have dumbass names like Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch, and Cuffy Meigs. Heroes, on the other hand, are tall strong ubermenschen with badass names like Francisco D'Anconia, Hugh Akston, and Rangar Danneskjold. Furthermore, all the shitty companies have names like Associated Steel and Amalgamated Switch & Signal; the competant ones are named after their owners.

Anyway, back to the story: Eddie and Jim bicker for a while, because the unfortunately named Boyle is like nine months late on delivering the steel they need, and Eddie's like "Fuck Boyle, lets just buy the steel from Hank Rearden. He's always on time, and also tall and strong and super intelligent and his name isn't Orren Fucking Boyle!" But Jim hates Hank Rearden for some reason, and says he doesn't want to betray Orren Boyle for someone with such a better name. Jim claims to appreciate the importance of the Rio Norte line, but he seems content to let it fall apart as long as he can't be blamed for Orren Boyle being a fuckup.

Why is a line of track stretching from Wyoming to Texas so important? Because in one of those "as you know" moments of exposition (justified in this case because Jim genuinely seems to need the reminder), we learn that there are two reasons: first, because it travels through Colorado, which is where a dude named Ellis Wyatt has discovered how to efficiently extract shale oil (which is rather impressive for a book published in the 1950's) from his property down there, which has led to an industrial revolution in the area. Colorado is totally where it's at these days.

Jim also hates Ellis Wyatt. He whines that in the days when Wyatt's old man owned those depleting oil fields, they were content with whatever small amounts of freight they were getting. Now that Ellis, a dude in his twenties, is producing fuckloads of oil all day, shit is different, and Jim doesn't like shit to be different. Since Taggart's been sucking so much at delivering shit lately, a local milk line called the Phoenix-Durango has recently expanded to pick up the slack.

When Eddie mentions the Phoenix-Durango, Jim gets EXTRA bitchy and basically changes the subject to reason number two: south of the Mexican border at El Paso begins the recently constructed San Sebastian line, leading directly to a copper mine under construction. Jim says that as soon as the copper mine starts producing, they'll make enough money in Mexico to afford all the other maintenance that the company needs. When Eddie warns that Jim's sister has doubts about the San Sebastian line, Jim's bitchiness escalates to eleven, and Eddie gives up and leaves.

On his way out, he talks to another employee who's fixing a typewriter. The guy complains that new typewriters suck and that when all the current ones break for good, typewriters will be a thing of the past; then he shrugs and asks who John Galt is.


In the next scene, we've got this hot (therefore, good) chick riding on T.T.'s fastest train, the Comet. She hears a lowly brakeman on the train whistling some kind of really awesome tune that sounds familiar. When she asks him what it is, he tells her that it's Richard Halley's fifth concerto. When the woman points out that Halley only wrote four, the dude's like "Oh, my bad lol. I guess I made it up."

The train stops for no reason, and the woman gets bent out of shape. She steps outside and talks to the employees, who explain to her that a signal light is red, so they stopped, even though the light is clearly just broken, and then they ask her who John Galt is and tell her to shut up and go back to a kitchen or something. The woman's like "Motherfucker, I'm Dagny Taggart. The Comet's never been late before, so quit being a bitch and run the red light."

Everyone immediately respects her. The whistling kid asks who she is and one of the other dudes is like "She's the V.P. of Operations, the real brains behind the operation, and has more balls than every other executive in this company put together," which just means she has more than zero balls.


Dagny arrives at New York and enters her brother's office. At first, it looks like she's going to have the same conversation with him that Eddie had, but then Dagny says "It's cool, bro, I already talked to Hank Rearden. He's going to sell us Rearden Metal for the new track. Tell Orren Boyle to shove his steel up his ass."

Jim wets his pants because no one has ever used Rearden Metal before. It's a brand new invention of Hank Rearden's, an alloy of steel and copper, and stronger/lighter than steel. Jim says that experts warn that it's unproven and dangerous but Dagny is like that dude who took Comp Sci III and says she studied engineering at college, and it looks okay to her, so she's running with it. Then she dares Jim to call Hank Rearden and cancel the order, but Jim's a pussy and does nothing. They also talk about the San Sebastian Line. Dagny calls the whole thing a catastrophe; she's certain those communist assholes in Mexico will nationalize it, so Jim calls Dagny a bitch because logic.

After the conversation, she calls a record company to ask them if Richard Halley wrote a fifth concerto. The guy laughs and says no.

Competent managers are really hard to find these days, so she decides to promote a young go-to kid named Owen Kellogg to Superintendent of the Ohio Division. When he enters her office, he tells her he's quitting before she even gets the chance to offer him the promotion. He won't say why, but presumably it's to start his own breakfast cereal company. Then he shrugs and asks who John Galt is.

Here ends the first chapter. By now you've probably guessed that Dagny Taggart is the heroine of this story. In the next chapter, we'll meet hero #2, Hank Rearden.

Introduction

I love Atlas Shrugged, even though I hate everyone else who likes it, and everyone I do like hates it. This is because everyone takes this books so fucking seriously. Like, way too seriously. I suppose it's because Ayn Rand's philosophy is unabashedly black-and-white; she even says so in this book. Consequently, everyone either sees it greater than the Bible plus Lord of the Rings times TEN, or else a piece of trash that's both evil and awfully written. Even my hero Sam Harris couldn't finish any of her books, and called Objectivism "autism rebranded".  That last part is probably true; at any rate, he's the very last person I'd presume to advise on ethics.

I won't be making any value judgments about the philosophy expressed in this book except to say that I suspect that if her philosophy were executed 100%, then all things considered, the result would be better than the status quo. I'm not very confident about this, and really, it's more of an indictment of the status quo than a praise for objectivism; we'd probably end up with something like the society seen in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, which would be fun, but probably isn't the best of all possible worlds.

Instead, I will simply contend that Atlas Shrugged is a cool story. At the very least, it's a unique story, with likable heroes, amusing villains, and very good prose. No one else seems capable of appreciating this without conflating the prose with the philosophy it endorses. It also doesn't help that the book is outrageously long. That's where I come in. Lets be real: who has time to read a 1500 page novel?

This will be my humble effort to bring the story of Atlas Shrugged to the masses. Sam Harris, I'm calling you out! If you ever wander onto this blog and enjoy it, I'll consider it one of the crowning achievements of my life thus far.