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from the above article by Steven Zeitchik:

>>> Rand’s popular but polarizing book — it’s derided by many literary critics but has a huge public following — tells the story of Dagny Taggart, a railroad executive trying to keep her corporation competitive in the face of what she perceives as a lack of innovation and individual responsibility. <<<

I haven’t read the book, but I have discussed it with people who have. In the book, wasn’t there a reason why there was a lack of innovation and individual responsibility? Some kind of cause? What was it? Martian invaders? Nazis? Zombies? Something *big*, I seem to remember...

>>> Although it was written a half-century ago, producers say that the book’s themes of individualism resonate in the era of Obama, government bailouts and stimulus packages — making this the perfect moment to bring the 1,100-page novel to the big screen.

Ah, so Rand’s book is about INDIVIDUALISM. No doubt individualism that’s being repressed by Big Business. Or a vast right-wing conspiracy. Or alien Nazi zombies. I mean, what else in America might be suppressing the expression of individual creativity? Especially economic expression. Let me think a minute...

>>> Baldwin may be on to something — love it or hate it, “Shrugged” is seeing a resurgence, with book sales spiking as debates rage in Washington and around the country about the government’s role in a faltering free-market economy. <<<

OK, maybe that’s it. The GOVERNMENT might have a role in Rand’s book in relation to the problems with free markets, individualism, and individual responsibility. Gee, I wonder what that role might be...

>>> The author’s final novel offers an embattled railroad company as a metaphor for a society that Taggart (and Rand) sees as succumbing to socialism at the expense of individual creativity. Its backbone is a 50-page speech by the mysterious but major character John Galt in which he lays out the Rand principles of Objectivism, which argues for an aggressive free market and against government activism. Let’s just say it’s probably not on the president’s nightstand. <<<

Finally, buried in the article I find what my friends thought was quite important about the novel: Rand’s harpooning of collectivism and the socialist state. Why didn’t Zeitchik just come out and say it? Hmmm...

I don’t know about you, but given Hollywood’s ability to transmogrify books like Clancy’s _Sum of All Fears_ and Heinleins’s _Starship Troopers_ into something quite different from the original, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Rand gets bulldozed too.

It doesn’t hurt that _Atlas Shrugged_ is 1000+ pages long; it will just give the director more leeway to “pick and choose” what will go on the silver screen. After Hollywood is finished with it, it will be remembered as _Erin Brokovich_ with trains.