“Had you been listening to the radio when all this happened, would you have listened to the entire speech, or would you have tuned out at some point?”
(flamesuit *on*)
Giant pothole indeed.
I’ve read the entire book except for this chapter. It is honestly so dry, boring, and downright mind-numbing I have never been able to finish it.
She is possibly the worst ‘great’ writer I have ever encountered. Her ideas have a great impact on me, but as a writer, her prose is horrible. I’ve never read less engaging writing, even in dry scientific journals, than this chapter.
No one talks this way. I doubt any speech ever given could be so dull, even some of the commencement speeches I’ve witnessed. I would have shut the radio off, and probably been the worse for it (as perhaps I am worse for never having finished this chapter).
I probably would have turned it off, too, but I’ve noticed when watching old TV shows, movies, and such that the attention span back then was significantly longer than the average person today.
I got a bit humbled when reading Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” as part of Glenn Beck’s Common Sense. This was supposed to be the arguments for revolution for the common man. I found it head and shoulders better writing than most of what I see now and I suspect that literary readers back then had higher expectations of their writers as well.
Having said all that, I do think that most of the people would have turned it off. But maybe Galt was expecting the other producers to listen through because it would speak to them more. And that was the audience that he was hoping to persuade to go on strike anyway.