I appreciate your thoughts on Rand as I am attempting to read her for the second time. In the short span of the book I have read so far, I am in agreement with your thesis of Rand's flawed vision of the capitalist as Hero. While I am only a short way into the book, I have begun to find it a little tiresome. In some respects, I understand she is trying to draw a sharp contrast of self-interest over collective interest in order to advance her philosophical concepts. However, she presents the capitalists as being without human flaws and the collectivists as the sum of their flaws. This does not ring true to the reality we experience daily, as your post points out.
I do not intend, however, to allow this distraction to keep me from my appointed goal to complete the reading of this book.
I know what you mean when you say “tedious.” Here’s a spoof I wrote years ago. It was posted on FR a while back, but has since been scrubbed out.
ATLAS DINED:
An AYN RAND SPOOF
By Huck
Could I please have a glass of ice water?
The server hurried off, somehow seeming annoyed that he had ordered ice water. Jack Caldwell didn’t know why he had, why it summoned inside of him a strange emotion, not quite envy, but a nagging— well, who had time to think of emotion? He had been longing for ice water all day; not out of need, but respect, for its clarity, its precision, and yet, he felt a certain contempt for it. Perhaps it was because its perfection was wasted on craven fools who wiped tables and carried food for people.
Marla Packwood sat across from him, trying not to let him see the shock in her face, which was cut as if by a sculptor, its lines tracing out the form of archaic nobility. She knew his request for ice water was a challenge to her, that he knew she cared what beverage he ordered. As long as they’d known each other, she had endured long hours of pain, in order to show indifference toward his food and drink, but tonight she had slipped, and she wondered why. She hated herself for it, but only for an instant, after which she regained her cold, stiff, emotionless, yet dangerously feminine demeanor.
It was the height of the dinner rush, and throughout the restaurant, elegantly dressed diners chattered away, consuming California wine and whispering about Harold Molt, who was in the restaurant with some friends.
Harold Molt had created a stir in the country when he published a book of philosophy. In it, he stated that America was corrupt, and he recommended that all industrialists be shot dead at once, as a lesson for the children. His philosophy was already gaining wide acceptance among college professors, newspaper editorialists, and the wives of industrialists. It was surprising to see him at this restaurant, but in this horrendous age, nothing was surprising anymore.
“Jack, do you see that scoundrel is here tonight?”, Marla asked, managing to put emphasis in her question without showing any emotion, a trick she had mastered when only three years old, the year she graduated from high school.
“Yes,” he answered, with a look of blankness which she knew meant that he felt the same way, that they didn’t agree with Molt’s ideas, that they both recognized Molt as an assault on everything that was good in the world, what good there was left.
When their dinner arrived, neither dared look at one another. They had both ordered rib eye steak with asparagus and baked potato. He had requested his own basket of rolls, and she knew he had done it to mock her. He could eat more rolls than she, and she hated herself for letting him, for caring, for not being able to hide her shame, in the pleasure it gave her to submit, to eat only one roll while he ate four.
Neither buttered their potato. They had both made their fortunes the hard way, with no help, unless of course you consider millions of dollars in property and stock inheritance help. They both valued the harsh struggle over all else, barely noticing the pain at all, welcoming it, sometimes not sleeping for weeks at a time, usually during tax season. To them, putting a pat of butter on a baked potato was a sign of weakness, and an immoral waste of time.
To watch Jack Caldwell cut into his steak was like watching a great building erected to the heavens, like watching a figure skater, after years of torturous practice, do what no one else could. His hands extended from his arms with delicate grace, and yet with all the passionate fury required to cut meat into bite size pieces. His knife hand and fork hand moved purposefully, as if their moves had been designed by a great choreographer. She watched him, and she knew he was the only worthy dining companion she’d ever know. All her life she had wondered why she seemed to be the only person in the world who was wholly competent and deserved to eat out. Here was someone who understood, someone who would order correctly, who would challenge her to chew her food with scientific precision, and someone who would never talk with his mouth full, or play the jukebox.
Marla sensed the piece of plain potato in her mouth. She felt as if the bland taste were the blandness of the ordinary people, who seemed somehow incensed when being trampled on by superior men, that she was consuming that blandness, overcoming it. The soft, moist texture was that of the average middle manager, a source of constant distraction to her. But now she was proving her superiority, her invincibility, and it felt, well, empty and emotionless.
“Pass the salt, Mar—”.
She passed it to him, noticing the fine cut of the salt shaker, a form that might have been conceived by a master architect. They don’t make salt shakers like that anymore, she thought.
I almost said her name, Jack thought to himself. He had caught himself in time, but he realized she had the upper hand now, which meant they would probably have to stay for dessert.
When the server took their plates away, everyone in the restaurant seemed to notice that Jack hadn’t quite finished his asparagus. They all fell silent, in awe of any man who could deny himself three hefty spears in February. This was a man to watch, they all thought. He pushed himself away from the table and looked almost, but not directly, at Marla.
“Dessert?”
“No.”
Just with that one word, she knew he knew that she knew she had won. But she couldn’t help feeling defeated. It was like that sometimes. Heck, even stolid objectivists have bad days.
Steam poured out rebelliously from a manhole as they walked back to the car. Neither had minded parking the car across the river in New Jersey. A twenty mile walk was a rare chance to enjoy the marvelous, heroic skyscape of Progress. They enjoyed the Marcal factory particularly. Marla summoned all her energy, barely aware of the fact that it had been 78 hours since she had slept, and even then it was a five minute nap in her office. She looked up as a DC-10 that she owned flew overhead, and belched with all the precision of a diamond cutter. Jack knew it was the closest thing to perfection he had heard all day. He knew he could possess the source of that belch, through a civil ceremony, that she would say yes, and that for that reason he could never ask. That instead he must destroy her, for he was a man of Reason, and he knew, as did she, that it was the right thing to do.