What's new
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

Who is John Galt?

Wol4ine

Registered User
I see that USCHO has a link to Atlas Shrugged movie Part 1 on their home page. I just finished reading the book. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie (comes out tax day, how appropriate) but unfortunately, it appears I'll have to drive to Illinois. It's an indie film with limited showings, so that sucks.
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

I know they felt they had to be accurate to the book, but isn't it a bit silly to still have Taggart be a train company? Seems so... 1950s.
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

Tell that to Joe Biden. I saw the trailer. They have bullet trains and some pretty sleak bridges made out of Reardon Metal.
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

I read that book during High School (somewhere between 1961 and 1964) and found it very interesting. I wanted to read Ayn Rand's other best seller The Fountainhead but I still haven't. :)
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

I read that book during High School (somewhere between 1961 and 1964) and found it very interesting. I wanted to read Ayn Rand's other best seller The Fountainhead but I still haven't. :)

From strictly a story standpoint, the latter is much better. Better characters, better story development and a plot that is much easier to relate to in terms of every day things we all know. Always thought The Fountainhead would make a much better movie than Atlas Shrugged, as not only is it better visually, but Atlas seems to be a watered-down disparate version of something I'm not sure needed to be refined.

Has anyone actually read Galt's full speech? Ever?
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

Has anyone actually read Galt's full speech? Ever?

That's pretty funny. And I was one of those people who, right from page one, was thinking, "This is IT! This makes it all come together! This Rand person is on to something!" Once I hit that speech though, I started checking how far I had to go. "Holy ****, this has been going on for twenty pages. I've still got -- six, eight, ten, how many more to go? Is this all the same speech?" Etc.
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

I read that book during High School (somewhere between 1961 and 1964) and found it very interesting. I wanted to read Ayn Rand's other best seller The Fountainhead but I still haven't. :)

I read Fountainhead when I was 15 and found it brilliant (and very badly written). I tried rereading it again about 4 years later and found it childish (and very badly written). I've talked to a lot of people who had the same experience.

Her essays at least drop the pretense of creating "characters" (all mouthpieces or foils for her) and dramatic situations (all morality tales to play out her particularly narrow worldview). I recommend For a New Intellectual to give you all the Rand you want in a tenth the time.

Her shtick was saying facile, outrageously un-PC things at a time when people actually made serious arguments in print. Now everybody writes facile, outrageously un-PC things in chat rooms so, hey, I guess she's a pioneer in dumbing down the debate. Rah.
 
Last edited:
Re: Who is John Galt?

Her shtick was saying facile, outrageously un-PC things at a time when people actually made serious arguments in print. Now everybody writes facile, outrageously un-PC things in chat rooms so, hey, I guess she's a pioneer in dumbing down the debate. Rah.

In other words, she would have made a killing on talk radio/TV. ;)
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

In other words, she would have made a killing on talk radio/TV. ;)

Oh God yes. She was made for it. Apparently she made a living on the plutocrat living room lecture circuit. There's nothing the rich like more than being caressed -- every tin horn dictator has his sychophants. Evidently she threw in a few extras as well although... shiver... pass.
aynrand091026_250.jpg


A handy guide to every Ayn Rand novel:
Ayn-Rand.jpg
 
Last edited:
Re: Who is John Galt?

I know they felt they had to be accurate to the book, but isn't it a bit silly to still have Taggart be a train company? Seems so... 1950s.
Given the auto bailouts, a car manufacturing company would make a lot more sense.
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

Given the auto bailouts, a car manufacturing company would make a lot more sense.

Yes and no.

Yes, given that the railroad industry isn't nearly the symbol of commercial wealth that it was prior to the 50's. Even Rand couldn't imagine that by the turn of the century the only transcontinental passenger rail service in the US would be government owned. How did she miss that?

No, even as the railroad industry was failing in Atlas Shrugged, it didn't get any bailouts from Washington. They screwed themselves by forming the National Alliance of Railroads and then passing the Railroad Unification Plan. The plan made all railroads operate as a team, pool their revenues, and then receive payment in proportion to total miles of track owned, not necessarily for services rendered. So the smaller, more profitable Phoenix-Durango sent their profits to the bigger, floundering Taggart Trans. Imagine if Pepsi had to bailout Coke!?!
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

Yes and no.

Yes, given that the railroad industry isn't nearly the symbol of commercial wealth that it was prior to the 50's. Even Rand couldn't imagine that by the turn of the century the only transcontinental passenger rail service in the US would be government owned. How did she miss that?

No, even as the railroad industry was failing in Atlas Shrugged, it didn't get any bailouts from Washington. They screwed themselves by forming the National Alliance of Railroads and then passing the Railroad Unification Plan. The plan made all railroads operate as a team, pool their revenues, and then receive payment in proportion to total miles of track owned, not necessarily for services rendered. So the smaller, more profitable Phoenix-Durango sent their profits to the bigger, floundering Taggart Trans. Imagine if Pepsi had to bailout Coke!?!

So it was more like MLB?
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

I see that USCHO has a link to Atlas Shrugged movie Part 1 on their home page. I just finished reading the book. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie (comes out tax day, how appropriate) but unfortunately, it appears I'll have to drive to Illinois. It's an indie film with limited showings, so that sucks.
Oh I didnt realize a movie was being made. I usually don't like movies made out of books, but I am kind of curious on this one.

Oh God yes. She was made for it. Apparently she made a living on the plutocrat living room lecture circuit. There's nothing the rich like more than being caressed -- every tin horn dictator has his sychophants. Evidently she threw in a few extras as well although... shiver... pass.
aynrand091026_250.jpg


A handy guide to every Ayn Rand novel:
Ayn-Rand.jpg
That graphic was hilarious!
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

I guess I need to read more of Rand. I had no idea that rape was a vice particular to capitalists, as it appears the stupid commies don't commit rape.
 
Re: Who is John Galt?

I guess I need to read more of Rand. I had no idea that rape was a vice particular to capitalists, as it appears the stupid commies don't commit rape.

Rand's female protagonists famously like it rough. Maybe you do need to read more Rand if you don't realize that.

Two pivotal scenes in Ayn Rand's most famous works of fiction revolve around the "sexy rape" of the lead female characters. In The Fountainhead, it's Howard Roarke's rape of Dominique, with whom the sexual chemistry is so sizzling, he needs to break into her home and take her by force. From Amanda Hess's transcription:

She tried to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that had not felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He moved one hand, took her two wrists and pinned them behind her, under his arm, wrenching her shoulder blades.…She fell back against the dressing table, she stood crouching, her hands clasping the edge behind her, her eyes wide, colorless, shapeless in terror. He was laughing. There was the movement of laughter on his face, but no sound.…Then he approached. He lifted her without effort. She let her teeth sink into his hand and felt blood on the tip of her tongue. He pulled her head back and he forced her mouth open against his.

Of this scene, Rand has said "if it was rape, it was rape by engraved invitation," presumably because Dominique had flirted with Roarke beforehand. A lot. Rand also wrote in her letters,

But the fact is that Roark did not actually rape Dominique; she had asked for it, and he knew that she wanted it. A man who would force himself on a woman against her wishes would be committing a dreadful crime. What Dominique liked about Roark was the fact that he took the responsibility for their romance and for his own actions. Most men nowadays, like Peter Keating, expect to seduce a woman, or rather they let her seduce them and thus shift the responsibility to her. That is what a truly feminine woman would despise. The lesson in the Roark-Dominique romance is one of spiritual strength and self-confidence, not of physical violence.

In Rand's view, not raping a woman is apparently what hurts her, by shifting responsibility for seduction to her. This. Is. Terrible. And I say that as someone who, again, has enjoyed Ayn Rand's books and really really wishes her views on gender and sexuality were any measure less messed up than they are.

In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny and John Galt finally consummate their unspoken affection (which exists because she is the smartest, most capable woman around and he is the smartest, most capable man--except for Francisco D'Anconia, who always seemed pretty awesome to me, but somehow didn't deserve her) when he tracks her down in a train tunnel, sneaking up on her from behind. As a teenager, I didn't know how to read this scene. Now I see it as rape, pure and simple.

Rand is the ultimate male teenage read -- all the adolescent tropes are there, from the misunderstood genius to the lone protester against society's preference of the comfortably normal over the uncomfortable (but morally superior) abnormal. Like Slayer, I don't trust the 15 year old who doesn't dig it.

And if by 19 we've all realized it has the maturity and intellectual depth of Twilight, well, that's OK too.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top