How I found Atlas Shrugged in 1962
I guess that members of Galt's Gulch sometimes tell the story of how they discovered Objectivism. My story does not seem to me very exciting. That is strange, though, because the discovery of Atlas Shrugged, when I was 17 years old, in the summer between the end of high school and going off to start at Brown University, was the most exciting and influential thing that happened in my entire life.
Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged in 1957, and, unlike publication of The Fountainhead, this was a major publishing event. Just read how Bennett Cerf, founder of Random House, persuaded Ayn Rand to give the book to Random House. At any rate, it was a publishing event, and Ayn Rand began to get invitations to speak in very prestigious places. There are some essays by Ayn Rand, once only available as pamphlets from the old NBI Book Service, that came out of these important speaking engagements.
Well, then, one of these was at Brown University, actually perhaps the women's co-ordinate college (then), Pembroke.
All four Donway kids grew up on a farm in Holden, Massachusetts, rather rural then. But the local New England grammar schools were good, as was the regional high school, and three out of four Donway children were brilliant students (I was the exception). SO...my sister, Lucile, one year my senior, had gone off to Pembroke/Brown for her freshman year. One evening, walking home from the library, she ran into a shouting, seething mob of girls around some speaker walking from the lecture hall to the student coffee shop. My sister stopped at the edge of this mob and asked: Who is it? "Oh, Ayn Rand," someone told her, "she wrote a new book." Now...why, in the name of all that is rational and normal, did my sister, Lucile, just hearing that one comment, go the next day to the bookstore and buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged? I see here the hand of Providence, because, seriously, who would do that? AND, Lucile then reads all 1300 pages, becomes excited, and comes home. First to be infected is my younger brother, Roger, who reads it and has the conversion experience. So Lucile and Roger are talking about atheism and selfishness and capitalism, and I, good New England boy, am furious at these unspeakable ideas--sudden virulent infection of the family.
No attempt to argue helps. I take "the" copy of Atlas Shrugged up to my room, under the eaves, and read it in a non-stop Marathon of two days, speaking to no one, arming myself to refute this crap.
Finishing Atlas, I walk down the stairs, in a trance, and shout to my brother and sister, "Who Is John Galt?"
Now, a question: what was there about this New England family of second-generation Polish immigrants, brought up in the Congregational Church, decently although not deeply devout, of parents who admired FDR--what was there about this family that permitted three children to read Atlas Shrugged and have an immediate, lifelong, irreversible conversion experience?
I invite your comments.
Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged in 1957, and, unlike publication of The Fountainhead, this was a major publishing event. Just read how Bennett Cerf, founder of Random House, persuaded Ayn Rand to give the book to Random House. At any rate, it was a publishing event, and Ayn Rand began to get invitations to speak in very prestigious places. There are some essays by Ayn Rand, once only available as pamphlets from the old NBI Book Service, that came out of these important speaking engagements.
Well, then, one of these was at Brown University, actually perhaps the women's co-ordinate college (then), Pembroke.
All four Donway kids grew up on a farm in Holden, Massachusetts, rather rural then. But the local New England grammar schools were good, as was the regional high school, and three out of four Donway children were brilliant students (I was the exception). SO...my sister, Lucile, one year my senior, had gone off to Pembroke/Brown for her freshman year. One evening, walking home from the library, she ran into a shouting, seething mob of girls around some speaker walking from the lecture hall to the student coffee shop. My sister stopped at the edge of this mob and asked: Who is it? "Oh, Ayn Rand," someone told her, "she wrote a new book." Now...why, in the name of all that is rational and normal, did my sister, Lucile, just hearing that one comment, go the next day to the bookstore and buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged? I see here the hand of Providence, because, seriously, who would do that? AND, Lucile then reads all 1300 pages, becomes excited, and comes home. First to be infected is my younger brother, Roger, who reads it and has the conversion experience. So Lucile and Roger are talking about atheism and selfishness and capitalism, and I, good New England boy, am furious at these unspeakable ideas--sudden virulent infection of the family.
No attempt to argue helps. I take "the" copy of Atlas Shrugged up to my room, under the eaves, and read it in a non-stop Marathon of two days, speaking to no one, arming myself to refute this crap.
Finishing Atlas, I walk down the stairs, in a trance, and shout to my brother and sister, "Who Is John Galt?"
Now, a question: what was there about this New England family of second-generation Polish immigrants, brought up in the Congregational Church, decently although not deeply devout, of parents who admired FDR--what was there about this family that permitted three children to read Atlas Shrugged and have an immediate, lifelong, irreversible conversion experience?
I invite your comments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38RxiMsUl...
No, this poem is my attempt, as an adult, to capture the emotional meaning that Tarzan as a hero had in my life and the sense of courage and excitement about life that the character of Tarzan gave to me. Especially, the sheer nobility. To do so, I must capture the rapture, the sense of any and all obstacles removed, the sense of unlimited moral courage. Therefore, the poem is almost dreamlike because I wanted the sense of being carried to an utterly new world: Galt's Gulch in Africa. As a boy involved with books, I would not have recognized any of this in the poem. So here it is:
Tarzan of the Apes
(For Dad, who showed me,
all can be forgiven)
I knew that you would come for me,
Come dropping, forest demigod,
From loftiest, implausible
Green jungle high-roads that you trod.
Liege lord of titan trees that sweep
Mere heaven, noble imago
Of man as sure as marble slimmed
To life by Michelangelo,
You would appear upon my path,
As sun will touch a single tree;
And with your eyes as wild and kind
As freedom, you would look on me,
And nod, impartial as a beast,
Or God, and I would go, and soon
We’d fly as high as dream desire
Through trees beneath a jungle moon.
And we would never tire, fight
And never doubt. Our fathers’ knives,
Baptized in fierce Bolgani’s blood,
Would bless the battles of our lives.
We’d summon good Tantor and tease
Malicious Sheetah’s snarling smile.
We’d stride as nude and beautiful
As beasts to baffle Satan's guile--
At manhood’s noon, our two great hearts
Would stay the lion’s breath above
The golden woman’s blameless breast,
And slay the lord of Death—for love.
And never taste the fatal fruit
Of fear, and never die, or die
Each day and never care who ate
Our bones or where our bones would lie.
With all due respect, as they say, I doubt that the Donway family conversion experience had much to do with that. You have to grasp, recall from your own experience, perhaps, that my reaction was not to recognizing familiar implicit truths, not even to discovered stimulating new ideas; this was INSTANT FULL EMOTIONAL CONVERSION. This was not a conversion of the mind, which after all isn't likely in two days given the huge substance of Atlas Shrugged. This was a whole body conversation: a glow of utter exaltation, burning conviction, and absolute certainty. Even Ayn Rand's ideas, newly presented in a few days, are unlikely to produce this in three restless, skeptical, sometimes cynical adolescents.
No, let's look at what Ayn Rand really did by writing a novel that made (ready for this) business executives into romantic rebels and heroes against the establishment. She wrote a novel about the most attractive adult heroes ever portrayed in fiction: beautiful or handsome, courageous, all commanding, and as much a moral loadstar as is Jesus for Christianity. And millions of people over the centuries have worked, suffered, and died with the vision an purpose of Jesus before their eyes.
My reaction, quite simply, was that I wanted to be John Galt, or Francisco D'Anconia or Hank Rearden; I wanted to be better than the whole of mooching, frightening, confused mankind. I wanted to take Dagny to bed. I wanted a secret and wonderful place in the mountains where I could escape all my doubts, burdens, worries, boredom, and fears.
You see, my Dad and Mom did one wonderful thing (among others, for me). They bought and read me books about heroes. The only books that my Dad actually bought, brought home, and read to me were the Tarzan books. (Forget those dreadful movies, Burroughs was a dazzling Romantic genius who wrote from a strictly moralistic and heroic viewpoint.) Tarzan of the Apes was the light, inspiration, salvation, and motivation of a very troubled, conflicted, angry, often frightened boy. No matter what happened, I thought of Tarzan and I could deal with it--always. I could run faster, fight harder, and face my fears.
In my first book of poems, "Touched by Its Rays," I have a poem about discovering Objectivism back there on the farm; in the second book, I wrote the poem I always meant to write about Tarzan and me and finally did. One of my life achievements.
And as I grew up, I imitated Tarzan. I went into the woods and pretended with my brother Roger. We had toy figures and endlessly played hero stories of Tarzan and others. And I thought a great deal about whether I really could go to Africa and make this dream come true.
And then, I real Atlas Shrugged and realized I didn't have to move to Africa, strip to a loin cloth, and fight lions. And my unquenchable passion shifted from Tarzan to John Galt and Francisco and to become those heroes, it was obvious, I had to know the ideas--all of them, perfectly, irrefutably, and then take them to the world.
The phenomenon of Atlas Shrugged and generation after generation that that suddenly sees a moral vision from which NOTHING can dissuade them, who believe in the vision even before they can explain and defend it--that is the power of Romantic literature, and, by the way, can be seen in many cases in the Romantic era.
And all around me, as I got into Objectivist circles in New York city, that conversion experience could be seen, often with all the intensity of cult--and many of the same problems. But that is another story.
My story is discovery of how I could become one of the heroes I loved as a boy, heroes that even then I realized weren't practical models. I didn't have to resign myself that that life of adventure, great battles, heroism, perfect love, and triumph over evil would have to remain forever in books.
This is only the story of discovering Objectivism, not how all those dreams actually worked out. That is another story.
I love her style of writing. I watched Atlas Shrugged, Part I, at least 4 times. I got tired of waiting for Part II to show up, so I ordered it yesterday, which is how I stumbled onto this forum.
If anyone endorses Communism, I'd highly recommend her book, "We the Living" which is a sobering portrayal of life in the old Soviet Union.