There's an old saying that goes, "There's nothing worse than a reformed prostitute." It means that the worst sinners often turn into the worst zealots when they get religion, driving everyone else crazy with their newfound sanctimony.
When I think of this saying, I think of Ayn Rand. I'll admit right up front that I will never forgive Ayn Rand for the worst six weeks of my high school career when my sophomore English class was forced to read Atlas Shrugged--all 1200 pages of it. I can't think of any 1200-page book that makes compelling reading for high school sophomores, but Atlas Shrugged is nothing more than aversion therapy: Page after page of a former communist harlot gushing over the sheer beauty of selfish, predatory capitalism. Spare me.
It's the worst kind of fiction there is where tired old political ideas get covered in human skin and walk around for 1200 pages (did I already mention it was a very long book?) spouting off about how wonderful they are. It raises didacticism to a capital offense. It sucks the very joy out of a person's life to sit through mind-numbing class discussion as if there were any depth or breadth to these cardboard characters.
Not for a moment did I think she had a point. I had two guiding principles already firmly established by that tender age. I was growing up in the same Christian denomination that ordained Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.--the gospel that spawned and sustained his liberation theology (back before those turned into dirty words). It was a gospel that respected the poor (they will be first in the end, not having to pass through the eye of a needle to enter the Pearly Gates), commanded us to love and care for each other, and warned us against storing up treasure and losing our souls. It was, if you will, the most divine kind of socialism I know.
The second guiding principle I brought to English class was the product of growing up with many Jewish peers. As they began to learn to read the Torah in Hebrew, they were encouraged to test every bit of scripture against their own sense of reason. Now that was another kind of miracle to me because my church demanded unquestioning faith.
Every page of Atlas Shrugged clashed against those two principles. I don't think I knew the term "fascism" then, but I recognized it when I saw it. To swallow what Rand was preaching, one has to believe two things: (1) There is no such thing as a human soul, and (2) the accumulation of material, wealth, and power is the noblest goal of a brief human life. I knew even then that she was some sort of overzealous novice in the Temple of Capitalism. As I recall, Jesus had something to say about the merchants and moneylenders in the temple just before he scattered their wares and threw them out.
I hear there is a Florida summer camp for children that seeks to indoctrinate them in the ideas of Rand AND the teachings of Christ. Surely it is called Camp Oxymoron. That's not just cognitive dissonance--that's child abuse.
I ought to know: I am an Ayn Rand survivor.
2 comments:
As I recall from that turgid tome, everyone who was good was also brilliant, hard-working, attractive and as focused as a laser on their material gain. Bad guys were conniving, weak, predatory and vindictive. The two camps never shared virtues or vices, they were all or nothing. Where was there room in Rand's cosmos for a Karl Rove? Someone brilliant but conniving, predatory, and possibly given to eating human flesh? (My own speculation, mind you) Silly, silly little Ayn Rand.
You're right, Gargantua. Atlas Shrugged is more melodrama than literature. Thanks for the comment!
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