While I am “on vacation” working on other projects, I thought I would repost part 1 of my review of “Atlas Shrugged” for my loyal readers. (Coincidentally, I wrote this review exactly two years ago!) Also, I will repost the remainder of my review in the next day or two …
Is Robin Hood a good guy or a bad guy? Our previous post identified three original ideas in Atlas Shrugged. One of these is Ayn Rand’s revisionist critique of Robin Hood, the legendary outlaw who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. This counter-intuitive critique appears on pp. 532-533 of this monumental tome (all page references are to the 35th anniversary edition of Atlas Shrugged, the one with an Introduction by Leonard Peikoff), or about halfway into the novel, where one of the secondary characters in the novel (the Norwegian pirate Ragnar Danneskjöld) questions the moral ideal of Robin Hood, describing him as “the most immoral and the most contemptible” anti-hero. (By the way, we begin our review of Atlas Shrugged with the Robin Hood passage because the idea expressed in this passage is central to the main thesis of the novel: government regulators are…
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I still need to read this book that I’m currently using it as a footstool. Call me lazy.
I know the feeling. I did not read Atlas Shrugged until 2018–after years if not decades of putting it off–, and I am currently stalled about half-way through David Foster Wallace’s magnus opus.
I’m pretty sure that just holding Atlas Shrugged in my hands while i’m lying on the couch is too much for the arthritis in my hands!