by RWC Member/Webmaster Laurie Hamilton
I may be one of the last conservatives on earth who had never read any of Ayn Rand’s books, but I finally bought the book, and it didn’t take long to get involved with the story even though I’m not normally a fan of fiction. The Amazon reviews helped me thoughen up to the fact that the names of the characters and industries had a bit of a comic-book feel to them. Dagney, for instance, kept sounding like Dagwood, but alas, the storyline easily kicked in, and now Dagney, Hank Rearden, and even Frisco will be a part of my everyday vocabulary.
I’m half-way through the book and don’t intend this post to be a spoiler, but I’ll summarize to say that the general plot in this book, written over 40 years ago, could almost have been written today, by just replacing Rearden steel with General Motors, as one example. The book is guilty of extreme sterotyping, and could be said to be unrealistic in that sense, but some of the interactions between two people of opposite mindsets are totally hilarious. The group that wants to do things “for the good of the people” aren’t interested in applying those same rules to themselves. To a capitalist, there’s probably not anything that we’ll find wrong with the actions or mindset of Dagney Taggart, so it’s hilarious when she makes statements to the pubic in an unapologetic “greedy” manner.
There was some talk about starting up a book reading club within the Republican Women of Clifton group, which is one reason why I bought the book, so if you’re interesting in participating in this, please let us know here!
