On the recommendation of an acquaintance, I’m reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I bought it last Sunday and now, one week later, am in 339 of the 1168 pages. I’m not disappointed.
This morning I went to the website for the Ayn Rand Institute and read the following:
Atlas Shrugged was [Ayn Rynd's] greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. Although she considered herself primarily a fiction writer, she realized that in order to create heroic fictional characters, she had to identify the philosophic principles which make such individuals possible.
Writing like Ayn Rand. I do not consider myself a fiction writer, but what I learn from her is the importance of, as said above, “identifying the philosophic principles which make such individuals possible.” Consider the scriptural narratives; individuals who have been written about for thousands of years. Historically, their character development has been looked at more frequently in terms of the theological principles of the larger story, the meta-narrative, of God’s self vs. the individual philosophy embedded in each character. What if we read – and wrote i a more Ayn Rand-like way? What if we had the capacity (and willingness) to view scriptural narrative as amazingly complex fiction; heroic characters who operated from a complex philosophical system? I’d love to write like that – and read more of the same!
Here are her own words:
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
I don’t know whether I completely agree with her philosophy, but I cannot argue with the way she writes, with the way she thinks, with the way she prompts me to do the same. I don’t presume that I will accomplish the same and we have different objectives. But I do presume that her way of thinking and way of writing offers a taste of depth and beauty that has/is not applied to scripture nearly enough. Maybe we need some new writing, some new thought, some Ayn Rand-like looks at those heroic beings of scripture as well as our own stories. I’m convinced.
Read her words again:
But there were times, like tonight, when she felt that sudden, peculiar emptiness, which was not emptiness, but silence, not despair, but immobility, as if nothing within her were destroyed, but everything stood still. Then she felt the wish to find a moment’s joy outside, the wish to be held as a passive spectator by some work or sight of greatness. Not to make it, she thought, but to accept; not to begin, but to respond; not to create, but to admire. I need it to let me go on, she thought, because joy is one’s fuel.
Imagine these words spoken by Hagar, Sarah, Deborah, Ruth, Mary. Can you feel the shift? Your thoughts begin to change, the images in your mind begin to swirl a bit, implications and applications become deeper and far more complex.
There’s so much more to imagine. So much more to write. And so much more to read (829 pages to be exact).
