I’m reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time. With all the tea-baggers and Beck fans talking about "going Galt", I thought I should know what it actually says. I intend to write a longer diary about it when I finish. It’s an interesting book, both better and worse than I thought it would be.
But halfway through, I’ve already picked up on certain habits in Rand’s writing; repeated phrases, archetypical characters and recurring situations. Habits which beg to be immortalized in their very own drinking game.
A game I call Atlas Chugged.
The rules:
- Every time someone asks, "Who is John Galt?", drink. Not only is this "immortal query" at the heart of the book, it’s also the opening line. So it gets you off to a quick start.
- Every time she describes physical fatigue or the need for sleep as a weakness and a betrayal, drink. She uses this characterization frequently in the early parts of the book, always applied to one of her heroes. It may have been her way to show the force of their will and the power of their luminous minds over their weak flesh. Or maybe she was just cranked up on amphetamines most of the time and she was projecting.
- Speaking of her heroes, Hank Reardon, Francisco d'Anconia, Dagny Taggart and her other heroes are handsome, beautiful people. Every time she describes one as the very embodiment of beauty and nobility, drink. Nothing says paragon of virtue like physical perfection.
- If her heroes are beautiful, her villains have to be ugly. Every time she describes a villain as a mass of flesh, with a "shapeless" mouth or "gelatinous" eyes, drink.
- There’s another difference between Rand’s heroes and villains. They both talk a lot, but the heroes get to talk a lot more. Every time a villain disgorges a 2 page long speech, drink. Every time a hero gets 5 or more uninterrupted pages, drink.
- For good measure, every time one paragraph goes on for more than a page, drink.
- Every time someone mentions the Pirate, drink. Yes, there really is a pirate. His name is Ragnar and he’s a Viking god with golden hair and a face so handsome it can never be scared. Is he a hero or villain? You get one guess.
- Rand’s male heroes are steely men of unbending strength. Even when overwhelmed by tides of emotion, they never show it. Every time one of them is paralyzed by his feelings, but no one can tell except for the single pulsing vein in his throat, the stretched skin over a temple or how his hands cling to the edge of a table, drink.
Dagny, OTOH, gets to feel, and show, lots and lots of emotions. Every time Dagny collapses into a little feminine heap, drink.
- There is one thing that can get under her heroes’ skin: the stupidity of the people around them. Every time a character is introduced just to earn a heroes’ (or the reader’s) contempt, drink. Keep an eye out for Reardon's mother and brother, Mayor Bascom, Kip Chalmers, Balph Eubank, Tinky Holloway, Lee Hunsacker, Gilbert Keith-Worthing, Paul Larkin, Eugene Lawson, Mort Liddy, Horace Mowen, Betty Pope, Drs. Potter and Pritchett, Bertram Scudder, Claude Slagenhop, the Starnes siblings, Clem Weatherby and many, many others.
Drink twice for Balph and Tinky, because their names are Balph and Tinky.
- In Rand’s world, there is only one person in the world who still does any given job well. Hank Reardon is the only man who can still make steel. Dagny Taggart is the only woman who can still run a railroad. Ken Danagger is the only man who can still mine coal. Lawrence Hammond is the only man who can still build a car. Every time one of these last-of-their-kind characters shows up, drink.
Drink twice for Hugh Akston. He’s the only philosopher in the whole world who can still think and he’s the only short-order cook who can still fry a decent hamburger.
- I’ve never even heard of a shoulder fetish, but there's one here. Rand is obsessed with Dagny Taggart’s shoulders; Her sensual, naked shoulders. Every time Rand writes of Dagny’s naked shoulders, bare shoulders or shoulders framed in fallen hair and transparent fabric so they look naked, drink.
- Throughout the book, people are constantly doing physically impossible and self-contradictory things. Every time someone leans on a wall, totally relaxed and motionless, but with a fierce energy, springs from a chair like shot from a bow but without motion or gives a glance that has all the characteristics of a wink (yes, that’s really in there, too), drink.
- To be fair to Rand, there is some good stuff buried in Atlas Shrugged. Her description of life in the collectivized 20th Century Motor Co. is a dead-on description of life in a totalitarian state and I liked Dagny's encounter with Owen Kellogg after the Comet was abandoned. At least once per chapter, find something for which Rand deserves credit and drink.
- At the start of John Galt’s famous
40 56 page long, climactic speech put yourself on the wait list for a liver transplant. If you’ve followed the rules so far, you’re going to need one.
- At the end of Galt’s speech, phone your doctor. If you’re lucky, you’ll have made it to the top of list. And just in time.