[lbo-talk] Happy 50th, 'Atlas Shrugged'!

Carl Remick carlremick at gmail.com
Sat Sep 15 19:52:55 PDT 2007


On 9/15/07, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Here's the plot to Atlas Shrugged: ...
> A bunch of creative doers, artists, and thinkers (from all classes) have
> had enough of this so they decide they are going to go on strike (Atlas
> shruggs and walks away). They run away to some protected spot in
> Colorado (?) where they have conveniently discovered an infinite source
> of energy (so the issue of heavy lifting kinda disappears), and here
> they riff off eachother while waiting for the world of the parasites to
> crumble so that the they can eventually step back in and run the world
> as they like.

On reflection, I thought this Randian Fantasy Island sounded a lot like Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ, the winter home and architectural "school" (read: sweatshop) of Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the 20th century's greatest egomaniacs and bunko artists. Wright lived here in his usual seigneurial style with his guard-dog of a wife, Olgivanna, presiding over an adoring court of architectural apprentices whom Wright exploited mercilessly -- paying them, as I recall, little or nothing for endless toil. Each evening after dinner, Wright, Olgivanna and these courtier-apprentices would retire to a spacious room where Wright and Olgivanna (seated on a raised platform) would dispense lofty wisdom to Wright's worshipful followers. In checking further, I was not at all surprised to find this entry in Wikipedia: "The architect hero Howard Roark of Ayn Rand's Fountainhead is generally thought to be based on Wright, although both Rand and Wright denied this."

Carl



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