I read the whole goddam thing and every other speech besides. I read the novel cover to cover one college Xmas break. Good times.
For some reason what has stuck in my mind was the description of Christ as a “Mystic leprous bum.” Mystic? Ok I guess. Bum? Well, I suppose, by Rand’s philosophy. But leprous? Where the hell did that come from?
I’ve forgotten everything else.
Not quite B. I didn’t give up so much as that my spider sense tingled that Rand was about to fillibuster, so I scanned ahead, saw that it was so, and decided that I wasn’t a reader who needed an exhaustive explanation of the points she was making via the story. I figured those out by reading the story.
So I read about a paragraph, peaked ahead and started reading from where it ended (20 pages?)
Like others, A. I was 17, a senior in high school. My English teacher took the book away from me for reading it during class. She finally said I had to give it up each day as I entered the classroom. She did, however, say it felt very wrong.
I was much more intense then. :dubious:
In all my readings of Ayn, that’s eluded me. The phrase I recall but I didn’t associate it with Christ (about whom Ayn has made contradictory statements).
Anyway, I pick between B & C. Read the first page or two of the address. Skim and skip along for a while. Then read the last five or six pages of the address where he gets inspirational and personal.
A. And A again, and again, and again; I don’t remember how many times; from my teen years through mid-20s.
I actually read Galt’s speech *before *reading the rest of the book. The first book of Rand’s I had read was *For the New Intellectual, *which included the speech.
OH! I misread the OP! I thought it was asking for advice. I think though I first did the same thing I suggested doing. After I finished the book, though, I went back and read through the whole speech.
B/c
I read it through the first time, and I’ve read it at other times as well. Maybe I’ll pick it up again this summer for something to read. I’m not going to set it to music though, I’ve better things to sing in the shower.
B (what’s the name of the character giving the speech?)
I’m going to de-lurk for a little while here.
The answer is most definitely A.
I first read AS in my mid-twenties at what apparently was the best possible time for me. I was young enough to relate to Rand’s brash, adolescent cockiness and old enough to see that her philosophy was dangerously simplistic and naive. I read it straight through, every last word. I re-read it some years later, skipping over the dozens of interminable speeches and soliliquies, and decided somebody could probably edit AS into a nifty paperback thriller just by eliminating the lame philosophizing. (Has anyone else noticed that “interminable” is the word most often chosen to describe AS?)
Of course, I have a taste for apocalyptic fiction. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer (which shows the obvious influence of AS), Jean Respail’s The Camp of the Saints, Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon, Stephen King’s The Stand, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, George Stewart’s Earth Abides–it’s all grist for my mill. I don’t know why I love all this end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it stuff, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with growing up with fundamentalists. The Left Behind books are about the only ones of this kind that I find unreadable, although the films based on them are great schlocky fun.
A. I didn’t find the speech that much different from any other passage in the book-- just longer. Why would I skip that one in particular? Or to put it another way, if Galt’s speech is so unbearable, what are you doing reading Atlas Shrugged at all?
Well at least the rest of the book hammered the points in in story form.
B. I figured Ayn Rand had already made her point and would continue to make it, and I find I didn’t miss anything by skipping it.
B, I enjoyed the book at the time and was very sympathetic to the philosophy at the time, but I just did not need to be beat over the head with that message for 100 more pages like that.
B - then a little C thinking that there had to be a better ending and I just missed it. Nope, still sucked. :smack: