Life, as it goes.

I have been gushing about the book like anything because it seems to me that it deserves all the praise I have given but this does not mean that it is faultless. There are certain negatives in the book which make it such a painful read that many people are not able to complete it.

Firstly, it is long. More than 1000 pages and that too only because the font size is .8. There are times when you would say, "Yeah yeah, get on with it." The reason for this is that the story in itself is not so long, it is stretched by the author with a purpose of propogating and documenting her ideas. If we only take the main turning points and events in the story, it can be summairsed almost by half. I don't know what system of editing was used when Ann Rynd wrote and whether publishers used to put their two bit into the work but this one sure looks like it never passed under an editor's eye or even if it did no real changes were made.

Secondly, it is heavy. Not exactly a page turner where each chapter ends with a sense of suspense and forces you to go on till you finish it in the wee hours of the night. So even if it is a best-seller, it could not have done better than a normal suspense, romance, tragedy or drama novel because of its very heavy message sent across in speeches and monologues which are painfully long and sometimes repetitive. For e.g. D'Anconia's speech about money, Rearden speech at his trial and the mother of all speeches, John Galt's radio speech which is 28 pages long.

Thirdly, the bias. Ann Rynd had talked about India, hardly a few sentences but what she wrote is sickening and definately not true. Her sweeping analysis of certain things is such that one feels like she doesn't know what the hell she is talking about. She has a bias, it could have arisen because of what she went through in her life in Russia but from the book one realises that there is no space for an alternate thought, no doubt for anything else. The fatwa she announces is that, "My way or highway, if not this than nothing." This does not go well with me especially because her potrayal of everything that is against her belief is such that you are compelled to dislike. Its just too damn dictactic and manipulative.

Fourthly, glorification of escapism. John Galt escapes just like a losing warrier would escape from the battlefield, hide on the side, build his own army and return to rule when everyone else has killed each other. The book calls this the right thing to do. I call it escapism. Sure, things are bad, sure situations and circumstances are not supportive to your belief, sure they are out to defeat you, so what? You run away? Nope not in the real world you don't. In the real world you stick it out, stay till the end and die if you have to defeated maybe but not a fugitive at least. To this doubt the book provides justification stating that it is right to escape a world which uses your last drop of energy but would not acknowledge that it can't live without you. Somehow for me it is not a good enough justification.

Lastly, I wouldn't recommend this as a book you should take on a fun vacation. In fact take it only if you want to ruin the vacation because it will make you feel angry, contemptuous and sometimes downright miserable. Its a book I would call, "Read it at your own risk."