"Going a long distance out of the way, to come back a short distance correctly"
Getting a little behind on my posts. Maybe blogging a 1200 page book, moving and starting business in the same month isn’t such a good idea. (Glad Hank Rearden wasn’t around to hear that.) Back to business…
Atlas Shrugged – Day 049 – pp. 479-488
Hank has just double dog dared the court to take away all his stuff. But not under the politically protective guise of punishing him for breaking the law. Come out and take it and show the world what you’re real intentions are.
Politically unappealing.
Atlas Shrugged – Day 048 – pp. 469-478
That bit was sooooo good, I think we need a little follow up and clarification from Hank. . .
Atlas Shrugged – Day 047 – pp. 459-468
Hank and Francisco finish sealing the breach in the furnace.
They said nothing to each other when they walked together through the darkness, on their way back to the office.
Kind of like that awkward silence after . . .never mind. . .
Atlas Shrugged – Day 046 – pp. 449-458
We cut back to Hank’s office. It’s late. He got Ken Danagger’s message from Dagny when she told him the story.
He’s bummed and thinking. . .
Atlas Shrugged – Day 044 – pp. 429-438
Busted.
“He stood like a man in military uniform at some official proceedings where emotions could not be permitted to exist.”
“Aren’t you going to try to justify yourself?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you going to start begging my forgiveness?”
Atlas Shrugged – Day 043 – pp. 419-428
He explains briefly to Hank
“Do you know where all those fair share vultures have invested their profits from Rearden Metal?”
“No but — ”
“In d’Anconia Copper stock. Safely out of the way and out of the country.
And then Francisco suddenly gets confused about the time-space continuum. . .
Atlas Shrugged – Day 041 – pp. 399-408
No it’s not a cuisinart.
It’s her husband at the reception. In the presence of so many of whom it will impress.
“Your guests are quite impressed. I can practically hear them thinking all over the room. Most of them are thinking: ‘If he has to seek terms with Jim Taggart, we’d better toe the line.”
So it’s not really a gift. More of an exchange? What’s she want?
Atlas Shrugged – Day 039 – pp. 379-388
Chapter II — The Aristocracy of Pull
Finally a title that makes sense! This is the world we’re living in right now. Where if you are positioned correctly in the right office and know the right people, you can get – do – say – screw just about anyone or anything. H-E-L-L-O Washington.
The calendar in the sky beyond Dagny’s window said September 2. OK. We’re one year into the book — it read exactly the same when Eddie looked up at it on page 2 or 3.
Incidentally, I recently found out that Sept 2 is “Atlas Shrugged Day.” Happy Belated Atlas Shrugged day to all!
The calendar that timed her race to get the JG line built was now “clocking her race against an unknown destroyer.”
Atlas Shrugged – Day 038 – pp. 369-378
While she’s waiting she recalls all the incredible gifts he’s given her. . .
“The single pear shaped ruby that spurted a violent fire on the white satin of the jeweler’s box. It was a famous stone which only a dozen men in the world could properly afford to purchase; he was not one of them.”
“On the evening of a blizzard, she came home to find an enormous spread of tropical flowers standing in he living room against the dark glass of windows battered by snowflakes.”
“. . .he brought and put over her shoulders was a cape of blue fox that swallowed her from the curve of her chin to the tips of her sandals.”
Out for a secluded dinner one evening, he again confesses what he believes to be his sin.
Atlas Shrugged – Day 037 – pp. 359 -368
“He would not work for me, so is probably the kind of man you want”
A young physicist from the Utah Institute of Technology…
His name . . .
Atlas Shrugged – Day 031 – pp. 304-313
But Hank has other struggles besides business and politics.
His personal dalliances have left him in a swamp of moral turpitude. (Turpitude, I like that word. Sounds messy.)
Back in Rome WI, Mayor Bascom had remarked about the woman “who was not Hank’s wife.”
Atlas Shrugged – Day 030 – pp. 294-303
Chapter X — Wyatt’s Torch
They’re going to find the person who built that motor. Won’t be easy. First they have to find out about the owner of the factory. So they start at the hall of records. . .
“Nobody knows who owns that factory now. I guess nobody will ever know it. . .”
Atlas Shrugged – Day 029 – pp. 284-293
They’ve stumbled into what happens when industry fails. What happens when the businesses that provide people their livelihood close their doors.
“Through the open door, they could see the interior of her house. There was useless gas stove, its oven stuffed with rage, serving as a chest of drawers. There was a stove built of stones in a corner, with a few logs burning under an old kettle, and long streaks of soot rising up the wall. A white object lay propped against the legs of a table. It was a porcelain washbowl, torn from the wall of some bathroom, filled with wilted cabbages . . . A brood of ragged children had gathered at the door behind the woman, silently, one by one.”
A man comes up carrying water from the local well.
Atlas Shrugged – Day 028 – pp. 274-283
“Owen Kellogg.”
It’s the kid with all the promise Dagny wanted to make manager of the midwest region. The one who quit and dropped off the face of the earth so mysteriously. Doing transient labor now?
“Listen Kellogg, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”
“You wouldn’t care to know.”
Atlas Shrugged – Day 026 – pp. 254-263
Chapter IX – The Sacred and the Profane (sounds like a soap opera…)
The deed done, now comes the awkward part.
Hank gets up to get dressed and addresses the situation…
Atlas Shrugged – Day 025 – pp. 244-253
OK the train is hurtling on. And as it blows past everything at 100 mph, Rand describes Dagny’s feelings of exhilaration. Her sense of triumph blends into the scenes Rand paints of land and skyscapes flashing by.
I’d say Dagny is having a good day.
Now combine all that adrenaline with Hank in the engine cab. . .
Atlas Shrugged – Day 024 – pp. 234-243
She invites Hank to the press conference for good measure.
“Dagny recited the technological facts abot the John Galt Line, giving exact figures on the nature of the rail, the capacity of the bridge, the method of construction, the costs. . . . That is all,” she said
Of course the press want some sort of “message for the public.” Some “defense of themselves” in what they’re doing. A sound bite to “justify her line.”
“Aren’t you going to tell us your motive for building that Line?”
Atlas Shrugged – Day 023 – pp. 224-233
Hank envisions Paul Larkin as a young man of 18. . .
“And he saw what Paul Larkin must have been at that time — a youth with an aged baby’s face, smiling ingratiatingly, joylessly, begging to be spared, pleading with the universe to give him a chance. If someone had shown that youth to the Hank Rearden of that time and told him that this was to be the goal of his steps, the collector of the energy of his aching tendons, what would he have–
Rearden knew what the boy he had been would have felt: a desire to step on the obscene thing which was Larkin and grind every wet bit of it out of existence. . .
Continue reading “Blind public sentiment and clear business will”
Atlas Shrugged – Day 022 – pp. 214-223
The Equalization of Opportunity Act, as I recall, stipulated that businessmen could not own more than one business. It was designed so that others could have a chance at some success. Hank, who owns pretty much his whole line of production from the ore mines to the steel factory is facing some serious trouble.
As usual, he’s working past midnight. And a first glimpse of human weakness.
Atlas Shrugged – Day 021 – pp. 204-213
Things turnin’ a little sexy. While Dagny’s talking about Rearden Metal and bridges and union labor Hank’s having about two pages of fantasy lust in his mind . . .