The Great Escape

Atlas Shrugged – Day 103 – pp. 1150-1159

Now we get a little hokey.

Francisco grills the subdued guards. How many guards are there? Where? What are these rooms?

It’s military precision. (You wonder, when you’re an expert at one thing, it would seem, in Rand’s universe, you’re an expert at everything. Continue reading “The Great Escape”

The “Passion” of John Galt (or the end of Jim Taggart)

Atlas Shrugged – Day 102 – pp. 1140-1149

No it ain’t.

“Long coils of wire, like the twisted arms of an octopus, stretched forward across the stone floor, from the machine to a leather mattress spread under a cone of violent light. John Galt lay strapped to the mattress, He as naked; the small metal disks of electrodes at the ends of the wires were attached to his wrists, his shoulders, his hips and his ankles…”

Sounds like an impressive creation. Wonder where Dr F bought the kit for that?

They turn on the machine and hear the buzz from the generator and the amplified sound of John Galt’s heartbeat.

Now he makes a fairly ridiculous sounding demand of Galt.

Continue reading “The “Passion” of John Galt (or the end of Jim Taggart)”

A guest for breakfast

Atlas Shrugged – Day 069 – pp. 752-761 (One extra page at the end of the last chapter.)

Chapter 2 – Utopia of Greed! (Don’t know but it sounds good.)

So it’s morning and Dagny wakes up to see John Galt who’s already working at his desk.

She broke something on the “ray screen” of the power plant when she crashed so he has to run off and do his “handy man” thing. Dagny insists on cooking breakfast while he’s at work.

Getting kind of domestic after only one day.

As she’s cooking, a man she’s never seen runs up and in through the front door.

Continue reading “A guest for breakfast”

Pirate bookkeepers and out-of-town legislators

Atlas Shrugged – Day 052 – pp. 579-588

I’m going to try something a little different starting this evening. Rather than narrate the story like I’ve been doing, I’m going to try to recap a little less and think out loud a little more. A little more color, and a little less play-by-play. I’ll still include quotations from the book that I find particularly arresting, but not too much retyping. (I was starting to feel like I was just rewriting the damn thing!) So let’s see how it goes shall we?

Where were we? Oh yeah. Hank was confronting the Dread pirate Danneskjold (. . .Nah, “Dread Pirate Roberts” from the Princess Bride’s better too. Who names a pirate Ragnar?)

Anyway, Hank and Ragnar. Ragnar is explaining his accounting system to Hank. That he has a rather large account in his name. He has no way of knowing all of what’s been looted from Hank, with the exception of one account where meticulous records are kept.

Continue reading “Pirate bookkeepers and out-of-town legislators”

Hank, Ragnar and John…

Atlas Shrugged – Day 015 – pp. 144-153

Of course all that is lost on Jim who is a capitalist when it suits him and a “progressive” the rest.

Now Rand shifts gears once again to Dagny who is in some bit of awe of Henry Rearden. Perhaps since the d’Anconia thing didn’t work out…

But who’s this approaching Hank now? Continue reading “Hank, Ragnar and John…”