Slog tipper Erica wants us to know that over the weekend, the Seattle Times came out swinging for the upcoming Atlas Shrugged movie in an editorial-slash-review. I don't read the Seattle Times editorial pageâwhen they endorsed George W. Bush in 2000, I stopped caring about anything they had to sayâbut as near as I can tell, Bruce Ramsey is a 13-year-old they allow, adorably, to scwibble out his feewings fwom time to time. And this bright young up-and-comer liked Atlas Shrugged Part I:
The novel âAtlas Shrugged,â published in 1957, is a perennial seller with millions of readers and many fans. It is 1168 pages long. There are too many speeches in it, so that 50 to 100 pages are excessive from a literary point of view, but otherwise the story is tightly plotted and told. It is not a story that can be condensed into a movie to be seen at one sitting.
Some years ago there was a plan to make a miniseries of itâsomething like what was done to Stephen Kingâs âThe Stand.â That would have been the better way to do it.
âAtlas Shrugged Part Iâ is 110 minutes long, and is the first of three projected films to tell the story of the one book. âLord of the Ringsââthree booksâwas done that way, and was hugely successful. But Peter Jackson had about 10 times as much money as âAtlas Shruggedâsâ director, Peter Johansson. The first âRingsâ movie was 178 minutes, and the extended DVD version, which is better, is 208 minutes. And âRingsâ is a simpler story, especially the first of the three films. It was a quest. One thing happened, then another. When the director needed to save time, he left some things out.
âAtlas Shruggedâ is much, much more complicated than that.
Look at that! This little Ramsey fellow is practically a grown-up writer, and he's reading slightly above his grade level! (Of course, the flow of the piece is totally weirdâhis sentence structure needs a lot of workâbut I think this young man will do just fine on the English portion of his SATs when the big day comes. Give him time!) It's nice to see children taking part in big-people discourse. But here's the thing, little Bruce: One day, when you're a big boy, I want you to go back and re-read both of these books. Then, you'll see that the Lord of the Rings series is actually a much better-written (and far more complicated) literary work than Atlas Shrugged.
I understand that you're still a child, so you were dazzled by the vapid soap-operatics and chintzy sexuality of Ayn Rand's writing. That's okay! We like things for different reasons when we're kids. When we're grown up, we appreciate nuance and subtlety, but for now you just want to see simple-minded drama play out in exactly the way you expect. Tolkien actually put serious thought into his characters, his fictional world, and the philosophy of his book. Rand was just a sociopath who understood how best to hypnotize undeveloped mindsâwith a brash, shallow worldview and simple, repetitive language. When you're a little older, look up "straw man," and you'll understand what Rand was doing in her books. When you live in the real world one day, you'll realize how embarrassing her writing really is. (And if you brush up your writing skills, maybe when you're in college, you can intern for The Stranger, too!)
But anyway, three cheers for The Seattle Times! It's nice for them to recognize that children, however inane their personal philosophies may be, are our future. Let's just hope that in ten or twenty years time, some hard-hearted bloggers don't hold little Bruce to this piece when he's a grown-up writer. It's really embarrassing to be confronted with your own childish stupidity like that.
