Atlas is Fifty
October 7th 2007 03:50
It's 50 years since Atlas Shrugged was first published, one of the greatest books ever written in history.
I had already read The Fountainhead and I was fourteen. The next book to buy was of course, Atlas Shrugged. And for a fourteen year old child, that book came as a fairy godmother one never finds in real life. It bewitched pumpkins into twinkling carriages and took me on an intellectual journey which has never stopped since.
Of course, I have read it millions of times and of course I love it.
Have it outgrown it? many people claim that they loved it at one point of time but eventually grow out of it. Well, in a sense, I have. Too many people think that to love Rand is to be circumscribed by her. Many allege that this was a tendency perpetuated by Rand herself.
I did find new things to love, new boundaries so to speak, new pastures to graze. I may have come far from my intellectual hometown but is that straying too far? However far, I may have come, I have scrupulously followed one Randian dictum: THINK.
So, on the fiftieth birthday of Atlas, here's to my intellectual father (I am sure Ayn would approve of that term). FIFTY MORE YEARS.
I had already read The Fountainhead and I was fourteen. The next book to buy was of course, Atlas Shrugged. And for a fourteen year old child, that book came as a fairy godmother one never finds in real life. It bewitched pumpkins into twinkling carriages and took me on an intellectual journey which has never stopped since.
Of course, I have read it millions of times and of course I love it.
Have it outgrown it? many people claim that they loved it at one point of time but eventually grow out of it. Well, in a sense, I have. Too many people think that to love Rand is to be circumscribed by her. Many allege that this was a tendency perpetuated by Rand herself.
I did find new things to love, new boundaries so to speak, new pastures to graze. I may have come far from my intellectual hometown but is that straying too far? However far, I may have come, I have scrupulously followed one Randian dictum: THINK.
So, on the fiftieth birthday of Atlas, here's to my intellectual father (I am sure Ayn would approve of that term). FIFTY MORE YEARS.
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