So, sales of Atlas Shrugged are apparently trending upwards. As you know if you’d read the thing – or could glean from the Wiki, it’s an amazingly dense book. It sold stupendously well in its day and created shitloads of controversy. Even now, the Amazon reviews thread of it gets heated and bitchy real fast. Okay, I am not quite sure why the G.F.C. would send peeps stampeding out to buy a book that spruiks uber-capitalism and this is so damned hard to read – it’s not like it’s a handy guide or anything.
I was given Atlas Shrugged by the Gemini Cokehead best friend of my then boyfriend years ago, when i was (sort of) at uni. Gemini Cokehead was a shocker. He was 22 in sales selling radio ad space and would do anything to keep the lease payments up on his Italian sports car. He had a penchant for falling flamboyantly in love (unable to eat, going on long mountain hikes to try and forget her, non-stop analysis of the situation, compulsive throwing of the I-Ching) with other men’s girlfriends or wives but losing interest the moment they came on the market. Anyway, Gemini Cokehead said Atlas Shrugged was like his bible and that i had to read it.
Maybe i was too young but i thought the concepts of Objectivism and letting genius run free unfettered by idiots was all really fascinating but it gets to a really psycho bit – i think – at the end where the heroine is sort of in heaven (?) and this amazing uber-capitalist-genius-stud-Nietzsche guy called John Galt has got her sweeping floors. That totally weirded me out.
Ayn Rand herself has really fascinating astro: She was a refugee from Russia, loved America the moment she spotted the New York skyline and when she was buried, her coffin had a big dollar sign on it. And she was classic Aquarius – contradictory. She was madly right-wing economically but often had views quite at odds with the classic right winger then. eg; she was absolutely pro equal rights for people, regardless of their sexual orientation.
Anyway her astro: Leo Rising and Mars in Scorpio trine Neptune…there is that messianic self-belief and ability to concoct a whole new philosophy with such a wide effect. Uranus is at 2 degrees Capricorn and opposite Neptune. But how fun is that Pluto is trundling over her Uranus in the 5th house and there is a surge in sales? The re-ignition of interest in the book may also fast-track the movie, apparently to star Angelina Jolie and Russell Crowe. Rand also has Moon-Mercury in Capricorn and Sun, Saturn, Ceres and Chiron all together in Aquarius…Great big confident and over the top Aries Midheaven…
Yes, she got a stamp!
This is part of the plot synoposis from imdb f.y.i
“…Based upon the controversial 1957 novel by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged follows the struggles of Dagny Taggart, a railroad heiress trying to maintain her integrity, and keep her family’s railroad alive in the midst of a rapidly decaying world. She faces increasingly corrupt government agencies, the callous incompetence of her own brother, and the systematic loss of her best and most competent workers. As she works to overcome each obstacle, she begins to detect a pattern, and suspect a sinister force working against her. All across the country, there is a growing sense of helplessness, often summed up in a catch phrase that everyone seems to know, but no one knows the origin of – Who is John Galt?….
In the ‘living well is the best revenge’ tradition, Jennifer Aniston is on the cover of the only magazine her ex Brad Pitt purportedly reads or gives a merde about, with a triumphant gleam in her eyes but otherwise looking mega-casual and uncomplicated. The main point of the article seems to be that she has spent s-loads transforming what were previously His and Her bathrooms into a spa complex.
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