Lemon Rineand

"Houston.  We have a problem"

Okay, okay we have produced three blogs in high praise of "Atlas Shrugged", written by my very close friend and colleague (in my mind) Ayn Rand (pronounced "Ine").

Suddenly, on page 929, I have come across the reason "Ine" is renowned as a philosopher.  It is on that page, 929, where she begins a speech by her main protagonist. The speech lasts precisely 50 pages...no breaks.  To put this in perspective, I launched a cool little Internet stop watch and timed the reading of one of these pages...out loud and at the pace you would normally expect.  It took over three and a half minutes.  That equates to at least 175 minutes of...speech - no breaks. Just a hair short of three hours.  Pretty deep material too.   

After I got a half dozen pages into it I suddenly realized "Ine" was trapping me.  That is when I stopped to tally the depth of her trap.  Fifty big ones.  I am not even sure Mother Teresa could sit still for a speech like that.  This must be why they have the famous "Ayn Rand Institute",  http://www.aynrand.org.  It is because there are a bunch of folks who are spending their entire lives trying to figure out what she said on pages 929-979 of "Atlas Shrugged'.  No.  I am not joining.

So I am thinking; practically, there is no way I will ever in my lifetime read all those pages.  I won't even skim them.

I withstood Philosophy in college and know how painful it can be to try to understand some of those folks... I mean if it was easy everyone would be a philosopher right?!  Anyway, now I know why Ayn hit the big time in philosophy circles - she took the time to write a 50 page speech.  I have also found that she wrote it long hand and had a typist assisting her - a typist who could hunt and peck all day without nodding off and having her head hit the keyboard...er, I mean typewriter.

Now I have moved past the, "You guys are wrong and I am right" speech and am continuing to love the book. A little over a hundred pages left and I will file a final report on this, perhaps the greatest book I have ever read... except for the speeches.