This post continues my journal of impressions and thoughts as I read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged for the first time.

I have to give Ayn Rand credit for knowing how to make a collectivist look foolish.  While her writing is generally pretty bland and her dialog stiff, the novel comes to life–in a peculiar, risen dead sort of way–when she portrays the upper class academics and hangers on of the collectivist variety: the college professors and politicians who claim everyone should live for the good of everyone else and all personal earnings are to be tolerated only insofar as they can be used to improve the lot of “society.”

The passages remind me of the scene in Cryptonomicon when Neal Stepenson so skillfully pokes fun at liberal arts scholars by comparing them to Tolkien’s hobbits.  I imagine that, if it weren’t for the give away of Ayn Rand’s name on the spine and cover, many of the intellectuals I’ve met would nod along with these characters, feeling right at home in their banter.  There’s clever pseudo-profundity in what they have to say.

So, while the discussions between her businessmen characters don’t do a lot for me–not because they’re outright wrong but because they just aren’t terribly interesting–the party scenes are a hoot.

Sans its message, sans its historical significance, sans its ability to turn young people into libertarians, the first thing one picks up on when starting Atlas Shrugged is the poverty of the prose. Ayn Rand, no matter her or her followers’ opinion otherwise, just isn’t a very good writer. The language is plodding, non-lyrical, and often often awkward. For example, in one scene she writes, “He stood slouching against the bar.” To my knowledge, one stands against a bar or one slouches against a bar–but one does not stand slouching. An editor would’ve fixed that, but I was told once–and maybe this is apocryphal–that Rand refused such editing, asking, “Would you edit the Bible” Ignoring that the Bible was, in fact, edited through countless revisions and translations over thousands of years, Atlas Shrugged is not the Bible.  It is not scripture, nor does it benefit from the myth of a divine author whose original manuscript is lost in prehistory.

What else comes to mind, a mere 200 pages into this monstrous novel? Well, I can’t imagine wanting to hang out with any of these people. Her good guys are, without exception, awful human beings. They display no compassion and evidence no empathy. A world filled with such super men would be a terrible place, indeed. Her bad guys, on the other hand–her collectivists and leftists and academics–are ugly little toads who snivel and beg from the arch-capitalists we’re all supposed to look up to when we aren’t looking for an excuse to leave. Objectivism, at least as presented in this seminal text, affords no nuance.

None of this precludes the worthiness of Rand’s ideas, however. I have not encountered enough of those in the fist sixth of the book to adequately judge them, so such critique will have to wait until future posts.  While I imagine there will be a great deal throughout Atlas Shrugged I disagree with, and a great deal I am sympathetic towards, the fact remains that, except for my knowledge that this is a novel of ideas, one read for its philosophy and arguments and intellectual importance, I’d have put it down long ago.

Writing a novel is terrific fun. Editing it isn’t. But that’s the predicament I find myself in, as I’ve received the first round of extensive feedback from my wonderful new editor, and I’m slowly digging in for the long haul. The good news is, THE HOLE will be a much better novel as a result. The bad news is that it means my other writing projects must be a little backburnered so I can get the book on store shelves in a reasonable time.

I’ll try to post my thoughts as I go through this first experience editing a lengthy work. Words of encouragement are great, too, however…

None of them had an idea of what might have caused all this, but Danny was okay with that.  It was his curiosity about the words on his computer and the colors in his head that got him kidnapped in the first place and right now all he wanted was to get out of these tunnels and go home.

Jimmy and Alex argued about it for a bit.  Danny paid no attention, and instead focused on walking.  The staff continued to glow whenever it was within a foot of him.  That close, however, and his skin tingled, the hairs moving like they were caught in an electric field.  He rubbed his arms, but it didn’t do any good.

They’d walked for half an hour or more when he saw the first sign of light from somewhere other than the staff.

“Hey,” he said, interrupting Jimmy talking about how he never trusted Africans to begin with and sure as hell wouldn’t now.  “You guys see that?”

“What?” Jimmy said.

“See what?” Alex said.

Danny pointed.  Ahead of them, a good distance away, there’d been a flash of light—only once and then gone, but Danny was sure he hadn’t imagined it.

Jimmy put his hand on Danny’s shoulder.  “Sure you ain’t still messed up in the head from getting stuck to that stick earlier?”

“No,” Danny said, “I saw it.”

“Sure thing,” Jimmy said.  “Just want to be positive, you know?”

“It was there,” Danny said.  “A light.”

Alex pulled the staff away from Danny.  Its glow ceased.  “Be quiet,” he said.

They waited—seconds then minutes and then, as Jimmy began to fidget, the light came again.

“There,” Alex said.

Danny nodded.  It was a flash along the stone, like the reflection off a source moving outside their field of vision.

“That’s firelight,” Alex said.

“You’re right,” Danny said.

“You can tell that?” Jimmy said.  “You can tell that’s fire?”

“Come on,” Alex said.

They stayed close to the wall as they made their way along the tunnel in the direction the light had come from.  Alex held the staff far away from Danny, making sure it didn’t start glowing again and give them away.

“Maybe we’re in a mine,” Danny whispered.

Alex hushed him.

“Who the hell still uses torches?” Jimmy said.  “Miners sure don’t.”

“Be quiet,” Alex said.  He stopped.  “Wait here.  I’ll go on ahead and see if I can see anything.”

“Right, boss,” Jimmy said.  When Alex tried to hand him the staff, he said, “Keep it.  In case you need to hit something.”

“I have a gun,” Alex said.

“Oh, yeah,” Jimmy said, and took the staff.

“Keep that away from Danny,” Alex said, and left them.

Without the light from the staff, Danny couldn’t see Alex.  The detective moved silently.  Even with Jimmy there, Danny felt alone.

“What do you think it is?” Jimmy said into his ear.

“Don’t know,” Danny whispered back.  “Miners, maybe, like I said.”

“Can’t be.”

“What do you think it was?”

Jimmy was quiet a moment.  “You know, kid?  After the shit I’ve seen over the years, I don’t even want to guess.”

“Over the years?”

“Don’t worry about it, not—”

“What other stuff have you seen?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Jimmy said.

But Danny didn’t want him to wait until later.  He pressed the subject, asking Jimmy to elaborate, but it was like trying to get directions from a dead dog.  Jimmy just kept saying, “Nope, not now,” or “You’re gonna have to wait, kid, okay,” and Danny thought he could hear nervousness in the dismissals.  Jimmy hadn’t meant to bring the topic up and was now kicking himself for having done so.

Eventually, Danny let it drop.  He leaned against the tunnel wall and stared in the direction Alex had gone.  Quiet, and dark, and without the chatter of his two new companions, the insanity of the last day settled into Danny’s awareness.  He’d managed to forget about the culture box and the thing in his computer, but now they both returned, along with flashes of the awful man on the bus and the chrome tools he’d pulled from his bag.  Danny wanted to go home, to go to sleep and wake up and attend classes, like he was a regular college kid again.  He was even willing to deal with the headaches if it meant getting out of this tunnel.

The world isn’t supposed to work like this, he thought.  Danny was trying to figure out whether he could trust Jimmy Pete and Alex Dale when he heard the shot.

It was too far away, around a curve in the tunnel, for Danny to see the muzzle flash, but he knew immediately the loud pop was a gunshot.  He jumped and Jimmy did the same.  They collided, the staff in Jimmy’s hand swinging past Danny’s arm, erupting light.  In that brief illumination, Danny saw Jimmy’s wide eyes and, beyond him, Alex running toward them out of the dark.

“Keep it lit,” Alex shouted.

Jimmy didn’t hear or wasn’t paying attention, but Danny moved closer to the staff, coaxing it back to life.

No longer blind, Alex covered the distance between them quickly.  He had his pistol in his hand.  “There’s something up there,” he said, hands on his knees, panting.

“What’d you shoot at?” Jimmy said.

Alex shook his head.  “I don’t know.”

Jimmy said, “What do you—”

But Alex cut him off.  “I don’t have a goddamn clue.  I was walking and then there was this thing in front of me.”

“Did you find the light?” Danny asked.  “Is that how you saw it?”

Alex shook his head again.  “It was dark.  The thing was dark.”

“So how’d—” Danny began.

“It was darker than everything else,” Alex said.  “That’s how I saw it.  A black shape standing there in front of me.”

“Shape of what?” Jimmy said.

“A man, I think.  A large man.”

“You killed it?” Jimmy said.

“I shot it.  I think I hit it.”

“But you don’t know if it’s dead?” Danny said.

“No.”

“What about the torch?” Jimmy said.

Alex stared at him.  “The what?”

“Did the thing you shot have a torch?”

“Was it what made the light?” Danny said.

“I didn’t see one,” Alex said.  “If it had one, it wasn’t lit.”

“Let’s go have a look,” Jimmy said.

“Wait—” Danny said.  His stomach ached.  Far away, but close enough to tingle along his arms and spine, he could feel the pull of the staff.  And he knew—somehow he knew—that getting near that thing Alex had shot would only make it worse.

But Jimmy was already walking further along the tunnel and Danny had to run after him before the glow of the staff went out.  Alex followed.

The thing Alex had shot lay on the floor of the tunnel, its head propped up by the rock wall rising from the dirt.  Danny stared at it as Alex and Jimmy poked around the body.  Alex was right: the thing—or creature, or man, Danny wasn’t sure—was blacker than even the absence of light marking the continuing path of the cave tunnel.  It reminded him of a wooden artist’s doll, the kind with joints that could be posed in all sorts of ways: featureless, the basic shape of a man, but without any characteristics to make it human.

“That’s some crazy shit,” Jimmy said.

Alex crouched and poked at it.  “It’s dead.”

“You sure?” Danny said.  He stood next to Jimmy, who held the staff between them.

“Yes.”

Jimmy hunkered down next to Alex.  “Is it some kind of suit?” he said.

Alex shrugged.  “Maybe, but I don’t think so.”

“It’s a goddamn alien, then,” Jimmy said.

“Could be,” Alex said.

Danny said, “Let’s just leave it, okay?  Let’s keep going, see if we can find a way out of here.”  He’d been right about the tingling.  Up close, near the body, the tug of the staff was awful.  His arms felt like they’d gone to sleep and his stomach was writhing.

Alex was pulling at the thing’s face.  He’d grabbed it under the chin and now yanked up on its jaw.  The head rocked back and banged against stone and dirt.  “It’s not coming off,” he said.

“Maybe it’s a tattoo,” Danny said.

Jimmy stared at him.  “You ever seen a tattoo like that?”

“No.”

“You even think they make tattoos like that?”

Danny shook his head.

“An alien,” Jimmy said.

Alex stood up.  “It’s dead,” he said, “and we can’t learn anything more about it here.  We should keep moving.”

“That’s what I was saying,” Danny said.

“We’re not going to at least take a piece of it?” Jimmy said.

This time Danny stared at him.

Alex shrugged, took a pocket knife out of his jacket, and cut away a sugar cube sized chunk of the thing’s arm.  Danny felt sick.

“We keep going,” Alex said and put the piece of flesh in the pocket of his pants.

Jimmy spit dirt from his mouth.  His left arm hurt like hell, but it didn’t feel broken.  He tried to stand and couldn’t: a weight held him down, pressed across his lower back.  Jimmy rolled to his right, looking up.

The hole they were in was dark.  Far above—it was impossible to judge the distance—faint starlight glowed, streaming through the opening of the pit into which they’d fallen.  If there’s light coming through, Jimmy thought, it must mean the cabin isn’t there anymore. That was a comforting idea: if those goddamn thugs hadn’t kidnapped him, he wouldn’t be here lying on the dirt floor wherever here was—but at least their stupid little house had been smashed in return.

Jimmy pushed up with his hands.  Behind and above him, someone moaned.  “Oh, God,” the voice said.  “Oh, God.”

“Get the hell off me,” Jimmy said, twisting hard, trying to shake the weight loose.

The voice moaned again, but the weight fell away and Jimmy was able to pull himself to his feet.  “Who is that?” he said.

“Danny.”

“You still got that staff?  You’re not glowing,” Jimmy said.

“I don’t know,” Danny said.

From a few feet away, Dale said, “Is everyone okay?”

Jimmy laughed.  What did the bastard think?  They fell down a goddamn hole and here he was asking if everyone was okay?

“Yeah,” Jimmy said.  “I ain’t too busted up.”

“I feel sick,” Danny said, “but I think I’m okay.”

“Nothing’s broken?” Dale asked.  “On either of you?”

“We’re damn peachy,” Jimmy said.  He stared up at the mouth of the pit.  “Which, if you think about it, we really shouldn’t be.”

Dale came up beside him.  Jimmy could see his shape, but couldn’t make out any of his features.  “That must be fifty feet or more,” Dale said.  “How’d we survive it?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Dale crouched next to Danny.  “Can you stand up?”

“I think so.”

Dale helped him to his feet.

Jimmy said, “Could be, whatever it was tore that place apart, it brought us down here nice and gentle.”

All three stood together, staring up.  “What do we do now?” Danny said.

“This tunnel continues on for a while,” Dale said.  “We can follow it, see if we can find a way out.”

“Anyone got a light?” Jimmy said.

“Matches,” Dale said.

“Nothing,” Danny said.  “Sorry.”

Jimmy looked at him.  “What about that staff?  It’s gotta be around here somewhere, right?  You were still attached to it when we fell.”

“No…” Danny said.

Jimmy continued, “I mean, if you pick it up again, might be the thing starts glowing again, too.  That’d give us plenty of light.”

“No,” Danny said.

“We’ll try it carefully,” Dale said.  “If it hurts, if you don’t like anything about it, we’ll stop.”

“No,” Danny said.  “What if it gets stuck to me again?”

“We won’t let it,” Dale said.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said.  “We’ll break you free this time.”

Danny unenthusiastically agreed.  The three of them wandered around near where they’d landed, feeling out with their hands, looking for the staff.  After some minutes, Dale called out, “I have it,” and held the staff out to Danny.  Danny looked at it.  Even with the time for his eyes to adjust, there still wasn’t enough light for Jimmy to make out Danny’s expression, but he figured the kid still wasn’t liking the idea.

“It’ll be okay, Danny,” Dale said.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said.  “Just give it a touch and see.”

Danny did.  He reached his hand tenderly toward the staff.  When his fingers were six inches away from the wood, it began to glow—faintly at first, then stronger.

“Stop,” Jimmy said.

“Why?” Danny said, but he stopped.

“I got an idea.  Alex, you hold the thing.  Danny, you stand close to Alex.  Maybe we can get it to glow enough to see by without you having to touch it.  And that should keep it from sticking to you like before.”

Jimmy’s plan worked.  They had to move slowly, Danny and Alex maintaining the cumbersome equilibrium of not so close together they were bumping, but not so far apart that the staff lost its light.  But they were able to walk along the tunnel with plenty of illumination to keep from slamming into anything.

Later, Danny said, “How’d you get in that house with me?  Was it the strange man?  The one with the tools?”

“No,” Jimmy said.  “Just a couple of black dudes with this goddamn staff.  They jumped me.  At a bus stop, can you believe it?  Drove right up in a van and tossed me in, drove me up into the mountains, and then you know the rest.”

“How about you?” Danny said to Alex.

“I was on a job.”

“What kind of job?” Jimmy said.

“I’m a detective.  Private.  I was hired to find something.  I had a lead, some people who seemed to know about what I was looking for.  I followed them from a bar.  The cabin’s where they came to.”

“Where they black?” Jimmy asked.

“Just one.  The other was white.”

“Was the black one African?  I mean with an accent?”

“No.”

“So the way I understand it,” Jimmy said, “is we got the three of us all ending up in this crappy cabin at the same time, except that I’m shanghaied by a couple of Africans who drive me up here, our detective follows some good old Americans, and the kid is grabbed by a dude with tools.  That all right?”

“Uh huh,” Danny said.

“Yes,” Alex said.

“And then we all fall through the floor.”  He was quite for a moment.  “So anyone here have any goddamn idea what’s going on?”

She stared out the window the city lights and cars and rain.  Her breath fogged against the glass.  Behind her, Tedrow said, “Ms. DePaulo, I have word from the scouts.”

She turned her head to look at his reflection in the window.  “Yes?” she said.

“The beetle is gone.  We don’t know how he managed to get it but we have a lead on who he gave it to.”

“Who he gave it to?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Our sources indicate Ellison gave the beetle away shortly after gaining possession of it.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know.”

She looked back at the city.  “And the staff?”

“Missing, too.”

Earlene spun to face him.  “Missing?  The beetle and the staff are both missing?”

Tedrow nodded.

Earlene pulled out the chair behind her desk and sat down.  She stared at the glass trophy next to a picture of her husband and one of her dog.  Entrepreneur of the Year, she thought.  Jesus.

She stared up at Tedrow.  “Jamie,” she said, “You must—in fact, I know you recognize the importance of those two items.”

“Ma’am?”

“Their importance to me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I need them, Jamie.  They are crucial—the beetle, most of all.  Find them.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Tedrow left her, closing the office door softly as he did.

Earlene DePaulo leaned back.  She didn’t have long now.

I TRUST YOU WILL NOT FAIL IN OUR AGREEMENT?

The voice came from in front of her, but the room was empty.  Earlene swiveled her chair until she was again facing the window.  Casting an indistinct reflection in the glass was a human shape, masculine, but without texture or definite form.  She could see that the figure was standing in the center of her office.

“We’ll recover them,” she said.

I DO HOPE SO.

“This is only temporary.  We have a lead.”

I HEARD.

“We’ll find them.”

The figure took a step toward her.  THE DESH GROW IMPATIENT, it said.  WE LONG TO FEEL AGAIN.

We all do, Earlene thought.  She said, “You have my word.”

THAT IS NOT WHY I CAME, HOWEVER, the creature said.

“Oh?”

WE HAVE IDENTIFIED A NEW THREAT.

Earlene rubbed her eyes.  Is there anyone who isn’t opposed to us? she thought.

TWO GIRLS.

“Girls?”

CHILDREN. THEY SEEK THE SAME AS WE DO.  AS YOU DO.

“Tell me more,” she said.

The Desh did.  Earlene listened, processing this new information, fitting it in to her existing understanding of the conspiracy she’d become involved in.

Earlene DePaulo hated all of it—but the allure of power was too great not to proceed.

Fineman begins this chapter making a common mistake. “We live in the richest country in the history of the world,” she writes, “yet at least one out of every five children lives in poverty.” She continues, “Over 10 percent of Americans aged sixty-five and older are classified as poor, as are one-third of adults with disabilities.” {Fineman 2004@8} Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt on the statistics. Does this mean, then, that America, “at least in its political rhetoric and imagination, is seriously incapacitated in dealing with some of the most important social welfare problems facing its citizens today?”

Not necessarily. Poverty is measured in relative terms. For purposes of argument, assume that the poverty line is defined as the lowest quintile of earners. This tells us nothing about how much people in the lowest quintile actually earn or what their quality of life is. For example, if the average salary in the United States might be $50,000/year. The people in the lowest quintile might earn only $10,000/year. And, at these levels, it might be true that one in five children is in a family earning $10,000/year and, thus, are poor. But if incomes tripled—if suddenly everyone in the US could purchase three times as much quality of life as they could before—there would still be a bottom quintile and one-fifth of children would be in it.

What matters, then, is not relative poverty but absolute poverty. To say that one in five children in the United States is poor means something very different for the quality of life of those children than if we were talking about poor kids in Somalia. In fact, almost no “poor” person in the United States would willingly trade his poverty here for a middle class lifestyle in Somalia.

In a sense, Fineman is failing to understand Garrison Keillor’s about joke Lake Wobegon: “All the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” In any even distribution, someone will be at the bottom. We should be concerned with the absolute standard of lifestyle being at the bottom entails, and not point out the mere existence of a bottom as a failure of “political rhetoric and imagination.”

Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism was a random find. I’d returned a handful of books to the library and was looking for something to listen to in the car. The title of this book caught my eye and, at only five CDs in length, I decided to give it a try.

The introduction is intriguing. Keller, a Methodist minister in New York City, sets himself the mission of breeding doubt for both the skeptic and the believer. As he rightly points out, even when doubt doesn’t lead to a renunciation of one’s position, wrestling with it–and understanding the arguments for it–will make that position stronger and more nuanced. In other words, you can often learn more about your own views by reading those who disagree with you.

Unfortunately, Keller’s book, both when he seeks to undermine skeptical arguments and when he tries to buoy Christianity, are thin. No atheist even moderately well versed in the philosophical basis for non-belief will find anything convincing, or even troubling, inThe Reason for God.

For example, Keller begins by tackling the objection that the evidence for Christianity (or God–Keller doesn’t often distinguish the two) is lacking and that the burden is on the Christian to prove his claim. Keller’s response is that all statements about what is true are predicated upon underlying assumptions. Thus, the skeptic is as “faithful” in his beliefs as the Christian. It’s just that what they have faith in differs. Keller extends this by defining religion so broadly (it’s any system of belief about how we ought to live our lives) that he can therefore label the skeptic’s views religious. Once the atheist is seen as just another religious believer, how is he to say his religion is better than the Christian’s?

The trouble is, Keller’s radical epistemological move opens him up to “true” meaning anything anyone wants it to. Clearly, as a Christian and as a believer in the infallibility of the Bible, this is unacceptable to him. His escape is to fall into a trap common to liberal Christians: he turns to C.S. Lewis. In arguing against the problem of evil, for instance, Keller quotes Lewis’s claim that, because we seem to have a universal moral sense, there must be a God who gave it to us. This tactic only works–and arguably still doesn’t–when there are no alternative explanations for human morality outside of God. But the mere fact that I can respond, “Nope, it wasn’t God, but evolution that gave us our moral sense,” means Lewis (and, therefore, Keller) fail. The burden is again shifted to Keller to demonstrate why his, and not my, explanation is the legitimate one.

Throughout the book, one gets the sense of Keller as a man who can’t really understand why anyone would reject his belief system. Thus the reasons he gives for such rejection are presented as obviously shallow because, if they had depth, they would mean genuine trouble for his Christian faith. Keller was born into a Christian family, was raised in the Christian faith, and never really deviated from it. Christianity is all he knows, and it is clear he can’t see how that faith looks to the legitimate outsider.

There are stronger arguments for the existence of God and for the truth of Christianity than Keller presents. The Reason for God, then, is at best a friendly book for Christians who want to feel a little better about holding their faith. At worst, it is an example of why American Christianity is so defensive against the weight of the emergent atheist movement.

I am thrilled to announce that my first novel, THE HOLE, has landed a publisher and will be coming to bookstores courtesy of the terrific folks at Permuted Press.  Permuted is the premier small press publisher for zombie and apocalyptic fiction, so it’s a perfect fit for the end-of-the-world adventures of THE HOLE.  These guys do amazing work, and were long time sponsors of the serialized version of the novel, so I’m quite excited to be working with them to get THE HOLE out as an honest-to-goodness print book.