Objectivism Redux (Pardon Me: I Just Threw Up in My Mouth)

Twenty-odd years ago, I had a quintessential NYC transit experience riding on a crowded subway. I looked up from my book and saw an attractive woman a ways down the car from me who was reading the same book, same edition: the Signet paperback of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Had I been bolder in my youth (as I am today... yeah, right...), I would have made my across the car and attempted to strike up a conversation with the young lady. Sadly, I was especially shy when it came to meeting women and, when her stop came, she exited without my ever speaking to her. As Mr. Bernstein says so eloquently in Citizen Kane, "I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl."

I say this not with regret (I couldn't ask for a better outcome in my life, romantically-speaking, as anyone who knows Catherine and me can attest) but because I was reminded of this event today when I spied this article in Locus Online. To be quite honest, I didn't actually care much for Atlas Shrugged—as a philosopher, I respectfully think that Ms. Rand is full of it; as a writer, I think The Fountainhead is a better story—but if there IS going to be an authorized sequel, I'd be interested to read it, even it is more likely literary rubbernecking.