The Driver - part II

Click here for part I.

Chapter I ("Phantasma") of The Driver demonstrates a point that would later introduce Garrett's most famous work, The People's Pottage. I have written previously about the effect of the New Deal on Garrett's writings. The New Deal was the focal point of the American socialist movement. Prior to 1933, leftism in America was not backed by the power of government. The New Deal changed that. The New Deal turned leftism into a powerful and pervasive force that effects every area of our lives. More than any other factor, the New Deal turned leftism into "The Drumbeat." Garrett wrote about this transformation in the introduction to People's Pottage:

A time came when the only people who had ever been free began to ask: What is freedom?

Who wrote its articles – the strong or the weak?

Was it an absolute good?

...Since it was clear to reason that freedom must be conditioned, as by self-discipline, individual responsibility and many necessary laws of restraint; and since there was never in the world an absolute good, why should people not be free to say they would have less freedom in order to have some other good?

What other good?

Security.

What else?

Stability.

And beyond that?

Beyond that the sympathies of we, and all men as brothers, instead of the willful I, as if each man were a sovereign, self-regarding individual.

Well, where there is freedom doubt itself must be free. You shall not be forbidden to interrogate the faith of your fathers. Better that, indeed, than to take it entirely for granted.

So long as doubts such as these were wildish pebbles in the petulant waves that gnaw ceaselessly at any foundation, perhaps only because it is a foundation, no great damage was done. But when they began to be massed as a creed, then they became sharp cutting tools, wickedly set in the jaws of the flood. That was the work of a disaffected intellectual cult, mysteriously rising in the academic world; and from the same source came the violent winds of Marxian propaganda that raised the waves higher and made them angry.

Even so, the damage to the foundations might have been much slower and not beyond simple repair if it had not happened that in 1932 a bund of intellectual revolutionaries, hiding behind the conservative planks of the Democratic party, seized control of government.

After that it was the voice of government saying to the people there had been too much freedom.

pp. 5-6 (1953 edition)

Why does this matter in a discussion of the The Driver? The Driver was written in 1922, 11 years before the New Deal began. Socialism in America constituted nothing more than the ". . . wildish pebbles in the petulant waves that gnaw ceaselessly at any foundation. . . " to which Garrett referred in People's Pottage. They were just beginning ". . . to be massed as a creed." Garrett would have no way of knowing that the revolutionaries would soon seize control of government.

The Driver reflected this 1922 perspective (even though the story took place beginning in 1894 - "Fourth year of the soft Money Plague" - p. 1). Chapter I is sprinkled with random pebbles of leftist references in the quotations attributed to bit characters:

But a great majority of them were earnest, wistful men, fairly aching with
convictions, without being able to say what it was they had a conviction of, or
what was wrong with the world.

[p. 17]

"They blamed the money power . . . . " etc. [p. 17].

These references provided only a small influence on the plot, but the very nature of this minor role for these references reflects the times in which Garrett wrote.

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Part III of the review of The Driver.

The Driver - part I - Introductory comments.

click here for E.H. Harriman's review in Time Magazine - 1923.

The Driver (1922) is interesting for many reasons:

• The book is known as an Ayn Rand "relic", as there were some similarities between Rand's books and the elements and themes of The Driver.
• The Driver focuses on economic cycles of "boom and bust." Many of the plot elements will sound familiar to those of us that lived through the stock market bubble of the 1990's.
• The Driver is Garrett's most orthodox novel. Most of Garrett's other novels were more allegorical in nature. The Driver contained a more traditional plot.

(1) While The Driver has been the subject of much speculation over the years as it relates to Ayn Rand, such speculation is only partially valid. Having read The Driver, I found numerous elements that the book has in common with Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, including one nearly identical character name and some generally similar characters and plot lines. But the main plot of The Driver is unique and no language is identical among Garrett's work and Rand's. Rand's novels contained unique plots whose basic structure can be traced back to Rand's early writings such as Red Pawn.

While Ayn Rand may have been influenced by Garrett, the plots of her novels were far more developed and intricate than those of Garrett. Rand's novels conveyed more themes and delved more deeply into philosophy.

I will not reveal plot spoilers from the The Driver or what I call the various Rand relics that appear from time to time in the novel. Instead of trying to prove a point one way or another, simply enjoy each Rand relic as it appears. Consider yourself to be conducting an archeological dig, in which you unearth relics in the form of characters or events that presage some element of a Randian novel.

(2) The Driver centers on the immediate aftermath of the panic of 1893. Garrett does not propose solutions or advocate a position. Instead, he dramatized the steps taken by private individuals to deal with the crisis as it was. Garrett focuses on the ups and downs of one railroad in the aftermath of this panic. Keep in mind that Driver was written years before the Depression and more than a decade before the beginning of the New Deal. The idea of a government solution to this type of situation was not yet ingrained into our minds as it is today. In The Driver, calls for extreme government action form the background, while individual action by the hero forms the main plot. I wrote about the change in Garrett's focus following the New Deal in my review of Blue Wound (and some of the comments).

The Driver deals in fiction with some of the themes of the nonfiction Bubble that Broke the World. The Driver is much milder because Bubble was written at the height of the Depression around 1930. Driver was written almost 30 years after the panic of 1893, 15 years after the panic of 1907 and just as the bubble that eventually brought us the Depression was beginning. We can only wonder how the plot would be different (and sharper) had Garrett fully understood the momentous events that were only beginning to take shape as he wrote Driver.

(3) As I have written before, Garrett's novels often took the form of industrial novels:

I note here also that Garrett often writes extensively about industry. The railroad industry formed the backdrop for The Driver. Cinder Buggy was labeled "a fable of iron and steel." Satan's Bushel focused on agriculture - specifically wheat.

The Driver featured an active plot full of action, dialogue and characters - much more so than Satan's Bushel or Blue Wound. But Satan's Bushel and Blue Wound were more thought provoking than The Driver. Many modern readers blast through The Driver and cry "plagiarism" against Ayn Rand without understanding Garrett's deeper meanings. That mistake can't be made with Garrett's other novels.

The Driver - 1922 edition



As I mentioned before, I will review the book without revealing plot spoilers or the Ayn Rand relics. Half of the fun of reading The Driver is discovering the relics on one's own. I will focus, instead, on the deeper implications for the business cycle, for history and for our own times.

Click here for part II.

Coming in 2008 - The Driver

1922
















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