The Cinder Buggy - part 17 - Chapters XXV, XXVI and XXVII; sham marriages in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 of my review of The Cinder Buggy.

Chapter XXV is relatively simple and straightforward, but powerful.  Much of the plot and drama of Chapter XXV is a continuation of Aaron's prior efforts to make steel as Garrett described in Chapter VII. I found it refreshing that any fictional plot would be based on attempts by industrialists to perfect and complete an industrial process.  Today, fiction writers simply assume that the evil capitalists have the power to build or make whatever they want.  The only room for drama involves some illegality that the capitalist commits while making or building his products. 

I do not know if Garrett's description of the Bessemer process or its resolution is accurate.  

It is ironic and appropriate that Garrett describes the process for turning pig iron into steel just as we begin more chapters that likely served as raw material for the complex finished product found in Ayn Rand's most famous novels.

Chapters XXVI and XXVII feature a return to the triangle. These chapters focus on the marriage of Thane and Agnes.  The marriage seems like a less developed version of the Randian marriages of Peter and Dominique Keating (Fountainhead) and Hank and Lillian Rearden (Atlas Shrugged).  While I am convinced that the Thane-Agnes marriage influenced Rand in the depiction of her characters' marriages, Garrett's depiction is much less developed. 

Rand created the above sham marriages for the purpose of proving her philosophical points.  I predict that the Agnes-Thane marriage will not address underlying philosophy.  Instead, it will be unique to Cinder Buggy and the John-Agnes-Thane triangle. 

Garrett has created a mystery surrounding this marriage.  Garrett hints at the solution to this mystery with reference to Agnes' black book.  "The black book was the ledger of her spirit's solvency."  (p. 242). 

In the Randian novels, there was no mystery at which the audience would guess - just philosophical points that would be explained and demonstrated.

As with the other areas of Garrett/Rand overlap, Garrett's writing would serve as an allegory that Garrett could not have anticipated.  While Garrett wrote of using pig iron as a raw material, the real story of Cinder Buggy is its own function as raw material for Ayn Rand. In the same way, Cinder Buggy and the other forgotten Garrett novels served as the motor that Dagny and Hank Rearden found among the ruins of the factory in Atlas Shrugged. By studying and comparing Garrett with Rand, we can watch that relic being converted into a working motor.

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Update - Click here for Part 18 of my Cinder Buggy review.

The Driver - Part XI - the climax

Click here for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of my review of The Driver.


Chapter XIV of The Driver is the real climax of the novel. In this chapter, the main character's success, achievement and ability provoke the final conflict between the main character and various forces aligned against him.

This chapter will remind one of a much more simplistic version of Gail Wynand's battle to save his newspaper near the end of The Fountainhead, or the battles of various heroes in Atlas Shrugged. Lest Ayn Rand's detractors see another opportunity to cry "plagiarism," Rand's plots were much more intricate, complex and operated on a deeper moral and philosophical level.

Chapter XIV also operates as a more concrete version of Chapter 5 of Garrett's Blue Wound (1921) ("The Wages of Thrift"). That the theme of the successful man attacked because of his success appeared at all in Garrett's pre-New Deal writings reinforces Garrett's image as a prophet. That Rand explored, deepened and perfected this theme in numerous novels, articles and essays has provided moral support and fortitude to today's victims.
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See Part 12 - The way out..

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.

Introduction

I created this blog for the purpose of storing and spreading information about the mainly lost works of Garet Garrett. While the whole idea might sound uninteresting to those of you who have not heard of him or his work, keep an open mind.

Garrett was an early to mid 20th century conservative writer whose books and articles challenged the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt. He also did much more than that. As a novelist, essayist and editor for the Saturday Evening Post, Garrett provided a remarkable advocacy of capitalism and freedom.

Garrett's writings foreshadowed many of the later writings of Ayn Rand. For those who have read the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, certain unknown novels of Garrett would evoke a certain familiarity. While Ayn Rand appears to have built on those works and added much that was unique, revolutionary and brilliant, Garrett's works provided certain unmistakable elements for the Randian novels. Despite Garrett's obscurity, his ideas live on today in the works of modern writers and books.

There are enough Garrett books, articles and stories (together with related economic and political news) to blog for many years. Check back here every so often to see what is new (and what is old). You will gradually gain an appreciation for Garrett's works and for old fashioned capitalism.