Anthem

I have this notion that the similarities between Ayn Rand and H.P. Lovecraft merit a closer look, and so I was kind of excited, when I was about two chapters in, to discover that Anthem was first published in 1937, the last year that the Old Gent dwelt within the confines of Euclidean space. Because, and I cannot stress this enough, this novella starts off very much in the Poe/Lovecraft mode of the first-person Gothic tale, with our narrator confessing to his terrible crimes in writing. He's even writing by the light of a stolen candle, and it's hard to get more Gothic than that. And then we learn–more shades of Lovecraft–that the confession is connected to the protagonist's discovery of a subterranean space belonging to a lost civilization about which dark things are muttered.

The setting also has something of the feel of Lovecraft's Dreamlands, since the setting is a city of no later than medieval technology run according to traditions interpreted by a council of elders. (Though no mention is made regarding prohibitions on feline homicide.) So, here we have all the makings of a strong Gothic tale: the society with its arbitrary laws and customs, the daring (if off-kilter) protagonist, the discovery of the lost civilization, the quest for forbidden knowledge. I wish I could say that the story lives up to that early promise, but it doesn't, and since most people won't read this for its Gothic qualities, I'll try not to dwell too much on that.

The first chapter is actually solid enough. There are a few flaws in the world building, but nothing to really ruin the plausibility. In the second chapter, when the main character falls in love with a beautiful lady, we learn that men and women are not allowed to have sexual thoughts except for once a year when they have sex in order to reproduce. This society doesn't have powerful libido-suppressants or brainwave modulators or anything like that at it's disposal. It basically tries to suppress the human sexual drive through disapproval, a strategy with the same long-term prospects as stopping a locust swarm with a large umbrella. (Even Lovecraft, who liked sex way less than Rand did, would only have attempted such a thing with a society of aliens or transdimensional beings or something along those lines.)

Soon, the protagonist discovers electricity–through a plot contrivance that is, frankly, amateurish–and realizes that electricity and lightning (‘The power of the sky') are the same thing. Soon, he is experimenting with electricity and, having recreated a light bulb, declaring: “The power of the sky can be made to do men's bidding. There are no limits to its secrets and its might, and it can be made to grant us anything if we but choose to ask.” That's not the only instance of an increasingly mad scientist tone that the protagonist takes on.

Having figured out the principles of the funny glass spheres in the cave and the protagonist reinvents the light bulb. He gets excited about showing it to the elders, reasoning that never had such an invention been offered to men. And I realize that maybe he means the people of his current civilization, but the way it's written, I just wanted to point out the whole cave full of batteries and light bulbs and how he's taking credit for someone else's invention.

This peaks in the climax of the novel, when he shows the light bulb to the elders, and they say it will have to be destroyed, and he runs out, yelling, “You fools! You thrice-damned fools!”

That's also pretty much where the story leaves off being interesting. He runs away to surprisingly unpopulated woods, his lady friend joins him, he makes a bow and arrow (though there's no reason to believe he would have any training in how to do this), they find a conveniently abandoned and well preserved house where he learns (because she's a woman and not up for learning on her own, or something) about the past, and then he engages in a long and tedious rant which is either the kind of thing you're into (if you like Rand's politics/philosophy) or should just be skipped over.

Interestingly (and getting back to the way the story collides into Gothic archetypes), the story ends at a familiar premise: the hero in an ancient, isolated structure believing himself safe and the rightful lord of the property wherein he dwells. In a Gothic text, that tends to be where things start to go wrong

There are some other elements, minor absurdities which wouldn't stand out so much if the rest of the work was actually engaging. One thread is how certain words–such as I, she, he, and ego–have been forbidden, but it's kind of half-assed, and if you're interested in how a regime might manipulate language to make the wrong kind of thoughts impossible, stick to Orwell's 1984. (Rand may have experienced totalitarianism up close, but her understanding of it does not match Orwell's.)

Really, the main problem is that at this point in her career, the need to deliver a polemic has started to take over whatever gifts Rand has as a writer. At least a pulp stylist like Lovecraft could have made this entertaining, though the moral message would likely have been much more ambiguous. I do wonder what Ayn Rand's version of “Herbert West - Reanimator” would have been like, though.

A note on scoring: I oscillated between 2 and 3 stars for this. That lest section, though brief compared to the filibuster ending of Atlas Shrugged, is painfully dull, but right up until that point, I was entertained enough to be leaning towards 3 stars. I thought about downgrading, but since it's so eminently skippable, I decided I shouldn't penalize the novel for it.