I had the great pleasure of reading in manuscript a new book by Frederick H. Cookinham: The Journey of Dagny Taggart: A Commentary on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. I have known Fred for decades and of his passion for Ayn Rand’s work. He has conducted a series of classic In Depth Walking Tours in Manhattan and Brooklyn, many of which focus on “Ayn Rand’s New York.” He is also the author of The Age of Rand: Imagining an Objectivist Future World (2005) and Man in the Place of the Gods: What Cities Mean (2016).
The newest book includes a foreword by Gary Greenberg, whom I met in the late 1970s after his New York gubernatorial campaign as a Libertarian Party candidate. With old friends aboard, I couldn’t resist writing a blurb for the book. I wrote: “Frederick Cookinham provides readers with many provocative insights and informative details in this in-depth interpretive analysis of Atlas Shrugged. This Herculean effort is a worthy companion to Ayn Rand’s magnum opus.”
And it is indeed quite the Herculean project! This is clearly not a standalone book or one to be read by those who have never read Atlas. Fred’s book is full of spoilers, so, don’t you dare! It is meant as a companion to Rand’s novel, as Fred marches through virtually every passage and provides us with interesting literary and historical comments, analyses of Rand’s use of language, anecdotes and even a few logistical surprises (don’t forget that Fred has run tours and he knows his New York geography!). In the preface, Fred confesses that this commentary was written “in large part … just for fun.” And it shows! There is joy here that cannot be denied.
One of the things I liked most about the book is encompassed in its title: The Journey of Dagny Taggart. Gary understands the importance of that title. He writes:
“The title of the Commentary reflects the attention to literary detail. While Galt or Francisco gather most of the fan love, from a scholarly standpoint, they belong in the background, populating the environment through which the novel flows. Dagny, by contrast, holds down the foreground. Her intellectual and emotional journey from opponent to the strike to hard-core rebel moves the story forward and glues the various parts together, as does her romances with the three leading male characters, Francisco, Hank, and Galt.”
On this issue, Gary and Fred will find themselves in complete agreement with my dear friend Mimi Reisel Gladstein, who argues in her 2000 Twayne’s Masterwork Studies book, Atlas Shrugged: Manifesto of the Mind, that “Dagny Taggart is the main protagonist-heroine of the novel,” and that it is her “story more than any other” upon which “the reader’s attention is focused.”
To say more about Fred’s companion would rob it of its charm. It should be noted that this is the first of a two-volume set; it runs over 400 pages and covers parts one and two of Atlas. The second volume, due out in the fall, covers part three. You can purchase Volume 1 as a hardcover at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
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