Atilla Shrugged

Atilla Shrugged is a 3 act play drawn from Dostoyevsky’s novels with characters from Ayn Rand’s novels cast in Fyodor’s roles.

Act I is the scene from The Brothers Karamazov where Ivan confronts his Demon.

Act II is the scene from Crime and Punishment where Razkolnikov and police inspector Porfiry Petrovitch discuss The New Jerusalem and the Exceptional Man.

When The Fountainhead became fashionable among the architectural set, Ayn Rand was not pleased. When the readers of the New York Times were advised that it was an interesting novel about architecture, she was offended and outraged; evidently the reviewer identified with Ellsworth Toohey. Whatever his motives, certainly we can conclude that the central theme of The Fountainhead is something decidedly more than the raising of roofs.

On first approaching Fyodor about this project, I had scant hope that he would be inclined to attend to what amounted to little more than my wild fantasy. To begin with, he was unfamiliar with Ayn Rand’s works. This should come as no surprise, since it has been some time since he had been a regular at those soireés where one might have occasion to witness a Randian Ideal brandished in defense of the swipes and jabs of some leprous humanitarian, the likes of whom can be counted on to impose herself on better company, no matter how carefully the guest list is managed.

As I watched Alan Greenspan make his chastened confession of having uncovered a flaw in his theory of self-interest as it applies to the fulfillment of fiduciary responsibility, I wondered if perhaps it would have been better had he foregone his illustrious career and, from his days as a tender foundling of the Randian clique, to have put that clever mind of his on strike, stoically withholding the bounty of his demiurgic intellect.

You might think of our whole proposition as an heroic version of The Nutcracker Suite, with Eddie Willers as Clara. Like Clara, Eddie falls asleep after a long day at the office and dreams the muddled truth of his conflicted world. If it helps, you might think of Prince Myshkin as Dosselmeyer, (although you’ll have to make some allowances).

Ayn Rand is best characterized by Fyodor, who offered: “Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked for three days and nights in the belly of the whale.” You can take it from there.

Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum was born in St Petersburg, Russia within a week of the 24th anniversary of the death Fyodor Dostoyevsky, also in St Petersburg. His dying request was for the parable of the Prodigal Son to be read to his children, and we take the liberty of assuming he would extend the same lesson to those who have wandering into the devouring worldview of polished indifference espoused in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Dostoyevsky left us his novels to disarm and unwind the nightmare of a world unbound. Let the story be told.