Who is John Galt Construction?

Among the scars of 9/11 that are still visible in downtown Manhattan, none could be creepier than the Deutsche Bank building—an ugly, festering hulk that remains abandoned and shrouded after all these years. Following the fire that took the lives of two firefighters recently, New Yorkers seemed to wish this atrocious eyesore could just be teleported the hell out of there.

It looks like the wish for a magical solution even extended to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation! What else explains their motivation to hire a chimerical entity—The John Galt Corporation, aka John Galt Construction—as demolition contractor to take the building down?

This New York Times article mentions the plain reference to Atlas Shrugged, though it doesn’t comment on the irony that should also be apparent to the many people who’ve fancied Rand’s writings (at some point in their lifetimes, anyway).

I read The Fountainhead to steel myself for Atlas Shrugged, Rand’s real chef-d’oeuvre—a massive tome of fine print with a speech by John Galt himself extending for over 50 pages. (That makes Gary Cooper’s courtroom declamation in the film version of The Fountainhead, courtesy of Rand’s screenplay, seem brief in comparison!)

(Atlas Shrugged might remain forever unfilmable (“This project is indefintely [sic] delayed,” according to the Internet Movie Data Base entry dated June 18, 2007), but nonetheless it landed a place in The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century (in the chapter called Utopias & Dystopias, naturally). The NYPL list is fairly narrow, with just 150 books or so, too—and is worth having just for its graphics by the extraordinary Diana Bryan.)

The irony to which I referred, quite inescapable to me even as a high school student reading The Fountainhead, stems from the overabundance of horn-blowing Howard Roarks in the world who are, in reality, Peter Keatings. Considering the prevalence of problematic human self-perception in areas from appearance to intellect to character—ranging in severity from modest to ridiculous—who’s surprised that The John Galt Construction Company should go down in the flames of a classic NYC corruption scandal?

I guess we’re pretty inured to our classic scandals; local reporting seems almost restrained and tasteful. “They failed at essential tasks” sticks in my mind as representative.

The villians of Atlas Shrugged, typified by Dagny Taggart’s brother, James, are a mixture of Keating-style mediocrity and outright malevolence. But if I were the LMDC and awarding contracts, I’d rather have chosen The Jim Taggart Construction Company! They might not be competent contractors, but a rapier wit is a smarter choice any day than a moniker as questionable (and, quite possibly, delusional) as John Galt.