DEATH IS EASY by Russell Madden   Softcover, $14.95 Hardcover, $24.95     (Preview. Also available in a digital edition, $4.81.)	FREEDOM, As If It Mattered by Russell Madden   Softcover, $24.95 Hardcover, $34.95   (Preview. Also available in a digital edition, $5.63.)

Despite the enduring popularity of Atlas Shrugged for nearly half a century, lots of people "still don't get it." The misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and misapplications of this classic novel continue unabated.

Four decades ago, in a passage echoing with defiant loneliness, Ayn Rand faced the stark reality of the critical response she and her highest literary achievement had received:

"It is a significant commentary on the present state of our culture that I have become the object of hatred, smears, denunciations, because I am famous as virtually the only novelist who has declared that her soul is not a sewer, and neither are the souls of her characters, and neither is the soul of man." (The Romantic Manifesto [RM], p. 172.)

While some might dismiss this passage as an example of self-righteous sour grapes, Rand's centennial year continues to provide clear evidence of how negatively her opponents view her final novel. Even self-confessed libertarians declare that her writing is "clunky," "turgid," "drained" of "all life and beauty,"; that her ideas are "eccentric," "extremist," and "unrealistic."

One prominent libertarian writer expressed sympathy with a television cartoon character's statement that Atlas Shrugged is "garbage" and a "piece of shit." Another found parallels between the novel and "communist or fascist propaganda" and derided the central ideas as nothing more than "dogma" laced with "odder features" that falsely portray opposing viewpoints as straw men. Such cutting pronouncements find a warm home with similar denunciations by earlier critics who "discovered" a Nazi-esque call for death camps in the pages of the premiere individualist fiction of our time.

Given these "failings," one must wonder how Atlas Shrugged has managed to dupe so many millions of readers for so many decades...

A conservative television commentator demonstrated a similar -- though more positive -- tunnel vision when he informed us that Atlas Shrugged had "one good idea": that capitalism is "splendid." Had she lived to hear this less-than-insightful "analysis," Rand might well have sighed and shaken her head...but she would have understood its cause, as well the source of the motivations that elicit such left-handed compliments from those who owe so much to the world depicted in Atlas Shrugged.

Despite the misapprehensions of many -- friend and foe, alike -- Atlas Shrugged is not about capitalism. It is not even about politics. Or statism. Or individualism versus collectivism. Or reason versus irrationality. Perhaps most shockingly and surprisingly, it is not even about philosophy or Objectivism.

Any thoughtful observer of modern life is well aware that life can sometimes feel like an endurance contest. Daily existence is laced with problems. Each of us must, at one time or another, wrestle with these difficulties. At work, we may have to face obstreperous customers or annoying coworkers. At home, rebellious children, distant or thoughtless spouses, or household calamities may try our patience. At leisure, crowded beaches and false promises of relaxation may require a vacation from our vacation...if only such an option were possible.

Emotional ups and downs, bouts of sickness and disease, precarious financial concerns, periods of drudgery, clumps of mistakes and failures...death...all take their toll.

Beyond this common heritage of humanity, for that small minority of folks who still understand, appreciate, and hope for personal and social liberty, there are wider, even more insoluble cultural complications added to the already sometimes overwhelming burden each of us must, at times, carry. The constricting noose of government restrictions on our freedoms of expression and self-defense; increasing losses of privacy at the hands of the State; mounting taxes that steal our wealth directly and soaring inflation that does so via stealth; explosions of oppressive laws and regulations that limit our choices and our actions; deteriorating educational and health care systems that continually seek to "correct" the problems generated by the last round of "reforms"; burgeoning wars scattered across the globe that make us less safe than before; a State that claims a mandate to micromanage our lives, from the amount of water in our toilets to the size of the holes in our Swiss cheese...such encroachments on the dignity and autonomy of the individual contribute to a depressing loss of personal control; a questioning of how much the system can endure before the whole unwieldy mass collapses under its own weight; a serious doubt about how much more we can bear before we lose the last shredded bits of our humanity.

It is at such a crossroads that hope can sour into despair, happiness warp into sadness, enthusiasm wilt into apathy.

At these dark crystalline moments in our lives, we can not only benefit from an uplifting of our spirits, we need such a rejuvenation if we are to continue existing as fully functioning human beings.

"The primary value [of art] is that it gives [a person] the experience of living in a world where things are as they ought to be. This experience is of crucial importance to him: it is his psychological life line." (RM, p. 170)

The proponents and supporters of statism and collectivism, of the irrational and the mystical, of altruistic sacrifice and abject self-denial have no shortage of venues that reflect their views of life and the world. In television and movies, in books and magazines, in politics and churches, messages reinforcing the essential evil of humanity, the impotence of the human mind, and the relativistic nature of reality abound.

In entertainment, nasty characters with few redeeming personal traits or values are lauded for their "realism" and their "depth." Business owners and productive individuals are derided for their "vapid" pursuit of "meaningless" wealth and power. "Public service" is touted as the highest form of virtue, with politicians offered as the finest distillation of what is most decent and admirable in the human psyche.

Fictional folks portrayed as helpless pawns of fate or the "system" are supposed to receive our uncritical sympathy and unbounded assistance. If we are wise, we accept the realization that freewill is an illusion, that rights are nothing more than social constructions devoid of external bracing, that "selfishness" is the root of the destruction that is the natural lot of us all.

The fuel firing the engines of those seeking to curtail liberty and crush the rest of us into an undifferentiated glob of flickering life is easily obtained. We are immersed in a steaming bath of those ideals. Alternative visions are lost in the waves of the mainstream or drowned before they can find solid ground.

Luckily for those who reject immolation from within and without, a few peaks manage to rise above the suffocating fog that has become the norm. Freedom-lovers cling to those isolated havens, knowing that to abandon them would lead to a depressing demise of unpleasant intensity.

Books such as "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the movies based upon them; many of the novels of Robert Heinlein and F. Paul Wilson; the occasional television series such as Joss Whedon's short-lived "Firefly"; even comic strips like Wiley Miller's "Non Sequitur"; these examples and others offer bubbling avenues of relief from the unrelenting negative downpour emanating from our cultural leaders.

But most such avenues of renewal are undependable fountains, at best. In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand achieved a consistency of vision and depth of execution unparalleled in the freedom movement. Though some libertarians lambaste Rand and Atlas Shrugged for its "totalism," that very coherence is, of course, one of the book's greatest strengths. The consonance between theme and plot, the congruity between character and action create a symmetry of structure and a unity of purpose and achievement that has rarely, if ever, been duplicated.

"In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it..." (Rand, The Journals of Ayn Rand, p. 479.)

As Ayn Rand made clear, the primary purpose of Atlas Shrugged was not to present the struggle between opposing political, economic, or philosophical systems. Unlike many of her readers, she clearly distinguished the goal that she sought to reach in her fiction writing and the means she used to accomplish that task.

Having grown up in a totalitarian regime in the U.S.S.R. and having witnessed the steady erosion of American liberty under FDR's "New Deal," Rand felt more keenly than most the slow, withering disappearance of a social milieu that touched her on a deeply personal and emotional level. Even more, she could discern where others could not how such a radical transformation of her adopted land's culture was infecting and twisting the individuals she knew; people who flailed in a swamp of personal confusion in an often vain attempt to grasp an elusive understanding of themselves and the vanishing values that had forged their nation.

For very personal reasons, then, Rand undertook the monumental task of creating the world of Atlas Shrugged.

What Rand could not readily experience in her daily struggles, she sought to distill in the framework of her novel. Who existed and how they acted in that projected universe formed the core of her task. As she said, "...I write -- and read -- for the sake of the story." (RM, p. 163) In making her decisions on how to proceed, she was guided by a fundamental principle:

"My basic test for any story is: Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end in itself?" (RM p. 163)

Precisely because so few others had endeavored to reach this destination in a manner consistent with her view of romantic art and her passion for liberty, Rand took upon herself the mission of furnishing the "emotional fuel" she so desperately desired. Her gift to herself secondarily became an offering and a boon for any and all readers willing and able to embrace her grand perspective.

Despite momentary fits of despondency at the unmerciful demands of her work and the ocean of apathy and hostility in which she swam, Rand knew she could and would succeed in her primary design. Part and parcel of her certainty that she would obtain her emotional fuel was her belief in the benevolent universe premise and how that fact meshed with her sense of life.

While Rand did not believe that the universe was literally "benevolent" -- reality as such has no attitude; it simply is what it is -- she did accept that:

"'...injustice (or terror or falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life, not the rule.' One feels certain that somewhere on earth -- even if not anywhere in one's surroundings or within one's reach -- a proper, human way of life is possible to human beings, and justice matters." (Rand, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, p. 118.)

She knew that if one acted in accordance with reality (rather than against it), then success in achieving one's goals should be the expected rather than the unusual. When setbacks occur -- as they often do -- one deals with them, not surrenders to them.

The benevolent universe premise became part and parcel of Rand's sense of life and a major component of the emotional fuel for which she yearned. At a fundamental level, she felt that people can and should achieve happiness; that morality is not only vitally important but imminently possible for anyone to practice; that values and knowledge and truth are essential to human life, while misery and suffering and defeat are nothing more than temporary and superficial obstacles to be overcome.

Rand defined a sense of life as "...an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man's emotional responses and the essence of his character." (RM, p. 25) It is "[t]he integrated sum of a man's basic values..." (RM, p. 29) and "...is experienced by him as a sense of his own identity." (RM, p. 31) For each individual, "'The...subconscious criterion...is: 'That which is important to me' or: 'The kind of universe which is right for me, in which I would feel at home.'" (RM, p. 28)

While a person's sense of life is experienced in and influences many areas of existence -- from work to love to family to leisure -- one of the most important venues for its expression is in art. When we hear a piece of music or view a movie or study a painting, we have an emotional response that says, in essence, "'This is [or is not] what life means to me.'" (RM, p. 35) Such art functions as a kind of "...metaphysical mirror; what a rational man seeks to see in that mirror is a salute; what an irrational man seeks to see is a justification..." (RM, p. 39)

Well-crafted art can be incredibly powerful precisely because it "...has such a profoundly personal significance...that...confirms or denies the efficacy of a man's consciousness, according to whether [it] supports or negates his own fundamental view of reality." (RM p. 24)

These points help explain why even many libertarians join those who hate Rand and virulently denigrate and demean her and Atlas Shrugged. To accept the sense of life infused throughout Atlas Shrugged would be for them to reject their own views that life requires "compromises"; that "principled action" is "impractical"; that a cohesive world view is either impossible or undesirable; that mysticism and sacrifice aren't so bad; that those who ruin their own lives need and deserve our help.

These are the people who "seek...a justification," an excuse for their lapses in thought and their failure to achieve their dreams. For them, Atlas Shrugged provides a slap in the face, not an avenue for discovering an invaluable supply of emotional fuel. Better to be obtuse, evasive, and ignorant, they vaguely feel, than to change the fun house mirror that is their own sense of life. For them, the universe of Atlas Shrugged is not something to be coveted. But as Rand said, "Well, they ought to know." (RM, p. 172)

Rand's sense of life, however, led her in an entirely different direction: towards the rarest type of artistic endeavor to be found today.

The greater the size and frequency of hardships one experiences; the longer the periods of struggle and frustration; the larger the numbers of indifferent or antagonistic listeners one must confront, the more one will yearn for a sense that one is not alone; that one's efforts are not pointless; that life is not futile. Many readers return again and again to the well that Rand constructed half-a-century ago. Luckily for them, Atlas Shrugged provides any number of opportunities for the receptive reader to find "fuel for the soul," to recharge his mental and emotional batteries. Indeed, the story traces an arc from gloom to glory, a rising pathway that mirrors the steps many of us have trodden on our journey to freedom.

In Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden expresses just how isolated and deserted a lover of liberty can feel and how draining that condition can become:

"He felt a desolate loneliness, of a kind he had never known before. He thought that Gwen Ives and Mr. Ward could look to him for hope, for relief, for renewal of courage. To whom could he look for it? He, too, needed it, for once. He wished he had a friend who could be permitted to see him suffer, without pretense or protection, on whom he could lean for a moment, just to say, 'I'm very tired,' and find a moment's rest." (AS, p. 206)

But regardless of the inroads into our rights that society makes, regardless of the pain that others inflict upon us through their acts of thoughtlessness and willful betrayal, we can find solace in Rand's benevolent universe premise and know -- as Dagny Taggart understands -- that eventually "this, too, must end":

"She survived it. She was able to survive it, because she did not believe in suffering. She faced with astonished indignation the ugly fact of feeling pain, and refused to let it matter. Suffering was a senseless accident, it was not part of life as she saw it. She would not allow pain to become important. She had no name for the kind of resistance she offered, for the emotion from which the resistance came; but the words that stood as its equivalent in her mind were: It does not count -- it is not to be taken seriously. She knew these were the words, even in the moments when there was nothing left within her but screaming and she wished she could lose the faculty of consciousness so that it would not tell her that what could not be true was true. Not to be taken seriously -- an immovable certainty within her kept repeating -- pain and ugliness are never to be taken seriously." (AS, p. 114 -115)

Many -- if not most -- people in our society would claim that they believe in and want to establish "freedom." Yet when presented with the steps actually necessary to achieve liberty, they shy from those suggestions with alarm and denial. Unlike Dagny, they have yet to grasp that their hollow words devoid of action condemn them out-of-hand:

"It was a strange foreshortening between sight and touch, she thought, between wish and fulfillment, between -- the words clicked sharply in her mind after a startled stop -- between spirit and body. First, the vision -- then the physical shape to express it. First the thought -- then the purposeful motion down the straight line of a single track to a chosen goal. Could one have any meaning without the other? Wasn't it evil to wish without moving -- or to move without aim?" (AS, p. 229 - 230)

No matter how clearly a defender of freedom presents his case, no matter how many objections from his detractors he answers, no matter how fully he explains and expands and elucidates, he will inevitably face those who do not want to know, who implicitly demand that no one "confuse them with the facts." Allies in the defense of the individual are, sadly, a scarce commodity. As Dr. Robert Stadler tells Dagny about those who seek to destroy greatness in their aberrant attempts to preserve the status quo:

"'Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own -- they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal -- for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them -- while you'd give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors -- hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom -- the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?'" (AS, p. 339)

Even many who declare their allegiance to liberty are more concerned with how the statists and collectivists and mystics "feel" about them than they are in the fact that it is the enemies of freedom who should fear our condemnation, our judgment of their corrosive ideals and destructive actions. No one should feel guilty in identifying as immoral those who would prefer to hide behind a facade of respectability and compassion. Hank Rearden faces this brand of cowardice and appeasement from fellow businessmen who fear that his directness and honesty in declaring his own value and rights will somehow create difficulties for them:

"In my opinion, Mr. Rearden, it was extremely unwise of you....It seems to me that this is hardly the time to make enemies....We can't afford to arouse resentment."

 

"Whose resentment?" he asked.

 

"I don't think the government will like it."

 

"You saw the consequences of that."

 

"Well, I don't know...We've been trying hard not to give any grounds for all those accusations about selfish greed -- and you've given ammunition to the enemy."

 

"Would you rather agree with the enemy that you have no right to your profits and your property?"

 

"Oh, no, no, certainly not -- but why go to extremes? There's always a middle ground."

 

"A middle ground between you and your murderers?"

 

"Now why use such words?"

 

"What I said at the trial, was it true or not?"

 

"It's going to be misquoted and misunderstood."

 

"Was it true or not?"

 

"The public is too dumb to grapple with such issues."

 

"Was it true or not?"

 

"It's no time to boast about being rich -- when the populace is starving. It's just goading them on to seize everything."

 

"But telling them that you have no right to your wealth, while they have -- is going to restrain them?" (AS, p. 455)

The unique experience when we first realize that the ideas, the wishes, the opinions of those seeking our slavery -- in both body and mind -- are, on a fundamental level, unimportant and trivial is incredibly refreshing and liberating. Hank Rearden comes to such an awakening when he recognizes the true nature of his wife, Lillian:

"He did not listen to her while she reached for her coat, telling him that she was going back to their home. He barely noticed it when the door closed after her. He stood motionless, held by a feeling he had never experienced before. He knew that he would have to think later, to think and understand, but for the moment he wanted nothing but to observe the wonder of what he felt.

 

"It was a sense of freedom, as if he stood alone in the midst of an endless sweep of clean air, with only the memory of some weight that had been torn off his shoulders. It was the feeling of an immense deliverance. It was the knowledge that it did not matter to him what Lillian felt, what she suffered or what became of her, and more: not only that it did not matter, but the shining, guiltless knowledge that it did not have to matter." (AS, p. 499)

As important as it is to reject the unwarranted negative judgments of people seeking to use us for their own ends, it is even more vital to reject our own baseless criticisms of ourselves arising from a misplaced trust in the ideas of those unworthy of any honest commitment. Hank Rearden at last breaks such self-imposed mental shackles:

"He thought: Guilty? -- guiltier than I had known, far guiltier than I had thought, that day -- guilty of the evil of damning as guilt that which was my best. I damned the fact that my mind and body were a unit...

 

"...I accepted their code and believed, as they taught me, that the values of one's spirit must remain as an impotent longing, unexpressed in action, untranslated into reality, while the life of one's body must be lived in misery, as a senseless, degrading performance, and those who attempt to enjoy it must be branded as inferior animals.

 

"I broke their code, but I fell into the trap they intended, the trap of a code devised to be broken. I took no pride in my rebellion, I took it as guilt, I did not damn them, I damned myself, I did not damn their code, I damned existence -- and I hid my happiness as a shameful secret. I should have lived it openly, as of our right...

 

"...I believed that one person owes a duty to another with no payment for it in return...And just as they believe that their need is a claim on my energy, so I believed that [Lillian's] unhappiness was a claim on my life. For the sake of pity, not justice, I endured ten years of self-torture. I placed pity above my own conscience, and this is the core of my guilt. My crime was committed when I said to her, 'By every standard of mine, to maintain our marriage will be a vicious fraud. But my standards are not yours. I do not understand yours, I never have, but I will accept them.'" (AS, p. 528 - 529)

Freed from his intellectual and emotional fetters, Hank is ready to accept the core of any proper social relationship, the essence of what it means to live a fully human life:

"I SWEAR BY MY LIVE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE." (AS, p. 680)

The world that Rand created for herself and her readers in Atlas Shrugged is one that defies traditional expectations, traditional thought, traditional morality. To understand completely and to live fully in a world that is truly free and based upon the best in humanity rather than the worst requires more effort, more challenge, more focus than most people are willing to expend. Yet as John Galt makes clear to Dagny, neither he nor she deserves anything less...and that can be a hard lesson to learn:

"'Did it ever occur to you, Miss Taggart,'" said Galt..., 'that there is no conflict of interests among men...if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical? There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another -- if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't... A wish for the irrational is not to be achieved, whether the sacrificial victims are willing or not...'

 

"He glanced at her and added slowly..., 'No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy...'" (AS, p. 742)

In explaining this to Dagny, Galt makes it clear that the only thing holding us back from breaking from the calcified ideals of the past is ourselves:

"If you fail, as men have failed in their quest for a vision that should have been possible, yet has remained forever beyond their reach -- if, like them, you come to think that one's highest values are not to be attained and one's greatest vision is not to be made real -- don't blame this earth, as they did, don't damn existence. You have seen the Atlantis they were seeking, it is here, it exists -- but one must enter it naked and alone, with no rags from the falsehoods of centuries, with the purest clarity of mind -- not an innocent heart, but that which is much rarer: an intransigent mind -- as one's only possession and key. You will not enter it until you learn that you do not need to convince or to conquer the world. When you learn it, you will see that through all the years of your struggle, nothing had barred you from Atlantis and there were no chains to hold you, except the chains you were willing to wear." (AS, p. 755 - 756)

Attempting to "fool" people into supporting liberty -- trying to disguise the reality of what freedom is and what it fully entails -- will not only not work but is, worse, a treason to the very things we cherish and seek to obtain:

"'Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud -- that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee -- that you do not care to live as a dependent, least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling -- that honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.'" (AS, p. 945)

What is disheartening for those of us struggling to advance freedom is that the values many people exhibit in their private lives vanish when the context is switched to the "public" arena. The evil actions they would readily condemn in their neighbors or their children or themselves are somehow transmuted to golden "virtues" via the simple act of voting. When the majority of those otherwise decent folks, those heroes-in-waiting hear -- truly hear -- and understand Galt's words, accept them, and transform that knowledge into action, then, perhaps, we will be far on the road to restoring better than ever the legacy of freedom, justice, and dignity that is our birthright:

"'The last of my words will be addressed to those heroes who might still be hidden in the world... My brothers in spirit, check on your virtues and on the nature of the enemies you're serving. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, your love -- the endurance that carries their burdens -- the generosity that responds to their cries of despair -- the innocence that is unable to conceive of their evil and gives them the benefit of every doubt, refusing to condemn them without understanding and incapable of understanding such motives as theirs -- the love, your love of life, which makes you believe that they are men and that they love it, too. But the world of today is the world they wanted; life is the object of their hatred. Leave them to the death they worship. In the name of your magnificent devotion to this earth, leave them, don't exhaust the greatness of your soul on achieving the triumph of the evil of theirs.'" (AS, p. 992 - 993)

We can leave no better legacy to those who come after us than to create within ourselves -- and through our deeds, within the world itself -- a society based on reason, purpose, and self-esteem; a nation that honors rationality, productivity, and earned pride; a country that demonstrates in reality as well as in words that independence, integrity, honesty, and profound respect for the individual, his values, and his goals are not merely empty sounds but the solid framework for a moral universe fit for a truly human existence.

"The importance of that experience is not in what he learns from it, but in that he experiences it. The fuel is not a theoretical principle, not a didactic 'message,' but the life-giving fact of experiencing a moment of metaphysical joy -- a moment of love for existence." (RM, p. 170)

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand succeeded with admirable skill and thoroughness in realizing her remarkable goal of creating people and a world that ought to be. Each of us needs a respite from the woes that beset and bedevil us as we wend our way through life. Atlas Shrugged provides us that indispensable breather we need to face our burdens as we work to craft our own values. For that gift alone, Rand deserves our thunderous applause.

In return, Rand figuratively asked for only one thing from those of us who have benefitted so immeasurably from her achievement:

"Don't work for my happiness...-- show me yours -- show me that it is possible -- show me your achievement -- and the knowledge will give me courage for mine." (The Fountainhead, quoted in RM, p. 171.)