Ayn Rand

• Ayn Rand is “one of the most important intellectual voices in our culture,” wrote Gregory Salmieri, co-editor of the Blackwell Companion to Ayn Rand, in 2016.
• Rand’s novel, which she believed her best, has generated significant critical and academic scorn since publication.
• But her laissez faire, anti-government ode to individualism also resonated with millions of readers.
• It remains a favourite of politicians (including Tea Party types) and tech billionaires – including one with possible apartheid emerald mining connections.
• […] Perry Parker watched carefully as the car containing Marion came to a stop.
• […] Kneeling beside the bundle, he reached down and lifted it toward him, throwing his arms around his 100-pound daughter, and pulled her closely toward him.
• Rand wanted to denounce, as Harriman puts it, “a world that seems to have no place for heroism”.

A real delight in opposing people

• He takes a real delight in opposing people, in fighting and terrifying them.
• He gets immense enjoyment from shocking people, amusing them with his cynicism, ridiculing before their eyes the most sacred, venerated, established ideas.
• He takes a real delight in opposing people, in fighting and terrifying them.
• The “only philosophical debt” Rand, who considered herself a thinker of profound originality, would now acknowledge was “to Aristotle”.

Executioner or saint?

• This 700-page-plus blockbuster – which has sold 6.5 million copies – focuses on an architect named Howard Roark.
• His face was like a law of nature – a thing one could not question, alter, or implore.
• It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint.
• His face was like a law of nature – a thing one could not question, alter, or implore.
• It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint.

Watching the world burn

• A physicist and inventor, Galt, who is Rand in fictional disguise, is trying to burn the whole world down.
• […] When you clamour for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamouring for public ownership of the mind.
• Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable – except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders […] Well, their turn has come.
• Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function.
• Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable – except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders […] Well, their turn has come.
• Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function.

A gateway to the right

• Those on the opposite side of the spectrum were troubled by the novel’s explicit atheism.
• And virtually everyone was critical of the novel’s vituperate tone and repetitive style.
• But how, given the critical opprobrium meted out to Atlas Shrugged, are we to account for the novel’s popularity?
• What this says about the political landscape, or the reading habits and ideological inclinations of the public, is up for debate.
• Given Rand’s longevity and popularity, the answer may not – and this could shock complacent coastal liberals – necessarily be reassuring.