I like to read things I disagree with – keeps me sharp. Besides, if I’m going to condemn something, a movie, a book, a philosophy, I prefer to have dealt with the original. Thus, I began this doorstop of a novel. I’ve read short pieces by Ayn Rand, and found them lacking. Fifty pages or so into this one, I had to stop. The book is without any literary merit whatsoever. Even that commie turned red baiter, Whittaker Chambers, reviewing it on publication said that to call it a novel was to “demean the term.” Hey, he was right about Alger Hiss, too!
The one book that this writing reminds me of very strongly is What is To Be Done? That too is without literary merit. Ironic, isn’t it? A book of right-wing libertarian cliches is the literary twin of the bible of the early Russian revolutionaries. Both have characters of phantastic nobility, character, discipline and resolve. Both are …
Well, read it if you can.