"So how about a little help explaining it to us dense folk: 'Rand's books
are super important because ..'"
I don't recall saying it was super important. I referenced other material
that said it was important. That said, I refuse to interpret the material
that is right there before you. I will paste it here so you can try again.
Reception
Atlas Shrugged debuted on The New York Times Bestseller List at #6 three
days after its publication date.[7] It remained on the list for 21 weeks,
peaking at #4 for a six-week period beginning December 8, 1957.[7]
"Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book;
the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of greed
is good. Rand is said to have cried every day as the reviews came out."
Harriet Rubin (2007) in The New York Times[6]
Atlas Shrugged was generally disliked by critics, despite being a popular
success. The book was dismissed by some as "a homage to greed", while author
Gore Vidal described its philosophy as "nearly perfect in its
immorality".[6] Helen Beal Woodward, reviewing Atlas Shrugged for The
Saturday Review, opined that the novel was written with "dazzling
virtuosity" but that it was "shot through with hatred".[33] This was echoed
by Granville Hicks, writing for The New York Times Book Review, who also
stated that the book was "written out of hate".[34] The reviewer for Time
magazine asked: "Is it a novel? Is it a nightmare? Is it Supermanin the
comic strip or the Nietzschean version?"[35] In the conservative magazine
National Review, Whittaker Chambers called Atlas Shrugged "sophomoric" and
"remarkably silly", and said it "can be called a novel only by devaluing the
term".[36] Chambers argued against the novel's implicit endorsement of
atheism, whereby "Randian man, like Marxian man is made the center of a
godless world".[36] Chambers also wrote that the implicit message of the
novel is akin to "Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's brand of
Communism" ("To the gas chambers go!").[36]
The negative reviews produced responses from some of Rand's admirers,
including a letter by Alan Greenspan to The New York Times Book Review, in
which he responded to Hicks' claim that "the book was written out of hate"
by saying, "...Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness.
Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and
rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid
either purpose or reason perish as they should."[37] Greenspan had read
unpublished drafts of the work in Rand's salon at least three years
earlier.[38] In an unpublished letter to the National Review, Leonard
Peikoff wrote, "... Mr. Chambers is an ex-Communist. He has attacked Atlas
Shrugged in the best tradition of the Communists - by lies, smears, and
cowardly misrepresentations. Mr. Chambers may have changed a few of his
political views; he has not changed the method of intellectual analysis and
evaluation of the Party to which he belonged." National Review did not
publish the letter.[39]
Positive reviews appeared in a number of publications. Richard McLaughlin,
reviewing the novel for The American Mercury, compared it to Uncle Tom's
Cabin in importance.[40] Well-known journalist and book reviewer John
Chamberlain, writing in The New York Herald Tribune, found Atlas Shrugged
satisfying on many levels: science fiction, a "Dostoevsky" detective story
and, most importantly, a "profound political parable".[41][42] However, Mimi
Reisel Gladstein writes that reviewers who have "appreciated not only Rand's
writing style but also her message" have been "far outweighed by those who
have been everything from hysterically hostile to merely
uncomprehending".[43]
Former Rand friend, associate, business partner and lover Nathaniel Branden,
to whom the book was originally dedicated, has had differing views of "Atlas
Shrugged" in his life. He was initially quite favorable to it, praising it
in the book he and Barbara Branden wrote in 1962 called Who is Ayn Rand?[44]
After he and Ayn Rand ended their business/romantic relationship in 1968,
both he and Barbara Branden repudiated their book in praise of Rand and her
novels.[45] As of 1971 though, in an interview he gave to "Reason" he listed
some critiques, but concluded, "But what the hell, so there are a few things
one can quarrel with in the book, so what? ATLAS SHRUGGED is the greatest
novel that has ever been written, in my judgment, so let's let it go at
that."[46]
But years later, in 1984, two years after Rand's death, he argued that Atlas
Shrugged "encourages emotional repression and self-disowning" and that her
works contained contradictory messages. Branden claimed that the characters
rarely talk "on a simple, human level without launching into philosophical
sermons". He criticized the potential psychological impact of the novel,
stating that John Galt's recommendation to respond to wrongdoing with
"contempt and moral condemnation" clashes with the view of psychologists who
say this only causes the wrongdoing to repeat itself.[47] Rand herself,
however, would not have regarded a novel as needing to portray such
"ordinary" human interaction at all, even if an entire philosophy of life
does need to address this.[48]
[edit] Praise, criticism, influence and renewed popularity
For more details on this topic, see Bibliography for Ayn Rand and
Objectivism.
Over the years, Atlas Shrugged has attracted an energetic and committed fan
base. Each year, the Ayn Rand Institute donates to high school students
400,000 copies of works by Ayn Rand, including Atlas Shrugged.[6] According
to a 1991 survey done for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month
Club, Atlas Shrugged was situated between The Bible and M. Scott Peck's The
Road Less Traveled as the book that made the most difference in the lives of
5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members surveyed, with "A large gap existing
between the #1 book and the rest of the list".[49] Modern Library's 1998
nonscientific online poll of the 100 best novels of the 20th century[50][51]
found Atlas rated #1 although it was not included on the list chosen by the
Modern Library board of authors and scholars.[52]
In 1997, the libertarian Cato Institute held a joint conference with The
Atlas Society, an Objectivist organization, to celebrate the fortieth
anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged.[53] At this event, Howard
Dickman of Reader's Digest stated that the novel had "turned millions of
readers on to the ideas of liberty" and said that the book had the important
message of the readers' "profound right to be happy".[53]
The C-SPAN television series American Writers listed Rand as one of
twenty-two surveyed figures of American literature, though primarily
mentioning The Fountainhead rather than Atlas Shrugged.[54]
Rand's impact on contemporary libertarian thought has been considerable, and
it is noteworthy that the title of the leading libertarian magazine, Reason:
Free Minds, Free Markets, is taken directly from John Galt, the hero of
Atlas Shrugged, who argues that "a free mind and a free market are
corollaries".
The Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises admired the unapologetic
elitism of Rand's work. In a private letter to Rand written a few months
after the novel's publication, he declared, "...Atlas Shrugged is not merely
a novel. It is also (or may I say: first of all) a cogent analysis of the
evils that plague our society, a substantiated rejection of the ideology of
our self-styled "intellectuals" and a pitiless unmasking of the insincerity
of the policies adopted by governments and political parties... You have the
courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior
and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for
granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you."[55]
Acclaim has not been unanimous. The 2007 dystopian video game BioShock
offers a sharply critical depiction of Objectivist principles from the
perspective of those "Going Galt". Of which an isolated Objectivist society
is lead to ruin as its inhabitants become addicted to genetic drugs which
are the product of un-checked scientific advances.[56] In the game's sequel
BioShock 2, a polar opposite altruist society rises in the wake of the fall
of the Objectivist society, however it is just as dystopian.[57] Nobel Prize
winning economist and liberal commentator Paul Krugman alluded to an
oft-quoted quip[58] in his blog: "There are two novels that can change a
bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its
unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled
adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course,
involves orcs."[59]
"I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that Atlas Shrugged
has had a significant effect on their business decisions, even if they don't
agree with all of Ayn Rand's ideas."
John A. Allison, former CEO of BB&T [6]
In the late 2000s, the book gained more media attention and conservative
commentators suggested the book as a warning against a socialistic reaction
to the finance crisis. Conservative commentators Neal Boortz,[60] Glenn
Beck, and Rush Limbaugh[61] have offered high praise of the book on their
respective radio and television programs, although Rand's opposition to
conservatism is well known.[62] Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
Clarence Thomas had cited Atlas Shrugged already in 2006 as among his
favorite novels.[63] Republican Congressman John Campbell said for example:
"People are starting to feel like we're living through the scenario that
happened in [the novel]... We're living in Atlas Shrugged", echoing Stephen
Moore in an article published in The Wall Street Journal on January 9, 2009,
titled "Atlas Shrugged From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years".[64]
The sales of Atlas Shrugged have since then sharply increased, according to
The Economist magazine and The New York Times. The Economist reported that
the fifty-two-year-old novel ranked #33 among Amazon.com's top-selling books
on January 13, 2009 and that its thirty day sales average showed the novel
selling three times faster than during the same period of the previous year.
With an attached sales chart, The Economist reported that sales "spikes" of
the book seemed to coincide with the release of economic data. Subsequently,
on April 2, 2009, Atlas Shrugged ranked #1 in the "Fiction and Literature"
category at Amazon and #15 in overall sales.[65][66][67] Total sales of the
novel in 2009 exceeded 500,000 copies.[68]
In 1958, Jeheber, a Swiss publishing company, attempted to publish a French
version of Atlas Shrugged as a three volumes set, under the title La Révolte
d'Atlas. But this translation was deliberately sabotaged and, as a result,
Ayn Rand ordered to stop the publishing of the third and last volume, which
never existed. Since then, the publishing of a French version of Atlas
Shrugged is yearly announced for "the next year", but fails to happen
systematically. An unauthorized French translation, released under the form
of a .pdf file and titled La Révolte d'Atlas, was made freely available on
Internet in October 2009; it is the only complete and available French
translation of this novel.[69]
J
-
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
gospel of envy. - Winston Churchill
"The Government should not keep information confidential merely because
public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and
failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears." -
Barrack Oba
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