Great web-site! Thanks.
We will have to agree to disagree on two points: (1) the people that Ayn Rand was working against in the 1940’s were the collectivist planners (not liberals) depicted in that wonderful comic book; and (2) Her characters may be over the top (which befits her narcissistic amd obsessive personality) but they are wonderful symbols of individualism and self-reliance. I really enjoy her work precisely because her characters are “different”.
(2) The only place I can really stand characters who are symbols rather than living, breathing human beings is in something like The Pilgrim's Progress (although Bunyan's characters are breathing flesh-and-blood creatures compared to the likes of Taggart and Galt, despite their old-fashioned descriptive names). But that sort of set-piece only works when it doesn't attempt to exist in the Real World . . . I think Rand really couldn't decide if she was writing a novel, an allegory, or a polemic. A little of all three, perhaps.