I’ve read everything she has ever written and my take is:
1) She needed an editor. She takes a great idea and beats you over the head with it for at least five pages.
2) Having Roark rape Dominique in The Fountainhead was so bizarre I read the part several times to see what I was missing. Apparently the fact that they both wanted each other made it all right and the fact the it was written by a woman makes it worse, WTH?
3) Her personal life was a shambles, she cheated on her husband and told him she was going to do it.
4) She was a hard drinker and smoker. OK, this doesn’t bother me because I have zero room to talk but if you want to be some moral authority, you might want to reflect it in you personal life.
5) I still like The Fountainhead despite the bizarre rape scene as that scene is better than the literally 100 page John Galt speech in Atlas Shrugged. Frisco’s money speech is good even if it does go on forever.
6) We The Living is an awesome book. Yes, it’s long and dreary, just like the communism the characters live in. If anyone here has read it, the parallels between it and Obamavision are scary.
Finally, I would say that what she wrote against are what is destroying this country, she was right on there. I forget the exact line but I think it’s from Toohey in The Fountainhead where he says they don’t care about people breaking laws, they want them to so they’re easier to control.
>>She needed an editor.
The audiobook version (Audible, read by Scott Brick) has the Galt speech go on for about 2 and a half hours...
Her short story “Anthem” is short enough for anyone to get and it spells out her ideas well.
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system.”
Quote by: Ayn Rand
(1905-1982) Author
Source: “Atlas Shrugged”, Part II, Chapter 3
Smoker yes, drinker, no.