[Steely Tom]

She was a sworn enemy of the collectivist mindset in all its forms and was quite good at creating a manifesto but a novelist she was not.

No, I don't think anyone can argue that Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead are great literature, or share much in common with The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises.

But that's not really the point of those novels, in my opinion. They are just packages for Rand's philosophy, which is fairly nuanced and thoroughly thought through.

I don't think anyone has ever made a more clearly enunciated argument for freedom, and for the inescapable connection between physical freedom, political freedom, intellectual freedom, and economic freedom (also known as Capitalism).

Yes, it can certainly be argued that she rather beats the subject to death, but of all subjects that it might be worth "beating to death," I think the superiority and inevitability of Capitalism is possibly the one at the top of the list.

And neither of her two great novels are really bad novels.

They're not unreadable, by any means.

I think Ayn Rand aspired to be a writer in the same vein as Raymond Chandler, or Dashiell Hammett. I don't know if she really succeeded in achieving that level, but she certainly didn't embarrass herself in the attempt, IMO.

[RegulatorCountry]

I've read most of her works, even earlier more obscure ones such as Anthem. Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt the power of what she wrote but how she wrote it gave me a giggle at the time, even as a starry-eyed libertarian at the time, who welcomed her message with open arms. The stereotypical Randian protagonist hopping on a soapbox for a chapter-long tortured soliloquy is sort of funny, you've got to admit.