[DesScorp]

I've read the Fountainhead, and I'm just finishing up Atlas, and I bet Ayn Rand was the kind of person that really liked hearing herself talk. Those books take a thousand pages to tell a story that 400-500 would have done with some effective editing, and without losing one whit of important plot or characterization.

[Yaelle]

Oh, I completely agree. Wonderful meaningful stories but the author did not care much for the soul of wit, did she?

If a film tried to recreate one of those speeches, a weapon would be taken posthumously from each theatre goer in turn until everyone in the audience had committed sweet merciful suicide.

[meadsjn]

a thousand pages to tell a story that 400-500 would have done with some effective editing,

Three main chapters of ten or less pages each, a short introduction, and a short conclusion; such could have made her points clearly, and would have been read, understood, and celebrated by 100 times whatever her existing fan club amounts to.

[Fred Hayek]

Those books take a thousand pages to tell a story that 400-500 would have done with some effective editing....

I think it might also be the Russian style, which tends to be long. I base this on having read other Russian authors.

[PoloSec]

"I bet Ayn Rand was the kind of person that really liked hearing herself talk"

You can hear an interview with her here, she was capable of getting to the point...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k

In this interview she explains her atheism.

[ExpatGator]

Yes, she was long winded, love hearing herself talk and she was prescient. You take the bad with the good.