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The plot manages to be simultaneously leaden, yet ludicrous, as Rand v e r y s l o w l y introduces a series of increasingly improbable and ridiculous plot points over the course of 1100 pages. The characters have all the depth and dimension of paper cutouts, where cartoonish heroes resembling extremely vanilla versions of Mighty Mouse battle with exceptionally banal villains, who spend most of the book rubbing their hands in glee and twirling their handlebar moustaches in the very best Snidely Whiplash tradition.

For a moment there I was sure you were describing the screenplay for the first Star Wars movie.

Yes, Rand wrote in stilted style and in "Atlas..." the characters were characatures, but since it was intended as a vehicle to lay out philosophical issues, I can forgive her, just as I forgive Lucas for the Saturday Matinee quality of the characters in "Star Wars." Both are about good and evil, and both paint them in starkly black and white terms, literally so in "Star Wars." Neither are masterpieces in a purely literary sense, but both had an immense influence on American society.

Closest I can find w/regard to Atlas was a site saying Rand's books have sold over 20 million.

Can't find figures for Witnesses.

Left Behind claims 60 million for series.

Exactly

"Uncle Toms Cabin" is full of caricatures too.

As is "The Wandering Jew".

Etc. ad infinitum. Novels as political tracts are nothing new, and on the whole they aren't good novels.

Thers'a rather more common vehicle to lay out philosophical issues, known as an "essay", and somewhere within the vast, elephantine bulk of the novel is a terse, cogent, well-reasoned essay, of about 50 pages or so, just screaming to get out of the literary prison it's currently in. I would have been very interested to read that essay, and I probably wouldn't be nearly as hard on that essay as I am on the novel. Otherwise, as a work of literature, it's really shockingly bad. Star Wars, as bad as it was in a literary sense, at least had the redeeming virtue of being fun, but there is nothing fun about Rand's fiction - she is deadly serious. Poisonously, soporifically serious.

And that's a problem, because the literary flaws of the work eventually come to overwhelm and overshadow the message she wants to convey. I think, and the responses on this thread tend to support me on this, that there are a great many people who, by about page 600 or so, come to conclude that the proper answer to "Who is John Galt?" is "Who gives a damn?" This is a case where the messenger interferes with the message so very badly as to render it indecipherable to a goodly portion of her readership, because a lot of people simply aren't willing to slog through the acres of literary muck to find the pearl hidden somewhere in the sty. And as a result, despite the commonly accepted aphorism to the contrary, this is a case where the messenger really needs shooting, and shooting with great enthusiasm, followed by an unburial so as to shoot the messenger yet again.

It's a tough gig she set up for herself - I don't think there's been a decent philosopher who was also a decent novelist since Voltaire, and Rand failed to break that streak rather spectacularly. Atlas Shrugged is living proof of the truth behind the old saw - basically, if you want to write a novel, write a novel. If, on the other hand, you want to send a message, call Western Union, because the history of attempts to do both in one shot is littered with casualties, Rand being merely one of the more recent. Influential? Certainly, but it's entirely possible to be influential without being a literary masterpiece, as Ayn so ably proves.