I would have to agree. Great ideas, turgid writing. I mean, a literally 100 page speech by Galt??? Did Ayn think people were so stupid they needed to be beaten over the head?
I’ve read it more than once though. It would be interesting if someone with integrity edited it to make a better read.
The Fountainhead is written much better and I think it was written over 10 years earlier than Atlas Shrugged. She cut Roark’s speech to only 10 pages.
I’ll see the movie though when the DVD comes out just to see what they made of it. The movie of The Fountainhead was just horrible. I think Ayn wrote the script.
Heinlein beat people over the head with his politics too, but he simply repeated a point in different conversations within a story, and his writing flowed naturally.
Lester Del Ray as well.
Politics can work well in a story but it isn’t a substitute for good writing.
If your writing is really, really bad you will have to found your own religion to create readers for it.