Whittaker Chambers offers an excellent review of Atlas Shrugged. I loved reading both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as a teenager and enjoyed them both. However, now when I look back on it I see the validity of Chamber’s critique. Atlas Shrugged, in particular, was filled with unrealistic characters making these long winded speeches and lectures. The good guys are virtually superhuman and without flaws and the bad guys are cartoonishly evil buffoons.
I recently read Chamber’s own book, Witness. Now there is a book for ALL conservatives. A true story based on Chamber’s tumultuous life as a young communist who transformed into one of the greatest conservatives of all time who famously locked horns with Alger Hiss in a titanic struggle which has divided conservatives from the liberal/left ever since. With Chambers you see the human condition in its totality warts and all beginning with himself. Therefore, his work, writings, and life experiences are much more grounded in reality.
Read Atlas Shrugged for fun and entertainment—and yes Miss Rand was light years ahead of her time predicting socialism coming to America no matter how silly and unrealistic her characters were. But read Witness for getting to the truth and a real life experience of one man’s ascent from darkness and evil to the truth and seeing the light. One work is quite juvenile, the other is manifestly profound and deeply spiritual.
Agree on the good guys, but those very same cartoonishly evil buffoons (in both parties) are now running our government, so how much of a satire could Atlas Shrugged really have been? :)