Replies

BradyLS: I think her best novel was the one set in Leninist Russia, We the Living. The Italians made a movie adaptation of the novel in 1942 called Noi Vivi, which was then banned from public viewing by Mussolini's government.
Rembrandt_fan: National Review Online recently republished a fifty-year-old review of 'Atlas Shrugged' by Whitaker Chambers, which I strongly recommend
Askel5: a review of Atlas Shrugged by Whittaker Chambers

Doesn't anyone find it bizarre that Rand spent so much time and energy excoriating ALL types of collectivism so that SHE personally caused tremendous problems for Mussolini, yet intellectual slobs like Chambers, who called her a fascist and obviously never got even the most fundamental of her points, are given so much credence by people who should know better?

As Leonard Peikoff has written so eloquently,

“To compare Miss Rand’s heroes to Nietzschean supermen and to identify her politically with Hitler is not stupidity on Chambers’ part. It is willful perversion. Were I in philosophic agreement with Mr. Chambers, I would say that his review is the proof of his doctrine that men are born with Original Sin and are inherently corrupt. But I am not in agreement with Mr. Chambers. He cannot blame Adam or God for that review. It is his responsibility.” [...] “Mr. Chambers is an ex-Communist. He has attacked Atlas Shrugged in the best tradition of the Communists—by lies, smears, and cowardly misrepresentations. Mr. Chambers may have changed a few of his political views; he has not changed the method of intellectual analysis and evaluation of the Party to which he belonged.
-- from http://tinyurl.com/59cwy

also see: these comments on Chambers.

Arguing the merits (or lack thereof) of Ayn Rand with a true believer is an exercise in futility. In its way, it's like arguing with a Scientologist about their resident literary 'genius', L. Ron Hubbard. As has been pointed out, Chambers was reviewing a specific book, and to his credit, his review was confined to the literary worth of that book. I don't recall a 'smear' against Fearless Leader anywhere.

She was a lousy writer and pernicious thinker. Objectivists be damned.