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Oh, yes indeed, although there are certain requirements for verisimilitude that prevent an author - a good one, anyway - from straying too far out of character. If your scene takes place in a dockworkers' bar you'd probably be accused of pretentiousness if you had them saying stuff like "Prithee, my good Lord, be so kind as to pass the ketchup and I shall be thy humble and obedient servant." Mind you, I'd love to read a novel like that but it's probably just me.

Rand had a couple of influences on her dialogue that make Atlas Shrugged difficult to judge. For one thing, English was not her native language although she spoke it with a fluency that native speakers envy. On the other hand, she was a Hollywood scriptwriter - a very good one, by all accounts, used by no less than Hal Wallis (Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Gunfight At The OK Corral, Becket, Anne of the Thousand Days, etc, etc) as a "script-fixer." Serious lit cred, if you will. So I don't feel too bad applying the highest standards to her dialogue - she earned the right.

But you can tell that AS is a very personal novel to her in that her heroine now and again departs from Dagny-dom into Ayn-hood. And back again, often in the same passage. I mentioned Dagny's use of the word "syllogism" in a rather unlikely context last week - it was actually a minor departure and Rand would have gotten away with it if she hadn't ended the chapter on it, leaving it, and us, twisting in the lexical wind.

Some other minor bitches since I'm on the topic - she is inordinately fond of the word "perish," placing it in nearly everyone's mouth when the simpler "die" would have sufficed. And she is particularly fond of the word "torture," employing it to mean everything from mild psychological annoyance to electrodes...but let's not jump the gun there. That does nothing but remind the prurient among us of her sexual proclivities, and it's usually unjustified. More or less.

Now and then I catch myself thinking "Is this Dagny talking now, or Rand?" That's actually a testament to the strength of her writing - you couldn't do that if Dagny's character hadn't been developed to the point where it displays a high degree of internal consistency. That's a tough thing to maintain over the course of 1100 pages and despite my grumbling I'd be the first to admit that Rand does a pretty doggone good job of it.

But you can tell that AS is a very personal novel to her in that her heroine now and again departs from Dagny-dom into Ayn-hood.

Exactly. It's when the dialog is inconsistent with the character (and in the worst examples, inconsistent with any known human) that it feels like painting a house with a crescent wrench.

My wife tells me that I like to write fiction because it gives me the chance to put words into everyone’s mouths!