I’m reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.  I had never read anything by her. The references I had were mixed: praise by some libertarians; condemnation by others; Nozick’s piece “On the Randian Argument.”  I appreciate novels for their literary value, regardless of the political message, if any, that the novel may try to convey. Thus, I don’t care if García Márquez is a Marxist or Jorge Luis Borges a conservative, and that allows me to enjoy their work undisturbed by ideological affinity or dislike.

So, from this standpoint, my view of Atlas Shrugged is mixed (although, of course, I should finish the novel before any final verdict). On one hand, this is not geat literature. Compared to someone like, say, Vladimir Nabokov (another Russian who wrote in English), Rand’s literary skills are minor, although not bad.  On the other hand, there is something remarkable, even unique, about the novel: it dramatically defies the conventions of the genre. We are used to altruistic heroes and self-interested villains. Indeed, good novels depict tragic heroes, people whose ultimate goodness prevails over their demons. In Atlas Shrugged, this literary convention is turned upside down. The heroes are aggressively self-interested, and Rand does an excellent job at showing why these persons, flawed in a number of respects, are nonetheless better than those around them. The villains in the novel are posturers, persons who profess to be altruistic but are really petty, incompetent, and envious parasites.  I think Rand wants to tell us that most ostensibly altruistic persons are frauds.  Also, this is the first time I see in a novel an effort to show the goodness of entrepreneurship, of the sheer power of transforming nature to suit human ends. The heroes do things; they don’t talk, beg, or lobby. Above all, they are not interested in running other people’s lives.

I am reminded of what Isaiah Berlin said about Macchiavelli: not the best political philosopher, perhaps, but remarkable because his pagan unsentimental Realpolitik upsets Judeo-Christian values grounded in love and compassion.  Similarly, Rand is not perhaps the most scintillating writer, but her novel forces us to reconsider a massive literary and philosophical consensus about who the good and bad guys really are.

I am most interested to hear opinions from those who know Rand’s work better than I do.