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Article: Last October marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and the occasion received widespread media attention.(While We're At It)(Brief article)
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- October 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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* Last October marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and the occasion received widespread media attention. The book still sells 150,000 copies per year. It is long, tedious, and intellectually vulgar. And yes, I did try to get through it once. Rand was a deeply troubled woman. She and William E Buckley did not get along. Meeting at a social event, Rand told him, "You're too smart to believe in God." Buckley had a great deal of fun with the thinly disguised Rand character in his 2004 novel, Getting It Right. Rand exuberantly flaunted her belief in "the virtue of selfishness," and, like a bargain-basement Nietzsche, mocked the ...