What is it about Atlas Shrugged that makes it so popular? Why has Ayn Rand’s dense, hard-to-read, and way-too-long novel sold over seven million copies and inspired such a loyal, even fanatical following?

I was asking myself these questions last week as I finished rereading the novel for the first time in 46 years. I wrote a retrospective review of Atlas Shrugged, which appears in Sunday’s edition of the webzine American Thinker, and I gave the book low marks, both as literature and philosophy. Such were not my views the first time I read it, and such obviously are not the views of most of those who have commented on my review.

What captivated me most about Atlas Shrugged the first time I read it was how different it was from what the culture was offering. Rand actually viewed businesspeople who were out to make a profit as the good guys! Up to that time, the only work of fiction I had read in which businessmen were treated sympathetically was Sloan Wilson’s novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which gives us a glimpse of the huge personal price that is often exacted from those who build great business enterprises. In Atlas Shrugged Rand does more than just treat businesspeople sympathetically:  she exalts them as heroes and presents them as innovators who are as brilliant and creative as the writers, artists and intellectuals who despise them even while depending on them for their livelihoods.

Another thing I liked about Atlas Shrugged was the way Rand skewered those collectivist clichés I had been hearing all my life and that people seem to regard as almost self-evident. It was hard to take them seriously after they came out of the mouths of ridiculous people like James Taggart, Orren Boyle and Philip Rearden.

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