There is no room for shades of gray in Ayn Rand’s universe. She divided humanity into two types: genius heroes with successful companies (who also happen to make the tastiest hamburgers and can fly planes) and sickly wretch, with sickening names like Balph Eubank or Wesley Mouch.
This week we read Atlas Shrugged, a book set in a dystopian America. “As a literary work, it fails on all levels,” said this week’s guest, NRC columnist Floor Rusman, who graduated on Rand’s work. Guus Valk, former America correspondent and current chief of the editorial staff in The Hague, is also not happy about it. The characters are flat and it is “an unnecessarily thick book full of preachy texts”. Still, they found Atlas Shrugged a fascinating book to read. “Rand gives selfishness a moral sauce.”
Since its publication in 1957, more than 10 million copies of this book have been sold. Ayn Rand’s work primarily appeals to right-wing Americans. Rand believed that people should operate rationally and egocentrically, with their own happiness as their goal in life. With her philosophy, Objectivism, she wanted to change the world.
She didn’t blink, wore dollar sign necklaces, and started a cult. Who was Ayn Rand, a Russian who became the capitalist figurehead of conservative America? What has her work stirred up in America and Europe, and what is it like to read Atlas Shrugged, “a political pamphlet in the form of a novel”, today?
This is the eighth installment of a nine-part series on books that changed the world.
- Presentation:
- Eve Peek
- Guests:
- Michel Krielaars & Arnon Grunberg
- Editing & Editing:
- Jeanne Gerken
- Photo:
- Everett Collection