This is it. This is the essay / interview that gets me to read *Atlas Shrugged.* I never knew--because it wasn't available--that what I needed to get me interested in the book was an actual *literary* discussion of the book moreso than a philosophical one. Thank you both.
Absolutely loved this conversation, thank you. For all Ayn Rand's personal flaws (let's face it, which great writer hasn't), and for all the bits of her overall philosophy that I can't go with, this book was nevertheless a life-changer for me when I read it at 21. I actually found Galt's speech a real page-turner, and still do :-)
Thanks! I avoided it for a while because people said she was a crank, but I'm so pleased I took Hollis’ recommendation! Once the speech started to click I felt like that, but it took me a few pages…
I never could understand all this manifestation of the grandiosity of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and her school. As a Russian reading a Russian woman's novel in English, I was surprised by how heavy and poor her English was; her heroes were so single-minded, without any psychological disclose; her romanticization of her heroes was so primitive, and their road to the heroism in the achievement of their purpose of the "good" capitalism was the necessary good end like in the American movies. I looked at the photo of her face. It's the face of an angry woman. And her personal life lacked the high morality of her preaching. I think my reading of Russian classic literature spoiled me.
This is what I can't grasp. Somebody fanned the flames. Running out of the Soviet Union to the US and finding freedom here is understandable, but making a career of poorly written novels and excuses for the capitalistic philosophy is for a very ambitious person, as I see her.
Well, “poorly written” according to whom? I mean, she wrote three major novels, and all three are still in print, still being discussed. How many books published in 1957 are being discussed in 2025? I’m not immune to her literary flaws, and Galt’s speech really is a slog. But the results speak for themselves: millions of people still read these books.
Galt's speech is better listened to than read I came to realize. We have that technology more readily available in 2025. I listened to it twice to prepare for the podcast! I see the gripes about its length as a matter of reading, yes. I've also come to understand how Rand wrote with her ear rather than her eye and she was on to something.
My wife and I listened to the audiobook not that long ago. I agree it’s better heard than read, but it’s still too long. I like the book a lot, but that speech should have been reduced in length.
By the way, I am a little surprised you didn’t mention my own favorite interlude in the book: the hobo whom Dagny invites to dine with her in her train car, and his recounting of the decline of the 20th Century Motor Company after it adopts the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” gets adopted as the company’s management principle. Thematically it encapsulates the whole book, and I found it vivid and oddly poignant.
I’m looking forward to listening to this later today. I grew up surrounded by Rand’s books and articles but have never read Atlas. My dad was a big fan in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
“Other than Jennifer Burns’ biography, academic study has largely declined to notice Rand.”
There was a Journal of Ayn Rand Studies! (It ran for approx. 20 years.) Here’s my essay on the Ayn Rand commemorative stamp: https://philarchive.org/archive/WOLTLA-2
This was a really interesting read, Henry and Hollis--thank you! I am a philosopher who has published work on Rand's philosophy and I have reviewed some of the work of academics who have also published about her literature and philosophy. There are entire collections devoted to rigorous study of her novels. Academic work is still ongoing, though, so not just "was"! There is a great, ongoing series of collections (based largely on work originally presented at the Ayn Rand Society at the American Philosophical Association meetings) and books published about her work by University of Pittsburgh Press: https://upittpress.org/series/ayn-rand-society-philosophical-studies/
First, thanks for acknowledging "Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand," published as part of Penn State University Press's "Re-reading the Canon" series. That volume on Rand, which I coedited with Mimi R. Gladstein, is part of a series that includes 37 volumes, each devoted to another canonical thinker in Western thought, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel.
In addition to other works mentioned by readers here, I should note that scholarly studies on Rand have increased exponentially over the last 40 years. My own work, "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical," published in 1995 by Penn State University Press, went into a second edition in 2013. I was also a founding coeditor of "The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies," which ran for over two decades (1999-2023) and published well over 400 articles by nearly 200 authors, left, right, and center. Other works on Rand include many edited collections published by Lexington Books on Rand's literary work, Derek Offord's "Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia" (2022), Neil Cocks’s edited collection, “Questioning Ayn Rand: Subjectivity, Political Economy, and the Arts” (2020), Aaron Weinacht's "Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand: Russian Nihilism Travels to America" (2021), and so forth. The future is, indeed, bright for scholarly work on Rand.
I know your work Chris! I used to read you online. I think I read work about the Francisco-Hank relationship either by you or referred by you. Is that right? It was super long ago.
That was terrific! I just listened to the whole thing (while I am puttering around rearranging my books, since I recently got some new bookshelves. There are a few greater pleasures known to man). I remember being emotionally moved by this book on numerous occasions when I read it as a teenager in the 1970s. And as you read some passages aloud, just recited them from memory, I felt those emotions again. If that is “melodrama“ it’s certainly nothing to be embarrassed about! The scene where Hank Reardon tells the injured man, try to live for me, got me choked up again. And you’re absolutely right, that’s something we can imagine Humphrey, Bogart or Jimmy Stewart saying. Never forget that Ayn Rand loved Hollywood movies. She wanted to make them, and she wrote her books with Hollywood movies in mind. Her idealized America is the idealized America depicted in Hollywood movies of the 30s and 40s, to a large extent. She didn’t really know many real businessmen or steel manufacturers, she knew American heroism from movies more than real life or even books. One of the great and permanent questions at the heart of her work is her constant assertion that “all is reason.” Yet what we actually read on the page is a fiery romanticism. And now, with everything else in my life up to my chin, I want to reread it! I can’t say I will do so soon, but I can now say that if life and health continue, I will reread it at some point. Thanks again for a terrific podcast.
Thank you both for this thoughtful and refreshing conversation! Too often, Atlas Shrugged is discussed only through a political lens, while its literary qualities such as its themes, characters, symbolism, structure, and enduring cultural impact, are overlooked. It’s encouraging to see the novel treated seriously as a work of literature worthy of analysis and debate.
As a side note, several years ago PBS reached out to me to discuss Atlas Shrugged, as one of one hundred novels, for their program called The Great American Read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK4LYRR9OD0
Another source for a heroine to compare Dagny Taggart to is Bettina in Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Shuttle. Also a wonderful villain to compare to Jim Taggart. I would love to listen to a podcast if you ever review this book.
Great model of what literary discussion (and disagreement) can look like.
@Henry mentions "It's much less crazy than the actual Randians I have met in the world." Why do you think Randians are often considered crazy? What is the translation error that is occurring? Is it simply, as you quoted earlier, that Randians orientation toward Ayn Rand are that of supplicants to their mystical leader/dictator?
@Anecdotal Hollis Robbins also mentions "I see [Atlas Shrugged] fitting into the network of so many things that I had read..." What are other books that you suggest the audience read to help contextualize this book?
Reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's DRED is a great place to start. Also Henry and I texted a lot about Gatsby even if that conversation didn't make it into the podcast.
This was so great to listen to. Thank you! The documentary on her, A Sense of Life, does a good job of contextualizing her. Also, a close study of Objectivism, her philosophy, helps one better understand what she was doing in Atlas Shrugged, as well as Anthem and Fountainhead. Her books are out-workings of her philosophy, at the center of which is her “ideal man (or woman)” and a moral rationalism as a virtue (rational egoism). She is doing both in one genre: dramatic storytelling and philosophical exposition. She was born in Russian, and English was her second language, so her command of the English language is quite commendable and its grammar is representative of a Russian worldview, which is distinctively different from the modern American ethos. She witnessed the Bolsheviks destroy her family and country. She escaped to America and saw very early beliefs and propaganda in American media and politics that resembled an earlier time in Russian, which allowed for the communist seize (this greatly concerned her). She was a devout student of Victor Hugo and wanted to write like him but for a modern world, which explains her grandiosity of style. She was an atheist and her own sort of feminist. All of this forms the crux of where her point of view comes from. She writes a persuasive framework from which she believes can save America (and governments at large) and allow for human flourishing. It’s not perfect, but it is certainly worthy of study and contains many important points. All of this is why she can’t fit neatly into the American political paradigm. She perplexes or agitates many who try to do so. We must view her without the corrupting lens of Right versus Left but as herself within her context. There are stern critiques for both political parties. -sincerely an English professor and writer ✍🏼
Really enjoyed the conversation, thank you! Read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager and saw more and more critique, thought my recollection of the book must be wrong, re-read 2020 or so, felt even more to the point.
Thanks for this, it's been so long since I've read the Fountainhead and Atlas. I was young but what I remember most about them was not so much that they were particularly great novels, rather what great critiques of collectivism/planned economies they were.
And extremely minor quibble: I'm Utahn and I've very rarely hear anyone use the term "Utah University." It's University of Utah, not to be confused with Utah State University, Utah Valley University, Utah Tech University, or Southern Utah University.
I guess you guys are too young to remember the last cycle of Rand being the vibe during the Tea Party era in USA and nascent future speaker of the house Paul Ryan a big Rand fan. It wasn’t too long ago…about ten years maybe. With Trump incoming I’m sure it will be in vogue again.
I was happy it’s time passed, reminds me of the worse of utilitarianism turning us into logic robots void of humanness…an interesting point of contact between a liberal movement like effective altruism and US conservativism
Especially stupid I would say. Heavy - handed and filled with intolerance on many levels. Her rankling at “collectivism” was naive and childish. Her novels’ characters were illustrative of humanity at its’ greediest and most self-serving… traits she would count as virtuous. Her philosophy on religion was particularly odious.
Read these books back in the early 70's as a college student. I was initially very taken by the philosophy and then I began to think about the implications for society and decided it was not for me. I do remember the books as being fairly ponderous with characters being moved around the chessboard. To each their own. Middlemarch they are not.
This is it. This is the essay / interview that gets me to read *Atlas Shrugged.* I never knew--because it wasn't available--that what I needed to get me interested in the book was an actual *literary* discussion of the book moreso than a philosophical one. Thank you both.
glad to hear it :)
Absolutely loved this conversation, thank you. For all Ayn Rand's personal flaws (let's face it, which great writer hasn't), and for all the bits of her overall philosophy that I can't go with, this book was nevertheless a life-changer for me when I read it at 21. I actually found Galt's speech a real page-turner, and still do :-)
Thanks! I avoided it for a while because people said she was a crank, but I'm so pleased I took Hollis’ recommendation! Once the speech started to click I felt like that, but it took me a few pages…
I never could understand all this manifestation of the grandiosity of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and her school. As a Russian reading a Russian woman's novel in English, I was surprised by how heavy and poor her English was; her heroes were so single-minded, without any psychological disclose; her romanticization of her heroes was so primitive, and their road to the heroism in the achievement of their purpose of the "good" capitalism was the necessary good end like in the American movies. I looked at the photo of her face. It's the face of an angry woman. And her personal life lacked the high morality of her preaching. I think my reading of Russian classic literature spoiled me.
It sort of became a bible of technocrats and sociopaths...
This is what I can't grasp. Somebody fanned the flames. Running out of the Soviet Union to the US and finding freedom here is understandable, but making a career of poorly written novels and excuses for the capitalistic philosophy is for a very ambitious person, as I see her.
Well, “poorly written” according to whom? I mean, she wrote three major novels, and all three are still in print, still being discussed. How many books published in 1957 are being discussed in 2025? I’m not immune to her literary flaws, and Galt’s speech really is a slog. But the results speak for themselves: millions of people still read these books.
Galt's speech is better listened to than read I came to realize. We have that technology more readily available in 2025. I listened to it twice to prepare for the podcast! I see the gripes about its length as a matter of reading, yes. I've also come to understand how Rand wrote with her ear rather than her eye and she was on to something.
My wife and I listened to the audiobook not that long ago. I agree it’s better heard than read, but it’s still too long. I like the book a lot, but that speech should have been reduced in length.
By the way, I am a little surprised you didn’t mention my own favorite interlude in the book: the hobo whom Dagny invites to dine with her in her train car, and his recounting of the decline of the 20th Century Motor Company after it adopts the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” gets adopted as the company’s management principle. Thematically it encapsulates the whole book, and I found it vivid and oddly poignant.
Yes that’s a great section
And constructing an ideology for capitalism ..
This is a woman who stated flatly anyone religious is at heart a murderer. Ironic that she became a poster girl for the extreme right.
I’m looking forward to listening to this later today. I grew up surrounded by Rand’s books and articles but have never read Atlas. My dad was a big fan in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Rand does get some serious attention in Wolfram Eilenberger’s book The Visionaries. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/669211/the-visionaries-by-wolfram-eilenberger-translated-by-shaun-whiteside/
oh interesting thanks!
“Other than Jennifer Burns’ biography, academic study has largely declined to notice Rand.”
There was a Journal of Ayn Rand Studies! (It ran for approx. 20 years.) Here’s my essay on the Ayn Rand commemorative stamp: https://philarchive.org/archive/WOLTLA-2
Thanks for the link! "was" is the word though...
This was a really interesting read, Henry and Hollis--thank you! I am a philosopher who has published work on Rand's philosophy and I have reviewed some of the work of academics who have also published about her literature and philosophy. There are entire collections devoted to rigorous study of her novels. Academic work is still ongoing, though, so not just "was"! There is a great, ongoing series of collections (based largely on work originally presented at the Ayn Rand Society at the American Philosophical Association meetings) and books published about her work by University of Pittsburgh Press: https://upittpress.org/series/ayn-rand-society-philosophical-studies/
Thank you!
oh interesting thank you!
First, thanks for acknowledging "Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand," published as part of Penn State University Press's "Re-reading the Canon" series. That volume on Rand, which I coedited with Mimi R. Gladstein, is part of a series that includes 37 volumes, each devoted to another canonical thinker in Western thought, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel.
In addition to other works mentioned by readers here, I should note that scholarly studies on Rand have increased exponentially over the last 40 years. My own work, "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical," published in 1995 by Penn State University Press, went into a second edition in 2013. I was also a founding coeditor of "The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies," which ran for over two decades (1999-2023) and published well over 400 articles by nearly 200 authors, left, right, and center. Other works on Rand include many edited collections published by Lexington Books on Rand's literary work, Derek Offord's "Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia" (2022), Neil Cocks’s edited collection, “Questioning Ayn Rand: Subjectivity, Political Economy, and the Arts” (2020), Aaron Weinacht's "Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand: Russian Nihilism Travels to America" (2021), and so forth. The future is, indeed, bright for scholarly work on Rand.
Oh, and needless to say: Thanks for the very good read here!
I know your work Chris! I used to read you online. I think I read work about the Francisco-Hank relationship either by you or referred by you. Is that right? It was super long ago.
Ah, it's possible. That may have been part of the monograph I wrote on Ayn Rand and Homosexuality, which is still available:
https://store.c4ss.org/index.php/product/ayn-rand-homosexuality-and-human-liberation/
Thanks! and thanks for the pointers on academic work!
That was terrific! I just listened to the whole thing (while I am puttering around rearranging my books, since I recently got some new bookshelves. There are a few greater pleasures known to man). I remember being emotionally moved by this book on numerous occasions when I read it as a teenager in the 1970s. And as you read some passages aloud, just recited them from memory, I felt those emotions again. If that is “melodrama“ it’s certainly nothing to be embarrassed about! The scene where Hank Reardon tells the injured man, try to live for me, got me choked up again. And you’re absolutely right, that’s something we can imagine Humphrey, Bogart or Jimmy Stewart saying. Never forget that Ayn Rand loved Hollywood movies. She wanted to make them, and she wrote her books with Hollywood movies in mind. Her idealized America is the idealized America depicted in Hollywood movies of the 30s and 40s, to a large extent. She didn’t really know many real businessmen or steel manufacturers, she knew American heroism from movies more than real life or even books. One of the great and permanent questions at the heart of her work is her constant assertion that “all is reason.” Yet what we actually read on the page is a fiery romanticism. And now, with everything else in my life up to my chin, I want to reread it! I can’t say I will do so soon, but I can now say that if life and health continue, I will reread it at some point. Thanks again for a terrific podcast.
Glad you enjoyed it so much!
Thank you both for this thoughtful and refreshing conversation! Too often, Atlas Shrugged is discussed only through a political lens, while its literary qualities such as its themes, characters, symbolism, structure, and enduring cultural impact, are overlooked. It’s encouraging to see the novel treated seriously as a work of literature worthy of analysis and debate.
As a side note, several years ago PBS reached out to me to discuss Atlas Shrugged, as one of one hundred novels, for their program called The Great American Read. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK4LYRR9OD0
I will watch!
Another source for a heroine to compare Dagny Taggart to is Bettina in Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Shuttle. Also a wonderful villain to compare to Jim Taggart. I would love to listen to a podcast if you ever review this book.
oh I would like to read that, thanks!!
Great model of what literary discussion (and disagreement) can look like.
@Henry mentions "It's much less crazy than the actual Randians I have met in the world." Why do you think Randians are often considered crazy? What is the translation error that is occurring? Is it simply, as you quoted earlier, that Randians orientation toward Ayn Rand are that of supplicants to their mystical leader/dictator?
@Anecdotal Hollis Robbins also mentions "I see [Atlas Shrugged] fitting into the network of so many things that I had read..." What are other books that you suggest the audience read to help contextualize this book?
Reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's DRED is a great place to start. Also Henry and I texted a lot about Gatsby even if that conversation didn't make it into the podcast.
Well I think many of them hold quite extreme and unyiedling ideas!
Why should on yield to wrong ideas?
This was so great to listen to. Thank you! The documentary on her, A Sense of Life, does a good job of contextualizing her. Also, a close study of Objectivism, her philosophy, helps one better understand what she was doing in Atlas Shrugged, as well as Anthem and Fountainhead. Her books are out-workings of her philosophy, at the center of which is her “ideal man (or woman)” and a moral rationalism as a virtue (rational egoism). She is doing both in one genre: dramatic storytelling and philosophical exposition. She was born in Russian, and English was her second language, so her command of the English language is quite commendable and its grammar is representative of a Russian worldview, which is distinctively different from the modern American ethos. She witnessed the Bolsheviks destroy her family and country. She escaped to America and saw very early beliefs and propaganda in American media and politics that resembled an earlier time in Russian, which allowed for the communist seize (this greatly concerned her). She was a devout student of Victor Hugo and wanted to write like him but for a modern world, which explains her grandiosity of style. She was an atheist and her own sort of feminist. All of this forms the crux of where her point of view comes from. She writes a persuasive framework from which she believes can save America (and governments at large) and allow for human flourishing. It’s not perfect, but it is certainly worthy of study and contains many important points. All of this is why she can’t fit neatly into the American political paradigm. She perplexes or agitates many who try to do so. We must view her without the corrupting lens of Right versus Left but as herself within her context. There are stern critiques for both political parties. -sincerely an English professor and writer ✍🏼
Really enjoyed the conversation, thank you! Read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager and saw more and more critique, thought my recollection of the book must be wrong, re-read 2020 or so, felt even more to the point.
Thanks for this, it's been so long since I've read the Fountainhead and Atlas. I was young but what I remember most about them was not so much that they were particularly great novels, rather what great critiques of collectivism/planned economies they were.
And extremely minor quibble: I'm Utahn and I've very rarely hear anyone use the term "Utah University." It's University of Utah, not to be confused with Utah State University, Utah Valley University, Utah Tech University, or Southern Utah University.
Sometimes confusion is useful!
Tried Atlas Shrugged a decade ago and found it boring and juvenile.
This interview invigorated my interest in trying again.
If anyone can drop a Ayn Rand Reading List - I would appreciate it.
I guess you guys are too young to remember the last cycle of Rand being the vibe during the Tea Party era in USA and nascent future speaker of the house Paul Ryan a big Rand fan. It wasn’t too long ago…about ten years maybe. With Trump incoming I’m sure it will be in vogue again.
We mention Ryan giving it out to his staffers, yes. And I'm old enough to remember the Goldwater campaign thank you!
That’s when my dad became a fan. He had all her books and piles of The Objectivist newsletter in his study.
I was happy it’s time passed, reminds me of the worse of utilitarianism turning us into logic robots void of humanness…an interesting point of contact between a liberal movement like effective altruism and US conservativism
I worked in politics in the UK during that time and remember it well
Ayn Rand is philosophy for stupid people.
Especially stupid I would say. Heavy - handed and filled with intolerance on many levels. Her rankling at “collectivism” was naive and childish. Her novels’ characters were illustrative of humanity at its’ greediest and most self-serving… traits she would count as virtuous. Her philosophy on religion was particularly odious.
Read these books back in the early 70's as a college student. I was initially very taken by the philosophy and then I began to think about the implications for society and decided it was not for me. I do remember the books as being fairly ponderous with characters being moved around the chessboard. To each their own. Middlemarch they are not.