Since its publication in 1957, Atlas Shrugged has sold more than five million copies. Perhaps a measure of the book's continuing influence may be estimated from the results of a survey conducted jointly by the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club in 1991. The survey asked readers which books had made a difference in people's lives. The results found Atlas Shrugged placing second only to the Bible. ( 1 Library of Congress Information Bulletin, December 16, 1991, pp. 478-479. )
To quote from Michael Shermer:
The story begins in 1943 when an obscure Russian immigrant published her first successful novel after two consecutive failures. It was not an instant success. In fact, the reviews were harsh and initial sales sluggish. But slowly a following grew around the novel, word of mouth became the most effective marketing tool, and the author began to develop what could, with hindsight, be called a "cult following." The initial print-run of 7,500 copies was followed by multiples of five and 10,000 until by 1950 half a million copies were circulating the country. The book was The Fountainhead and the author Ayn Rand. Her commercial success allowed her the time and freedom to write her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957 after ten years in the making. It is a murder mystery, not about the murder of a human body, but of the murder of a human spirit. It is a broad and sweeping story of a man who said he would stop the ideological motor of the world. When he did, there was a panoramic collapse of civilization, with its flame kept burning by a small handful of heroic individuals whose reason and morals directed both the fall and the subsequent return of culture.
As they did to The Fountainhead, reviewers panned Atlas with a savage brutality that, incredibly, only seemed to reinforce followers' belief in the book, its author, and her ideas. And, like The Fountainhead, sales of Atlas sputtered and clawed their way forward as the following grew, to the point where the book presently sells over 300,000 copies a year. "In all my years of publishing," recalled Random House's owner, Bennett Cerf, "I've never seen anything like it. To break through against such enormous opposition!" (Branden, 1986, p. 298). Such is the power of an individual hero . . . and a cult-like following.
(end quote)
Controversy and rabid admiration follow in the wake of Ayn Rand. Many persons I've spoken to about Rand's philosophy are pretty vague about understanding it fully.
I personally prefer her philsophy writing to her fiction (with exceptions) and have read all of it.
Rand is COMPLETELY left out of any/all textbooks on the history of philosophy as though she never existed. The reason is fairly obvious. She roasted both ends of the philosophy spectrum with scathing criticisms of the worthlessness in academia.
But, her work and her influence remain untouched.
ANYBODY up for discussion about Ayn Rand, her work, her philosophy?
Any questions, opinions, views?
T.