Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Rand, Ayn (Vol. 30) - Harold Strauss

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HAROLD STRAUSS

["We the Living"] is slavishly warped to the dictates of propaganda. Actually Miss Rand can command a good deal of narrative skill, and her novel moves with alacrity and vigor upon occasion. It is only the blind fervor with which she has dedicated herself to the annihilation of the Soviet Union that has led her to blunder into palpable improbabilities. We refer strictly to artistic probability; we cannot here hold in question the facts upon which Miss Rand's political attitude is based.

To the unwary "We the Living" will possess the semblance of impartiality, for it is the story of a girl who was loved by two men—by Leo, an aristocrat, and by Andrei, a Communist. But the dice are heavily loaded in the favor of Leo from the beginning, for Kira, the girl, is the daughter of a formerly wealthy factory owner; aside from Leo's greater physical attractiveness, her background has imbued her whole being with a yearning for the gentility and...

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1. Introduction
2. Harold Strauss
3. Ben Belitt
4. William Plomer
5. Lorine Pruette
6. Albert Guerard
7. John Chamberlain
8. Ruth Chapin Blackman
9. Granville Hicks
10. Helen Beal Woodward
11. Patricia Donegan
12. Gore Vidal
13. Nathaniel Branden
14. Bruce Cook
15. Gerald Raftery
16. Philip Gordon
17. Mimi R. Gladstein
18. KEVIN McGANN
19. Terry Teachout
20. DOUGLAS DEN UYL and DOUGLAS B. RASMUSSEN
21. Tamara Stadnychenko
22. Copyright

1. Ayn Rand