Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Rand, Ayn (Vol. 30) - John Chamberlain

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JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

["Atlas Shrugged"] is a work of fiction, a piece of inspired and thoroughly exciting story-telling that drags only in some of the lengthier speeches which tend to recapitulate points already established by the action. But it is so much more than a mere novel….

"Atlas Shrugged" will satisfy many readers on many separate planes of satisfaction. It has its Buck Rogers flavor—and pace—for those who delight in science fiction. It can be taken as a philosophical detective story…. It can be read as a Socratic dialogue on ethics, or as a profound political parable. Or, as Miss Rand would herself prefer, it can be accepted as a poetic celebration of man as an heroic being, "with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

It is as a political parable that "Atlas Shrugged" has its most immediate application…. Miss Rand believes that whenever...

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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