Ayn Rand as Author

Let it be said at the outset that I have never been an Objectivist nor am I now a Libertarian, albeit, obviously, I share many of their aims. There is much in Ayn Rand’s philosophy I admire, and much I despise. She has the odd ability to write pages and pages of very insightful wisdom argued with almost Thomistic rigor and logic, and then to stagger like a screaming drunk into page after page of vituperation and nonsense based on an apparently inability to distinguish radically unalike concepts, such as selfishness versus self-interest, or altruism versus communism.

But this is neither here nor there when it comes to judging her as an artist. I am continually flabbergasted by those who say they either admire, or at least do not find offense with, her philosophy, but who think her novel writing trite or cardboard or boring or hectoring.

With all such condemnations, I disagree in the strongest terms. Ayn Rand is — and I say this without qualification — among the best novelists of the Twentieth Century. Those who surpass her in skill and craftsmanship perhaps can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Ayn Rand was a better novelist than she was a philosopher, and she was the only philosopher worthy of that name since Kant, the only one to my knowledge who used logic to deduce moral truths, logic which she carried out with remorseless precision.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.