(Googling myself sometime back, I found that someone set up a link to these reviews on an academic-style website devoted to Ayn Rand.)

How unremittingly bad a piece of work do I think Atlas Shrugged is? Just know that it's 1160 pages long, and I read up to page 1000 and then gave up. I gave up on a 1160 page book with less than 200 pages to go. That means I can't really say I've read Atlas Shrugged. If Ayn Rand comes up in a conversation, I can't say, "Oh, Ayn Rand? Well, I read Atlas Shrugged, and I can say, without pause, that it is the worst book I've ever read or will ever read." And I really, really want to be able to say that. I want my Ayn Rand war story. I want my membership card into the "The Ayn Rand's Victims Club." But I fell short, and I can only say, that Atlas Shrugged is the worst piece of poo I've ever read most of. The damn thing just beat me.

For those of you who don't know anything about Ms. Rand, she was the founder of a philosophy called "Objectivism." Objectivism broken down to its key tenets, states that A is A, money = good, one should take pride in holding ones own, personal liberties are not only expediently desirable, but morally correct and "the common good" is an evil perpetuated by the weak. Got it? Well, in case you didn't, she'll make certain you understand by hammering away at these points again and again and again. First, she'll demonstrate them about 100 times throughout the course of a laughably overwrought and highly unrealistic story of a train company, a crumbling nation, and a hidden society of really smart hardworking people. Then, to make sure that her jackhammer subtly doesn't leave any uncertainty, she forgoes the "Show. Don't tell." rule, and peppers the book with a number of long, ham fisted diatribes delivered by the characters who collectively act as her mouthpiece. One speech, delivered as a radio address, appears towards the end of the book, and it goes on for 100 pages. I shit you not. It's what finally broke me.

Aside from the "Groundhog Day" repetitiveness of the book's theme and its bloated length, the only other minor complaints I have about the book is that Rand's style sucks donkey cock and the story and characters lick donkey 'taint. Her characters are all allegorical, the romances in the book would make a soap opera writer cringe, and the dialogue makes David Mamet's seem organic in comparison.

One hundred and sixty pages to go and I quit. Maybe I should pick it up again to say I did it. On one hand, if I do read the last 160 pages, I can say that I wouldn't let it beat me. On the other hand, this is a book that has the following declaration made by an anti-socialist Scandinavian pirate (again, I shit you not):

One hundred and sixty more pages? No Mas. No Mas. You win, god damn you.

RJ's follow up to my review

Atlas Shrugged - Better Dead than Read

I think some Randians have convinced themselves that people who don't like Atlas Shrugged are either mindless communist go-alongs or members of the liberal intelligentsia (if there's a difference). Well, I'm a Republican, and though I'm know that greed may be good, I also know that this book blows.

Imagine Fyodor Dostoevsky with no talent

Unlike my esteemed colleague, I didn't even put a dent in this turgid boondoggle. I tagged out around page 250, after reading the same over-philosophized economic old saw for what felt like the fifteenth time and realizing that I was probably going to have to read it about 45 more times if I wanted to finish the book. Shrugged compels you to constantly check the page number, not to monitor your progress, but to assure yourself that you're not reading the same page over and over again. It's a polemical Groundhog Day: A 1,100 page hamster wheel. Think about it--The Great Gatsby was a hair over 190 pages, while Common Sense topped out around 50, but copies of Shrugged despoil our nation's woodlands to the tune of over 1,000 pages. Take it from someone who is undisciplined, that is undisciplined writing of megalomaniac, almost masturbatory, proportions.

Their Name is Legion

Even more frightening than the book itself is its enormous and ever-expanding readership. If you take public transportation, you probably can't go a month without stumbling across some poor slob who is 600 pages deep in this bottomless pit. And it's not just shmoes with whom you ride the train, it's also your friendly ex-Federal Chairman, Alan Greenspan. Throughout the sixties, Greenspan was a hierophant of Objectivism and a devotee of Rand's cult of personality, which referred to itself as "The Collective." He was also probably Rand's boy toy. And if the idea Al and Ayn making sweet econolove isn't disturbing enough, consider how Greenspan once described the group's belief system:

"Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived. Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world. Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter of any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or appropriate to man's life on earth."

How do you feel about your 401(k) now?