By the end of this tedious novel, you’ll certainly know who Galt is, but will have lost almost any interest long before then. Preachy, repetitive, and ultimately boring, ’’Atlas Shrugged’’ trudges through the author’s socioeconomic fairyland to an anticlimactic conclusion that could have been better written with half the verbage. Besides, Rand’s premise that a modern technological society is wholly dependent upon the daily input of a handful of individuals is absurd. I understand that this novel is considered a contemporary classic by many, but they must have picked up the Reader’s Digest version. To those who believe that corporatism is king and altruism is foolish, Rand’s objectivism may seem plausible. To anyone who understands elementary economics and sociology, her entire line of reasoning seems childishly naive.
The bottom line?
She packs 30 minutes of drama into 12 hours of reading. It makes me wonder if she was paid by the word for this project.