{"id":10828,"date":"2026-07-02T00:04:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/?p=10828"},"modified":"2026-06-20T23:43:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T04:43:21","slug":"reading-rand-as-literature-a-surprising-dialogue-between-two-literary-scholars-about-atlas-shrugged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/reading-rand-as-literature-a-surprising-dialogue-between-two-literary-scholars-about-atlas-shrugged\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Rand as literature: A surprising dialogue between two literary scholars about Atlas Shrugged\u2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg<\/a><\/p>\n

Ayn Rand\u2019s ideas have become so polarized and politicized that few people seem capable of appreciating her fiction on its own literary terms. It\u2019s rare to come across an honest dialogue between two highly educated, rational and open-minded people about Rand\u2019s Atlas Shrugged<\/i> as simply a novel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Henry Oliver and Hollis Robbins did just that in a fascinating and surprising dialogue, which I only recently discovered. Often illuminating and with fresh insights free from most conventional views of Rand and her magnum opus, their conversation is worth highlighting on the Prometheus Blog in order to bring it to the attention of LFS members and a wider group of readers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to have a conversation about Atlas Shrugged, <\/i>and we’re going to, as you say, talk about it as a novel. It always gets talked about as an ideology. We are very interested in it as a novel and as two people who love the great novels of the 19th century,\u201d Oliver said in introducing their conversation<\/a> on his Common Reader blog at common reader.co.uk.<\/p>\n

Their wide-ranging discussion centered on Atlas Shrugged <\/i>\u201cin conversation with the great novels of the past, Rand\u2019s greats skills of plotting, drama, and character, and what makes Atlas Shrugged <\/i>a serious novel, not just a vehicle for ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A former dean of the humanities at Utah University and special advisor on the humanities and AI, Robbins was trained as a scholar of 19th-century American, Victorian, and African-American literature. Notably, he read Rand\u2019s Atlas Shrugged <\/i>and The Fountainhead <\/i>before he read Dickens, Melville, Jane Austen or Harriet Beecher Stowe and thus describes Rand\u2019s novels as \u201cfoundational novels\u201d for him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Novelist Ayn Rand (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By contrast, Oliver, 38 at the time of the 2025 interview, had not read Rand at all until recently. \u00a0She had little reason to, she explained, based on what others told her.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor my whole life, people have said, “Oh, that’s really a bad book. That’s so badly written. That book is no good.” The number one thing I can say to people is this book is fun,\u201d Oliver told Robbins.<\/p>\n

A BILDUNGSROMAN?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robbins, meanwhile, describes Atlas Shrugged as \u201cnot quite a bildungsroman.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201c It is in some ways the story of her (Dagny Taggart, a young woman and the operations person for Taggart Transcontinental Railroad)\u2026 coming to the realization of how the world works,\u201d Robbins said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s also the story of the decline of America, and the ways that, in this Randian universe, these villainous group of people who run the country are always taking and extracting from producers. As she’s creating and building this great railroad and doing wonderful things and using Rearden metal to do it, something is pulling all the producers out of society, and she’s like, “What is going on?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Robbins also noticed the many uncanny ways in which Atlas Shrugged<\/em> anticipated the long-term political, social and economic consequences if collectivism and statism continued to change America.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree speech, all these topics, energy production\u2026 We\u2019re seeing this in the headlines,\u201d Robbins said. \u201cWhen I was reading this book, I was like, “Oh my God, how did she know?”<\/p>\n

Their discussion encompasses probing critiques of other stereotyped views about Rand from both Left and Right, and explores the feminist view of Rand.<\/p>\n

A MODERN HEROINE<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/b>They also discuss how modern is Dagny Taggart, strikingly coming across as \u201cone of the new women\u201d of the novel\u2019s 1950s-era.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve read a lot of 1950s fiction. This is not the typical woman,\u201d Henry said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, this is not Cheever,\u201d Hollis said. \u201cThis is not a bored suburban housewife at a time when the way the ’50s are taught, certainly in America, it’s like women could work during the war, then they were suburban housewives, there was bored, there were key parties and all sorts of Cheever sorts of things. This is not that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among their other provocative insights and comments:<\/p>\n

* Despite Rand\u2019s avowed atheism, Atlas Shrugged is a \u201cvery Protestant\u201d book\u2026 \u201ca Weberian Protestant.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Atlas Shrugged<\/i> is in many ways in the spirit of some of the greatest 18th and 19th century novels – and they agree that Dagny is close to Dorothea from George Eliot\u2019s classic novel Middlemarch.<\/i><\/p>\n

They also compare Rand favorably to Jane Austen and the Brontes, especially regarding her treatment of her central male-female relationship.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the interesting things about Rand, what is different from like Austen and the Bront\u00ebs and whatever, is that Dagny and Hank are not in opposition before they get together,\u201d Henry said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have actually this unusual thing in romance and literature, which is that they have a meeting of minds. What gets in the way is that the way their minds agree is contra mundum and the world has made this problem for them,\u201d Henry said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>AN ETHOS OF EXCELLENCE
\n<\/b>
\nPerhaps most intriguingly, rather than stereotyping and dismissing Rand\u2019s philosophy as one advocating selfishness or blindly pursuing greedy profits at the expense of others, they respond positively to Atlas Shrugged <\/i>as a healthy and attractive vision focusing <\/i><\/b>on <\/b>an ethos of personal excellence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk a lot these days about, \u201chow can I be my best self?\u201d That\u2019s what Rand is saying. She’s saying, actually, it\u2019s not about earning money, it\u2019s not about being rich. It is about the perfection of the moral life,\u201d Robbins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s about the pursuit of excellence. It\u2019s about the cultivation of virtue. These are the important things. This is what Dagny is doing. When all the entrepreneurs at the end, they\u2019re in the happy valley, actually, between them, they have not that much money, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Common Reader interview<\/a> was titled \u201cIs Ayn Rand the New Vibe?\u201d<\/p>\n

Read in retrospect in mid-2026, that seems too trendy.<\/p>\n

Rand\u2019s ideas, and her fiction, do continue to be major bestsellers four decades after her death – no mean feat, given that even bestselling authors and books tend to fade away over time. But Rand is clearly not the \u201cnew vibe\u201d – at least, not yet, not when her fiction is so misunderstood and her philosophy remains so radical – in the original Greek sense of that word, referring to what\u2019s most fundamental about reality and life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS<\/b><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us!<\/b> To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, \u00a0join<\/a> the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n

Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.<\/p>\n

* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/b>For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced \u00a0Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of the 106 works that have won a Prometheus since 1979 fits the awards\u2019 distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/a><\/p>\n

* Read \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/a> an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/i>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg Ayn Rand\u2019s ideas have become so polarized and politicized that few people seem capable of appreciating her fiction on its own literary terms. It\u2019s rare to come across an honest dialogue between two highly educated, rational and open-minded people about Rand\u2019s Atlas Shrugged as simply a novel. Henry Oliver and Hollis Robbins … Continue reading Reading Rand as literature: A surprising dialogue between two literary scholars about Atlas Shrugged\u2028<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,1854,1585],"tags":[558,2855,167,2856,2854],"class_list":["post-10828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-ayn-rand","category-fiction-in-the-news","tag-atlas-shrugged","tag-austen","tag-ayn-rand","tag-brontes","tag-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-2OE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10828"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11061,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions\/11061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}