Atlas Shrugged Essay | Critical Essay #3

Atlas Shrugged Critical Essay #3

An American memoirist, journalist, and critic, Chambers is best known for his involvement in the 1948 trial that led to State Department official Alger Hiss's conviction for passing government documents to Soviet Agents. Once a member of the Communist Party, Chambers later became an editor and columnist for the staunchly conservative journal National Review, an evolution he chronicled in his autobiography Witness (1952). In the following essay, which was originally published in 1957, Chambers finds it difficult to take seriously the plot and philosophy of Atlas Shrugged, and maintains that the work is more a tract than it is a novel.

Several years ago, Miss Ayn Rand wrote The Fountain-head. Despite a generally poor press, it is said to have sold some four hundred thousand copies. Thus, it became a wonder of the book trade of a kind that publishers dream about after taxes. So Atlas Shrugged had a...
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