As a fabulist and satirist, Ayn Rand works fine; if you let go of the notion that her stuff is in any ordinary sense realistic, there are many sharp flashes that seem true.
Especially the negative stuff, the Toohey chapters: she has a great eye for manipulation disguised as idealism. And since the '60s in the US some of his attributees no longer seem over the top at all. Her exaggerations for effect have become reality.
Practical men deal in bank accounts, real estate, advertising contracts and gilt-edged securities. They leave to the impractical intellectuals, like me, the amusements of putting the gilt edges through a chemical analysis to learn a few things about the nature and the source of gold. They hang on to Krem-O Pudding and leave us such trivia as the theater, the movies, the radio, the schools, the book reviews and the criticism of architecture. Just a sop to keep us quiet if we care to waste our time playing with the inconsequentials of life, while you're making money. Money is power. Is it, Mr. Wynand?
In a contemporary movie version Toohey would be a Cultural Studies professor. His acolytes would be Washington Post columnists, school board members, ACLU lawyers. One can only hope that the Hollywood types supposedly working on an Atlas Shrugged adaptation are smart enough to approach it in this spirit.
There may be something after all to the idea that Rand appeals to young people who boil her ideas down to the theme of "self-actualization"---even though this points directly to the patronizing thought that she her limited role is to inspire and be outgrown. Or perhaps to the thought there is no real program here to be adopted; that we always have to be thinking and re-thinking how the ideas should be applied. Which suggests that she is consistent to the extent of respecting the freedom of thought of her readers.
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