The Fountainhead (1943; film, 1949), which became a durable best-seller, depicts its architect-hero as a superman whose egoism and genius prevail over timid traditionalism and social conformism. The Objectivist philosophy embodied in the book, inspired by Nietzsche, held that all real achievement is the product of individual ability and effort, that laissez-faire capitalism is most congenial to the exercise of talent, and that selfishness is a virtue, altruism a vice.
Rand's reversal of the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic made her a beacon for an avid and self-renewing cult of libertarian-conservative followers.
The allegorical Atlas Shrugged (1957), another perennial best-seller, combines science fiction and a political message.
Rand also wrote a number of nonfiction works expounding her beliefs, including For the New Intellectual (1961) and The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), and edited two journals propounding her ideas, The Objectivist (1962-71) and The Ayn Rand Letter (1971-76).
americanwriters.org
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It just sruck me, in a discussion, how did the NeoCon father Strauss and Ayn Rand get along??
Both had this theri stuff with sexuality, morality and great genius Noble Heroes plus the evil, ignorant masses??
PS Ayn Rand picked her artist name after Aino Kallas, an interesting Estonian-Finnish writer, and her last name from Aino's typewriter, model Sperry-Rand.
PPS At a minimum, they both struggled with the medieval stuff of "evil lurking in the dark" (although that too is a myth), representing the old belief and (messianic) hope of the "genius elite"..
need to do some digging:
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
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