David Bernstein says Ayn Rand was "one of the most influential English-language novelists of all time." This cannot possibly be true, can it?

Greenspan loved Ayn Rand. Greenspan was Fed chief during a period of unmatched increases in American prosperity. Thus she may indirectly have created more wealth than any other novelist. Ever.

Well, maybe St. Peter or someone.

There is trouble in the forest.
 

Literally, IYKWIMAITYD.

There is trouble in the forest.
 

The comments to that post are like a gold mine of unintentional comedy. Here's one Rand fan:

• Rand is not "preachy, pedantic," or "long winded." Nothing of her theme is not also found in her plot, in the logic of the events of her story. This is a rare thing to find in any literature. Her purpose was not propaganda or instruction, but contemplation and enjoyment. For a great many readers, her novels are exciting fun. She is also the most economical writer and the tightest novelist you can find. Her characters are much richer than Dickens's and far more pleasant to contemplate than most of Nabokov's. They behave more "believably" than many people I've actually known in reality - and, the heroes, far more logically. The same outcomes from the behaviors involved are to be found in both reality and Rand's work.

She is the Alpha and the Omega, apparently.

Hers isn't really so much an ideology as an absence of one. I think that's what makes her compelling. She excuses all the sins you want excused. The audience for that is limitless.

I get the appeal of her point of view to many -- what's odd to me is the suggestion that she's a good writer.

This is an odd case of substance trumping style. Her writing is flat out awful.

Jennifer Beals IS John Galt.
 

The following a propos exchange was in this Sunday's S.F. Chronicle:

• Dear Mick LaSalle: I was intrigued to find "Flashdance" on your list of movies with great endings: Our heroine, who has never studied ballet, is admitted to a classical ballet company on the basis of an audition that combines a gymnastic floor exercise with break dancing. Never happen!
  Nancy Lambert, Pinole
  
  Dear Nancy Lambert: That's just one more reason it's a great ending. If life were like the movies, movies wouldn't be necessary.

Name me a more influential English-language novelist.

Dickens. Seriously. Put aside his influence on other novelists, which itself would win the argument over Rand and so is not fair to raise here. Invented modern Christmas, which began the Victorian era as the least of four minor religious observances and now thanks to Dickens's enshrinement of personal sentimentality consumes free market economies for an entire quarter of a year. Meanwhile, exhaustively depicted a world that made socialism seem like a moral imperative. Rand merely tries to tear down what Dickens unintentionally created.

Half of what Britain thinks of itself is influenced by Shakespeare and the authors of the KJV, who are ineligible for the honor in question, but easily half of what Britain is was influenced by Dickens. I doubt there is any single American who could compete with Dickens (again, in terms of influence on the culture).

eta This argument is an insanity and I bring shame upon myself and this dojo to continue it. Google hits for "Ayn Rand": 2,570,000. Google hits for "Orwell OR Orwellian": 16,700,000.

Novelist with most direct creation of wealth would be Ian Fleming, once you count movie gross and consumer product placement. If it weren't for him, the American military industrial complex would have collapsed under its own weight, the British car industry would have been entirely dead by 1967, and the NRA would be going around saying automatic handguns were for dead Nazis, girls and pussies. Somewhere in heaven there is a steamroom where lots of white men are lined up to give Ian Fleming handjobs.

Good point. Ayn got me laid in college, when I met a girl at the Rathskeller who applied what she called the Ayn Rand Dealkiller Test. If you liked The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, well . . . let's just say that, fortunately for me, my school was filled with proto-fascists running around with worn copies of the two in their back pockets.

Norman Mailer

Barbara Cartland. Jesus H.

The Volokh Conspiracy has some guests with interesting posts about the Duke lacrosse scandal.