Pour some industry on me

So now Ms. McCardle , Mr. Douthat , and our own Sonny have expressed highly qualified praise of Ayn Rand, rightly noting her tendency toward tendentious prose. Curiously, however, no one has seen fit to mention the randy elephant in the room: her astonishingly discomfiting sex scenes.

The Fountainhead is basically The Accused with a happy ending. Atlas Shrugged features a kaleidoscopic portrait of love amongst the übermenschen. In layman’s terms, America’s future captains of industry run a train on Dagney Taggart over the course of about 1,000 pages.

And, at the risk of inviting a storm of abuse from loyal Randians, I might add that the sexual shenanigans of her characters paled beside those of the author.

Postscript: No mention of Atlas Shrugged can go without linking to Whittaker Chambers’ superb, witty review .