Of the ones I tried to read, Atlas Shrugged, and it’s not even close.
I’ve read it twice, and I agree. The plot amounts to spoiled, rich children take their ball and go home because they’re mad the poors won’t let them strip the world of resources for personal gain. The author makes it clear throughout the text that Dagny, Hank, and Galt are the heros for fucking off to larp as robber barons in the 1880’s.
As a philosophic text objectivism is naive at best and a cynical justification for authoritarianism at its worst.
Because the first time I read it I was a poor and stupid teenager slowly being pulled into an alt-right pipeline. After I figured that out I reread it with a more critical lens for closure.
I tried with it, I really fucking did. But GAWD was it so insufferable to hear how amazing and brilliant all these titans of business were so vastly more intelligent than the rest of the world. I got like a third of the way through before realizing I hated all of the charcters and didn’t care abiut what they were doing. So I decided to spend my time elsewhere.
It’s not the worst book I’ve read, but Anthem is close. I never had the urge to read Atlas Shrugged after that. The details of the evil, collectivist society are just so over-the-top, and the plot is just such obvious author-wish-fulfillment jack-off-ery. In my head canon, there’s an epilogue to the story which picks up a year later: Gaea has died in childbirth due to a breech baby, and Prometheus is crippled from a broken leg that healed badly. Hey, maybe there are benefits to society after all, y’know?
