I have a few simple points to make about the works of Ayn Rand. I am not really a student of literature so maybe my viewpoint is very naive but this is what I feel.
1)Lot of writers have come up with work that expounds a particular philosophy- Bernard Shaw for example. However, every one of them used a certain amount of subtlety and humour. Contrast this to Ayn Rand. Humour , of course, is non-existent in her work and as far as subtlety goes her attitude is akin to taking a hammer and smashing your point in. In doing this, one of the main techniques she uses is to build up false caricatures and misrepresent what the other side has to say. If portrayed in a certain fashion, virtually anything can be made to look ridiculous. For example, consider the narrative(Atlas shrugged) in which Hank Rearden's mother is trying to convince him to bother about his brother...
I wonder why using such techniques should not be called dishonesty?
2)Whatever you write about, the end result is that you are writing about people- and so it is essential to build up interesting characters. Where are the characters in her novels? Everyone is either all good or all bad. All the 'all good' people are people who put in a lot of effort into their work and all the 'all bad' people are those who are cunning and lazy. Thats it! There is a huge profusion of these two types in her novels and nothing else!
I havent come across a single genuine scientific argument in her work. Every statement she makes is based on some kind of a ridiculously exaggerated caricature. How can this be accepted as rational logic? Also, there is just one situation she portrays again and again-which is these cunning lazy people obstructing these hard working productive people. Why insult the reader's intelligence so much by repeating the same point hundreds of times?