Ayn Rand was a brilliant, though deeply flawed individual (aren't we all?). Atlas Shrugged has stood the test of time as a great novel. Although verbose in several spots, her development of the characters has few peers.
Her character development is the
best thing about her novels. Though I did remember reading
The Fountainheadand determining she'd written an excellent novel on behalf of horrible architecture. (To this day I think it's a better novel
than
Atlas Shrugged.)
My own take on Rand is this: She was eloquent in arguing against statism and she should have left it at that. Trying
to catechise it into a formal, almost (dare I say it) religious movement proved her downfall, in hand with a pecadillo
or three that helped wreck her original movement.
I wouldn't speculate what Chambers would have thought of the
Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I got why he felt
as he did about
Atlas Shrugged. In college years, when I wrote for my campus bi-weekly, I had a round or
two with the Randians on campus over a Rand-related event and wrote rather critically of it. But I remember this
above most regarding those exchanges: As you could almost expect from any one of them, I was reminded
personally and verbally of Rand's mantra: "A = A." When I replied by quoting one from James Burnham---"Who says
A, must say B"---the Randian who confronted me personally was stuck for an answer.