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The New York Times talks about the forthcoming Atlas Shrugged movie starring Angelina Jolie. The usual narrative is intact. Ayn Rand's powerful and immensely successful cry for capitalism is treated as one might a romance novel -- not to be taken seriously, but nevertheless very popular. The novel's philosophical seriousness is offered as reason why not to take the book seriously. It's most powerful elements, its lengthy passages on economic and political topics within the story arc are dismissed "the philosophy that it hammers home endlessly" in "Castro-length monologues." The Times has the gall to cite itself -- its own contemporary review -- as proof of the book's flimsiness:

“It howls in the reader’s ear and beats him about the head in order to secure his attention,” Granville Hicks wrote in The New York Times, “and then, when it has him subdued, harangues him for page upon page. It has only two moods, the melodramatic and the didactic, and in both it knows no bounds.”

Yet “Atlas” was a best seller.

Could the Times review have been wrong? No -- surely the book-buying public is wrong. Just wait till the movie is a hit. The public will be wrong again.

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