Ayn Rand Eviscerated in GQ

I’ve not read anything by Andrew Corsello before, but his evisceration of Ayn Rand in GQ magazine is a thing of caustic, vicious and snark-filled beauty.

I did my share of battle with the Rand Cult earlier this fall when I interviewed her Ghost to discuss capitalism’s share of blame for the credit crisis.  Corsello never meets her ghost, but speaks to quite a few of her acolytes in his piece.

I’m adding Andrew Corsello to my list of writers to keep up with.

Here’s why:

goddamn, the experience of being 19 years old and reading Ayn Rand! The crystal-shivering-at-the-breaking-pitch intensity of it! Not just for that 19-year-old, but for everybody unfortunate enough to be caught in his psychic blast radius. Is “experience” even the right word for The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged? Ayn Rand’s idolization of Mickey Spillane and cigarettes and capitalism—an experience? Her tentacular contempt for Shakespeare and Beethoven and Karl Marx and facial hair and government and “subnormal” children and the poor and the Baby Jesus and the U.N. and homosexuals and “simpering” social workers and French Impressionism and a thousand other things the flesh is heir to: experience?

Read the rest:

The Bitch is Back (GQ)

Read Also:

Interview With The Ghost Of Ayn Rand (TRB)