Gore Vidal: “Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality"
Can't even begin to say how much I'm going to miss this guy in the years to come
“This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest,” Gore Vidal said of Ayn Rand, writing for Esquire in July 1961, “and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the ‘freedom is slavery’ sort.”
The mindset of Rand’s followers has not changed over the decades. “She has a great attraction for simple people” Vidal said then, “who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the ‘welfare’ state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.”
Even so, then as now, Rand had a large following. “What interests me most about her,” wrote Vidal, “is not the absurdity of her ‘philosophy,’ but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about).”
Vidal also described Rand as “a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.”
http://www.gorevidalnow.com/2011/06/gore-vidal-on-ayn-rand-in-1961-she-has-a-great-attraction-for-simple-people/
= new reply since forum marked as read
might have been 
