January 23, 1958
Mrs. Ayn Rand 36 East 36 Street New York, N. T.
Dear Mrs, Rand:
I am not a professional critic and I feel no call to judge the merits of a novel. So I do not want to detain you with the information that I enjoyed very much reading Atlas Shrugged and that I am full of admiration for your masterful construction of the plot.
But “Atlas Shrugged” is not merely a novel. It is also — or may I say: first of all — a cogent analysis of the evils that plague our society, a substantiated rejection of the ideology of our self-styled “intellectuals” and a pitiless unmasking of the insincerity of the policies adopted by governments and political parties. It is a devastating exposure of the “moral cannibals,” the “gigolos of science” and of the “academic prattle” of the makers of the “anti-industrial revolution.” You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you.
If this be arrogance, as some of you critics observed, it still is the truth that had to be said in this age of the Velfere State.
I warmly congratulate you and I am looking forward with great expectation to you future work.
Sincerely,
Ludwig von Mises