Newsweek's 1957 Review of 'Atlas Shrugged'

From Cary Schneider and Sue Horton, at the Los Angeles Times, "Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged': What the critics had to say in 1957."

Newsweek

Gigantic, relentless, often fantastic, this book is definitely not one to be swallowed whole. Throughout its 1,168 pages, Miss Rand never cracks a smile. Conversations deteriorate into monologues as one character after another laboriously declaims his set of values. One speech, the core of the book, spreads across 60 closely written pages. Yet once the reader enters this stark, strange world, he will likely stay with it, borne along by its story and its eloquent flow of ideas.

There's a whole bunch of reviews there as well, from people you haven't heard of unless you're a real literary person. Most of them are not very favorable. Even Whittaker Chambers, at National Review, sniffed at it.

BONUS: At American Glob, "Liberals Don’t Get Ayn Rand."