Abstract

STEPHEN COX argues that American capitalism has found remarkably few exponents among modern American writers. Capitalists themselves have often been remarkably ineffective in expounding its principles. The most vigorous advocacy of capitalism has tended to come from people who stood at a distance from America's literary and social mainstream. Among them was Ayn Rand, who by writing from the "outside" succeeded in finding new imaginative constructions of the "inside" of American life. This essay examines the play of perspectives-inside and outside-in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and the ironies and parodies that result from the literary relationships of those perspectives