o’con­nor’s crit­i­cal appraisal of ayn rand’s books is pret­ty straight­for­ward. but here’s one fac­toid worth know­ing. mick­ey spillane (ref­er­enced in o’con­nor’s let­ter) was a huge­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery writer, who sold some 225 mil­lion books dur­ing his life­time. accord­ing to his wash­ing­ton post obit, “his spe­cial­ty was tight-fist­ed, sadis­tic revenge sto­ries, often fea­tur­ing his alco­holic gumshoe mike ham­mer and a cast of evil­do­ers.” crit­ics, appalled by the sex and vio­lence in his books, dis­missed his writ­ing. but ayn rand defend­ed him. in pub­lic, she said that spillane was under­rat­ed. in her book the roman­tic man­i­festo, rand put spillane in some unex­pect­ed com­pa­ny when she wrote: “[vic­tor] hugo gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cathedral–dostoevsky gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cham­ber of hor­rors