Like many young men, in my youth I became fascinated with a fantasy series of novels with wooden dialogue, stilted characters, and naive models of human interaction: the writing of Ayn Rand.

There is so much that is inept, odious, gross, ugly and base in her writing that boasts self-importance and depth while it possesses neither. But there is one area where Rand showed an aptitude if not an outright gift: horniness. Especially the rush to rut as sublimated into … industrial Pennsylvania.