AYN RAND WROTE THAT "The Man Who Laughs," by Victor Hugo, is "the greatest novel in world literature." Typically, it was a radically independent judgment. Hugo still is admired, today, especially in France (and, hey, "Les Miserables" didn't do so badly), but the admiration is more for his poetry than his novels. "The Man Who Laughs" is perhaps his least well-known novel, and, indeed, ask the average educated person, and "Les Miserables" is the only Hugo work they can name.) I first read "The Man Who Laughs" is a weird little, red-cardboard-covered volume taken from the old John Hay Library at Brown University. Then came the rather handsome volume issued by the Nathaniel Branden Institute, which I still own. I now am re-reading, "The Man Who Laughs," in light of my several months of research into Romanticism for my talk, this summer, at the Atlas Summit 2013. Ayn Rand saw through to the essence of Hugo's Romanticism--the portrayal of the glory of the human individual as a value-chooser--a moral being--but reading Hugo again I see, also, what a classic Romanticist he was. A dominant, though not DEFINING theme of Romanticism was to hold nature in awe--that admixture of admiration and fear, or, as Hugo might say, that clash within the soul of exaltation and dread. Accordingly, Hugo devotes chapter after chapter to describing a great storm at sea and how a tiny "hooker" ship comes to destruction. To quote is useless. Hugo seems to ignore no metaphor, no adjective, no personification in describing the storm--all mixing visual and even technical terms with a Thesaurus full of the most rarefied abstractions: soul, God, abyss, devil, terror, fate, eternity, infinity, fatality... If it were not so well done, and the characters thrown into this elaborate described nightmare so alive, it could be final great parody on Romanticism's worship of untamed nature. Hugo wrote four of his five novels during a very brief period, 1862 to 1974. Two of them, including "Toilers of the Sea" and "The Man Who Laughs," were written during 15 months spent mostly on the Channel Island of Guernsey, to which he was exiled for his unacceptable politics. He did not expect to return to France, and the dedication of "Toilers of the Sea" is to "That rock of hospitality, the Island of Guernsey, my present asylum, perhaps my grave..." But he did return to Paris. And, in 1974, published his last novel, "Ninety-Three." Then, for 11 years, he did not write another novel. It reminds one a bit of Ayn Rand. Except that Ayn Rand stopped writing novels when she wrote what she called her "metaphysical" novel--her "say it all" novel, "Atlas Shrugged." But Hugo published his metaphysical novel, "Les Miserables," in 1862, followed by "The Man Who Laughs," "Toilers of the Sea," and "Ninety-Three." I do not know why, exactly, Ayn Rand put "The Man Who Laughs" at the top--as Hugo's greatest novel and, so, the greatest novel in world literature. I will report, as I go along, and perhaps we can figure it out. I have an hypothesis. It is Hugo's most Romantic novel, both in classical terms and in Ayn Rand's terms. It has the purest love story ever told... But I think I'll tell you about that next time. Our visual is from a horrific scene in "The Man Who Laughs."