The Objectivist novelist Ayn Rand sat down for an interview with Playboy in 1964, back when that magazine routinely did Q&As with incredible subjects. She gave opinions on everything from politics to philosophy to religion to literature. An excerpt from the interview, conducted by Alvin Toffler, in which she shares her ardently contrarian views of novelists of that era:

“Playboy: Are there any novelists whom you admire?

Ayn Rand: Yes. Victor Hugo.

Playboy: What about modern novelists?

Ayn Rand: No, there is no one that I could say I admire among the so-called serious writers. I prefer the popular literature of today, which is today’s remnant of Romanticism. My favorite is Mickey Spillane.

Playboy: Why do you like him?

Ayn Rand: Because he is primarily a moralist. In a primitive form, the form of a detective novel, he presents the conflict of good and evil, in terms of black and white. He does not present a nasty gray mixture of indistinguishable scoundrels on both sides. He presents an uncompromising conflict. As a writer, he is brilliantly expert at the aspect of literature which I consider most important: plot structure.

Playboy: What do you think of Faulkner?

Ayn Rand: Not very much. He is a good stylist, but practically unreadable in content–so I’ve read very little of him.

Playboy: What about Nabokov?

Ayn Rand: I have read only one book of his and a half–the half was Lolita, which I couldn’t finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them.”