Why I read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead-and maybe you should too!

It's a controversial text, but as a unashamedly leftie artist, I cannot recommend reading such a challenging work enough. In my personal opinion, a better novel than Atlas Shrugged--although I haven't read that for many years. However, I guarantee not everything she says you will agree with. But that's what great about it: a polemical text that helps you refine your own ideas by taking such an opposite stance and arguing, at times, so convincingly.
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[@jodeelee7896]

Can't wait for the next video.

[@jodeelee7896]

Very informative!

[@davida.rosales6025]

This was a very useful review. Perhaps the first convincing argument I've heard to read her fiction.

[@charliereviews7448]

I'm putting together a list of some of my favourites now. If there's any books particularly you'd like me to review, let me know.

[@jodeelee7896]

I would be very interested in a review of The Great Gatsby.

[@davida.rosales6025]

Are you still taking requests?

[@charliereviews7448]

@@davida.rosales6025 Yes, still taking recommendations. I have a a couple of filmed videos left to edit but always open to suggestions :-) it might be a couple weeks though as I have just started rereading Dune to compare with the film and tv adaptations.

[@davida.rosales6025]

@@charliereviews7448 Dune's cool. I don't think Herbert ever superceded it. It's probably his most elegant and instructive, as far as that kind of writing can be so. I was thinking of a very short novel that is quite subtle and so is skimmed over most of the time: The House of the Vampire, by George Sylvester Viereck.

[@charliereviews7448]

@@davida.rosales6025 Yes, it was definitely his best work. Had better depth and structure than his other stuff. My preference is generally classics but I do have a soft spot for sci-fi and horror. Iain M Banks is my go to when I want something easy to read that isn't going to be so intensely character driven. And cool, I've added it to my wish list :-) I reread a few classic vampire novels recently so will be interesting to see how it compares.

[@ribblemcdibble]

I might like her more than you do!?!

[@sorvoe5513]

Why I read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand at age 12: It inspired Rush: 2112

[@charliereviews7448]

And Bioshock (although Atlas Shrugged to a higher degree).

[@alg11297]

Um, if Roark was let go from Architecture School, how could he practice as a licensed architect? I mean, isn't this like hiring a para legal to complete a major legal court case?

[@ianperez5350]

He’s unlicensed in the book and uninterested in getting licensed

[@alg11297]

@@ianperez5350 so he practices architecture illegally? And he's the hero? The ultimate man?

[@ianperez5350]

@@alg11297 lol I honestly don’t know about the legality as it’s never discussed but the licensing organization is an architects guild of sorts that all retain similar ideas of traditional design. However, I don’t believe that Roark didn’t join because of their ideals, which he would’ve hated anyways, but more because he’s not worried about the thoughts of other architects and doesn’t want to be a part of an organization just to be in an organization as it provides no value in his eyes. It seems that it’s complete indifference to collectivization that Roark possesses.

[@MNizamee]

​@alg11297 i cant tell if you're being ironic but I'm personally enjoying the idea that youre sincerely concerned about the legality of Howard Roark's career.

[@alg11297]

@@MNizamee No. The novel just makes no logical sense. Would you hire an architect who was apparently thrown out of his graduate school and apparently didn't pass the state license test? Think about that next time you visit the dentist.

[@scholtzmaritz6011]

How much different would the content of The Fountainhead (and Atlas Shrugged) have been, had Ayn Rand been, instead of a hardcore atheist, a hardcore born-again Christian?

[@charliereviews7448]

It's a good question. I'm an atheist myself, but I have a lot of respect for religion. I've read the Bible and Quran. Intending to read the Bhagavad-Gita soon. I would say that it would be difficult to reconcile that kind of pro-capitalist, ego-centric individualism with the core message of Christianity. Unfortunately, the right wing in the US has been doing just that for decades on a large scale, so that's not necessarily true. In the end, I think particularly if she were a born-again Christian, I might've expected less condemnation of pity/empathy and more lip service to Christian doctrine, even if she still felt that great individuals were somehow these supreme admirable beings. Maybe Howard Roark would've sounded more like Trump. Although I think in the version as is, she probably would have identified Trump as more like Peter Keating, a man with no self, merely constituted of the reflection of other men's desires and ideas.

[@scholtzmaritz6011]

@@charliereviews7448 If she was a hardcore born-again Christian, I think she would have asked herself, "Who is the most successful person, who ever lived and will ever live on planet Earth?" Then she would have answered, "The eternal second person of the eternal triune Godhead, Yahweh, embodied in human form in the person, who went by the name of Yahshua (Jesus) of Nazareth." Then she might have asked herself, "What makes him the most successful person to have ever lived and will ever live on planet Earth?" The answer to that question would then have run like a golden thread throughout the book.

[@alg11297]

Isn't it just bad writing with female sexual desires thrown in?

[@charliereviews7448]

Define bad writing. At times it's way too concerned with its own rhetoric. At other times, Rand really knows how to turn a phrase and she understands that we can empathise with quite difficult characters when you put them up against enough obstacles. I'm not rating the author's politics. I'm not really interested in doing so either.

[@alg11297]

@@charliereviews7448 You ever wonder it's not taught in any literature class or her philosophy taught in any philosophy class in the world. When I read Atlas Shrugged I started underlining the awkward phases that appeared on nearly every page. I was given the excuse the Rand learned English as a second language. Kind of like Joseph Conrad?

[@charliereviews7448]

Putting a writer on a literature class is pretty much promoting that writer by introducing them to a wider audience. Considering how liberal English Lit. Professors are generally I can see why they would not want to promote Rand. Her works have done amazingly well considering. I don't agree with her ethics (I'm an ethical utilitarian = the greatest good for the greatest number, hence veganism). But to say that Rand can't write is to conflate your aesthetic taste with absolute fact. She gets a lot of stuff to right. As someone who has studied writing, one of the basic principles is to have a protagonist with a clear goal and obstacles in their path. This novel has that in spades. As for Conrad, you don't think he can write? He's considered by many to be a pioneering prose stylist with some dodgy race politics to let down his legacy.

[@charliereviews7448]

*right, not to right