I'm 128 pages in out of about 600. So far it's far better book. Much easier to read.
Of course I started off mostly liking Atlas Shrugged as well, but so far in The Fountainhead I'm not seeing any of the warning signs I say early in that story, so I am more hopeful I will like the story, and not detest the characters I am supposed to like. One definitely sees patterns in Rand's characters, however. I'm suspicious that the suffering-for-love's-sake female character is going to be punished the way Rand punished a similar character in Atlas Shrugged.
Of course I started off mostly liking Atlas Shrugged as well, but so far in The Fountainhead I'm not seeing any of the warning signs I say early in that story, so I am more hopeful I will like the story, and not detest the characters I am supposed to like. One definitely sees patterns in Rand's characters, however. I'm suspicious that the suffering-for-love's-sake female character is going to be punished the way Rand punished a similar character in Atlas Shrugged.
The best thing so far is that Rand is much more conservative as a story-teller in sticking close to historical reality. She sets the story in 1922 specifically, and we feel like we are in the real New York of that era, and not an alternate reality (in which Lincoln didn't build the Union Pacific, or something weird like that) or in which the laws of physics are different than our own.
The thing that really bugs me about Rand in this book, however, is something that also bugged me in Atlas Shrugged. It's this: Rand makes judgments of taste in art which she considers as absolute. Each man and woman must live in freedom, but that freedom is supposed to converge on appreciation of certain expressions of art that Rand considers valid, and to shun ones that she considers as invalid. It's a deep contradiction in her world view, if you ask me, which is perhaps why Randians come across as severe know-it-alls while thumping you on the head about personal liberty.
To make it worse, her critique of architecture settles squarely on the genius of modernism, both its raw form, but also in its explicit discarding of tradition and the past. All forms of past architecture are invalid to her.
Can one think of a more deleterious attitude than this, which creates the god-awfulness of the Twentieth Century modern city, which feels soulless, and inspires only the desire to escape?
Yes I get that maybe we had to "forget" traditional forms for a while, to break free. But now everything Rand said about the cult of Classical-Gothic-Renaissance in vogue in architects of her era is now what one says about modern architecture, namely that's an Emperor Has No Clothes cult of mutual adoration among so-called architectural artists who give each other awards even though the public hates their work and wishes to tear it down and replace it with something more amenable to human usage (that happens to feel Classical or day one say it, Medieval).
The thing that really bugs me about Rand in this book, however, is something that also bugged me in Atlas Shrugged. It's this: Rand makes judgments of taste in art which she considers as absolute. Each man and woman must live in freedom, but that freedom is supposed to converge on appreciation of certain expressions of art that Rand considers valid, and to shun ones that she considers as invalid. It's a deep contradiction in her world view, if you ask me, which is perhaps why Randians come across as severe know-it-alls while thumping you on the head about personal liberty.
To make it worse, her critique of architecture settles squarely on the genius of modernism, both its raw form, but also in its explicit discarding of tradition and the past. All forms of past architecture are invalid to her.
Can one think of a more deleterious attitude than this, which creates the god-awfulness of the Twentieth Century modern city, which feels soulless, and inspires only the desire to escape?
Yes I get that maybe we had to "forget" traditional forms for a while, to break free. But now everything Rand said about the cult of Classical-Gothic-Renaissance in vogue in architects of her era is now what one says about modern architecture, namely that's an Emperor Has No Clothes cult of mutual adoration among so-called architectural artists who give each other awards even though the public hates their work and wishes to tear it down and replace it with something more amenable to human usage (that happens to feel Classical or day one say it, Medieval).
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