[SMS]

I read The Fountainhead way back in 1996 when I was far too young to understand it. I read Atlas Shrugged last year and was hooked. I re-read The Fountainhead after that but I just couldn't enjoy it as much as I had Atlas Shrugged. Is my evalutaion of The Fountainhead incorrect? Or is it just the fact that it was, in Miss Rand's words, an overture to Atlas Shrugged, that keeps me from enjoying it as much?

[Betsy]

SMS, on Jun 29 2004, 04:41 PM, said:

I read The Fountainhead way back in 1996 when I was far too young to understand it. I read Atlas Shrugged last year and was hooked. I re-read The Fountainhead after that but I just couldn't enjoy it as much as I had Atlas Shrugged. Is my evalutaion of The Fountainhead incorrect? Or is it just the fact that it was, in Miss Rand's words, an overture to Atlas Shrugged, that keeps me from enjoying it as much?

Maybe Atlas offers more of what you, personally, are looking for right now.

People have different optional values, they acquire new values as part of living, and that often affects what and how they respond to works of art or particular ideas.

[AMERICONORMAN]

One can read Atlas from the perspective of its literary role: as the epitome of the Romantic novel, in relation to Hugo, etc. Or Atlas as the ideal concretization of metaphysics, because of the fundamentality of the theme, and the fact that it is the right philosophy. Or Roark’s struggle and pain in resisting the agony of not having Dominique choose him for so many years. Or the great economics lesson in Atlas. Or the evidence why architecture should be considered an art, and how a building can be one’s fuel. Or the relation of Aristotle’s logic axioms as title for the 3 parts of Atlas: Non-Contradiction; Either-Or; AisA. Or how the fountainhead is a deep and intimate expose of 4 different types of moral natures: Keating—Toohey—Wynad—Roark. The novels are so rich that the choice between the two novels is impossible without proper context. But as pure literature, Atlas is the best one.

Americo.

[AwakeAndFree]

They are both so good, that for a long time I was't sure which I liked more. Then for a time I thought The Fountainhead is better.

Today I agree - Atlas Shrugged is the better novel.

[nimble]

i had the misfortune of reading Atlas Shrugged first. In turn, it made it so that I knew exactly what would happen and why it was happening in the Fountainhead. It kind of ruined the novel for me. Rand writes in a very unique way, and she consistently writes that way. So it makes her themes, plot and settings very predictable. If only I would have read Fountainhead, then AS I might have liked the Fountainhead better. I like both, but AS is the better novel.

[SMS]

I remember thinking after I'd finished The Fountainhead the second time that it was nowhere close to Atlas Shrugged in its pace and scope, covering very little ground in all its pages than Atlas Shrugged covered in very few. Like I said before, Miss Rand herself had said

Quote

"To all the readers who discovered The Fountainhead and asked me many questions about the wider application of its ideas, I want to say that I am answering these questions in the present novel and that The Fountainhead was only an overture to Atlas Shrugged."

She also said

Quote

"The Fountainhead was about "individualism and collectivism within man's soul"; it showed the nature and function of the creator and the second-hander. The primary concern there was with Roark and Toohey—showing what they are. The other characters were variations on the theme of the relation of the ego to others—mixtures of the two extremes, the two poles: Roark and Toohey. The story's primary concern was the characters, the people as such, their natures. Their relations to each other—which is society, men in relation to men—were secondary, an unavoidable, direct consequence of Roark set against Toohey. But it was not the theme.

Now, it is this relation that must be the theme. Therefore, the personal becomes secondary. That is, the personal is necessary only to the extent needed to make the relationships clear. In The Fountainhead I showed that Roark moves the world—that the Keatings feed upon him and hate him for it, while the Tooheys are consciously out to destroy him. But the theme was Roark—not Roark's relation to the world. Now it will be the relation."

I agree with Mrs. Speicher. I was utterly confounded by people and life in general and Atlas Shrugged gave me the tools I needed to understand them, or atleast ideas that I could work on. It's terrible to loose one's footing everytime one has to deal with people or even with oneself.

My problem with The Fountainhead seems to be my inability (so far) to clearly differentiate each character. My almost equivalent appraisal of each character makes it a book populated by a constant Roark-Toohey combo personality, which I'll have to clear up. I remember actually liking Ellsworth Toohey at some point.

As literature, Atlas Shrugged has no match. It's the sort of book that makes you feel like you'll never need (for guidance or inspiration) another book again. That is what literature is for, isn't it? It's sort of a handbook for life. Where it differs from The Fountainhead is in the direct applicability of its ideas to everyday life and that is how it was obviously meant to be.

I seem to have made the same mistake, nimble. That's exactly how I felt - that The Fountainhead had lost the charm a new book has before it has been and while it is being read. Not only has the inversion of the ideal sequence in which these book should have been read made The Fountainhead appear less significant than it really is but it has also led to a mental inversion of the proper logical sequence in which the ideas in the two books should have been placed.

[Tom Rexton]

Does the sequence of reading the two affect one's evaluation of them?

I for one read The Fountainhead first, and came to enjoy it more than Atlas Shrugged.

[SMS]

No, that's not what I meant. Although, like MinorityOfOne said in another thread, the branches of philosophy can be read in any order one finds interesting, it was difficult for me not to get confused when studying it in such an arbitrary fashion. Reading The Fountainhead after Atlas Shrugged was like slamming the brakes on a speeding vehicle and driving in reverse because of the fundamentality of the issues dealt with in The Fountainhead and the fact that Atlas Shrugged took many of them as understood, like egoism, individualism, etc.

[Areactor]

I honestly liked The Fountainhead more then Atlas Shrugged and I have high hopes that I'll be able to adapt it into a modern feature film. As an aspiring screenwriter and filmmaker, I wouldn't touch Atlas Shrugged.

I mean, what the hell would I put on screen during that speech?

[Spearmint]

Taken purely as works of fiction, ie novels, I would say that Fountainhead is many times better than Atlas Shrugged, since it is _actually_ a novel, whereas AS is more of a fiction-nonfiction hybrid. A book which contains dozens of philosophical tracts often longer than a page cannot be classed as 'fiction' in the sense that the term is normally used. A book with a 130 page essay embedded within it is not a 'novel', by any accepted definiton of the word.

As a work of philosophy however, AS is obviously far superior (although I do think that Galt's speech is out of place - it's far too indepth and long to be proper for inclusion in a piece of literature, and far too simplistic and unscholarly to stand-alone as a work of philosophy. I doubt that 90% of readers bothered reading more than a few pages of it on their first reading of the book)

[pvtmorriscsa]

Spearmint, on Jul 3 2004, 08:27 PM, said:

I doubt that 90% of readers bothered reading more than a few pages of it on their first reading of the book)

I must be part of the ten percent than. Not only did I read the entire speech, but when I was done I read it again.
Oh, I read Anthem, then The Fountainhead, and then Atlas Shrugged. Please don't ask me to pick favorites. I love them all.

[Fred Weiss]

Spearmint, on Jul 3 2004, 08:27 PM, said:

Taken purely as works of fiction, ie novels, I would say that Fountainhead is many times better than Atlas Shrugged, since it is _actually_ a novel, whereas AS is more of a fiction-nonfiction hybrid. A book which contains dozens of philosophical tracts often longer than a page cannot be classed as 'fiction' in the sense that the term is normally used. A book with a 130 page essay embedded within it is not a 'novel', by any accepted definiton of the word.

As a work of philosophy however, AS is obviously far superior (although I do think that Galt's speech is out of place - it's far too indepth and long to be proper for inclusion in a piece of literature, and far too simplistic and unscholarly to stand-alone as a work of philosophy. I doubt that 90% of readers bothered reading more than a few pages of it on their first reading of the book)

The speeches in AS are well integrated into the story line and in fact, given the nature of that story, are essential to it. This is a story of the strike of "the men of the mind", at the root of which were a body of ideas - and one cannot understand that strike without those ideas. It would be as if one were to write a fictionalized account of the American Revolution without the key ideas which prompted and motivated it.

Galt's Speech summarizes the ideas behind the strike. It couldn't be more than a summary and it had to be written in the form it was because it was a radio speech. But to also criticize it for not being a fully worked out philosophical treatise drops the entire context. (Ayn Rand spent the next 25 years of her life expanding on it.)

Whether readers pause and carefully study the speech on their first reading of the novel is really irrelevant. How many listeners to the (fictional) radio talk would have done that?

I'll just add that if what you said were true, then Victor Hugo didn't write novels either, since all his novels also include long essays on subjects related to the story.
In contrast to AR however the necessity of Hugo's digressions are often of questionable value to the story and are usually at best of marginal interest.

AS is in fact an extraordinary integration of ideas and story, of logical plot development and intriguing character development, combined with beautiful, clear writing style. In my view it is the greatest novel ever written.

Fred Weiss

[Spearmint]

Fred Weiss, on Jul 4 2004, 06:00 AM, said:

AS is in fact an extraordinary integration of ideas and story, of logical plot development and intriguing character development, combined with beautiful, clear writing style. In my view it is the greatest novel ever written.

Well I agree that AS was a great book, I just don't think it is great as literature qua literature. While I'm sure you enjoyed the many mini-essays (as did I), this would primarilly be because you agreed with their content. Someone who did not share Rand's philosophy would most likely have grown tired of the relentless proselytizing that occured on almost every second page. It's certainly hard to imagine someone unsympathetic to Rand's beliefs happily plowing through the forty-seventh speech that explains why morality is objective and why the failure to recognise this is destroying society.

I don't think that major agreement with an author's philosophy should be a pre-requistite to enjoy a book. It's certainly possible to write an Objectivism-themed novel without beating the reader over the head with the principles every second sentence, and Rand achieved this in the Fountainhead (probably in We Are The Living too, but I havent read it yet). Consider other supposed works of great literature such as those outputted by Tolstoy, Doestovsky or Hugo. Someone who disagreed with the philosophies of these authors may still find much of value within their works, and enjoy reading them regardless. I cannot say the same with regard to Atlas Shrugged.

[Fred Weiss]

Spearmint, on Jul 4 2004, 08:00 AM, said:

Well I agree that AS was a great book, I just don't think it is great as literature qua literature. While I'm sure you enjoyed the many mini-essays (as did I), this would primarilly be because you agreed with their content. Someone who did not share Rand's philosophy would most likely have grown tired of the relentless proselytizing that occured on almost every second page.  It's certainly hard to imagine someone unsympathetic to Rand's beliefs happily plowing through the forty-seventh speech that explains why morality is objective and why the failure to recognise this is destroying society.

I don't think that major agreement with an author's philosophy should be a pre-requistite to enjoy a book. It's certainly possible to write an Objectivism-themed novel without beating the reader over the head with the principles every second sentence, and Rand achieved this in the Fountainhead (probably in We Are The Living too, but I havent read it yet). Consider other supposed works of great literature such as those outputted by Tolstoy, Doestovsky or Hugo. Someone who disagreed with the philosophies of these authors may still find much of value within their works, and enjoy reading them regardless. I cannot say the same with regard to Atlas Shrugged.

So if the American Revolution had not occured and some genius of AR's caliber had conceived it in fiction, including the essence of the critical and motivating speeches and documents, would you also regard including them in the novel as mere proselytizing? And then would you also say that it would be unfair to include them because communists, socialists, and fascists would disagree with them - and why don't they have the right to enjoy the book as much as supporters of liberty?

Incidentally, a great many opponents of Objectivism have read and appreciated AS, even if they disagreed with it, just as Objectivists have read and appreciated any number of novels (such as Hugo's) which project philosophical beliefs they don't agree with.

What AS does require is a somewhat more sophisticated reader - but that is true of any great work of art, whether novel, symphony, drama, poetry, or music. In the case of AS all they would need to grasp and appreciate is the importance of ideas in shaping important events in history. True, some people don't get this or regard ideas as "just theory" or find them boring. And in fact, I understand, AR's publisher pleaded with her to cut some of it to make it more appealing and saleable. But AR knew to omit the ideas would in effect diminish the power of the book and thereby its greatness. Furthermore, it proved to be a phenomenal best seller and in contrast to many lesser works which don't burden the reader with what you regard as gratuitous speeches and which in fact became best sellers of their day, they have died and hardly anyone reads them any longer. But AS continues to sell and has to be regarded as a modern classic. It, along with its speeches, will be read for centuries to come.

Fred Weiss

[Spearmint]

No, it would be perfectly possible to describe the American Revolution in a fictional manner. It would be perfectly possible to describe the events of Atlas Shrugged in a fictional manner - the issue isnt the story itself, but the manner of the presentation. Theres nothing wrong with advocating a philosophy within a book (Fountainhead does this, as do many other books). However when your advocation of this philosophy results in regular page long speeches by characters, I don't think your work can be called purely fictional.

To continue your example, if the fictional account of the American Revolution had the entire text of Locke's 2nd Treatise on Government embedded within it, as well as the full Declaration of Independence, American Constitution, and assorted political speeches by Franklin and Jefferson, then I would claim that it would lose its classification of 'fiction' and become a hybrid of fiction and political philosophy. This is essentially how I view Atlas Shrugged.


Incidentally I'm not criticising Atlas Shrugged here - it is my second favourite book that I have read (Fountainhead being the first). I just dont think that it classes as 'literature' in the same way other classics do, due to the mode of presentation.

[AMERICONORMAN]

Spearmint,

You’re view of Atlas Shrugged is one of the silliest things I have ever heard. Just think of the drama of the big speech. Look how it happens, when it happens. The President is about to address the nation about the national crisis assuring them that more sacrifice will solve the problems. That is what the citizenry expect because that is all they’ve heard. Suddenly, the radio waves are taken over. Everyone in the country is listening to something they have never heard before, someone telling them the truth. For most it will be a slap in the face by a hand that they won’t be able to stop.

Look at the consequences of that speech. John Galt will now be in danger. What does that mean for Dagny and the rest of the gang? Do you remember the descriptions of the enemy characters after hearing the speech? Look at the conflicts prior to this speech that the speech will now begin to resolve in the ensuing action. Ayn Rand spent many years on those 47 pages. It does integrate to the rest of the action prior and after.

You probably find it hard to believe that anyone would give a speech of that length in real life. Francisco’s sex speech to Rearden is certainly long but it can happen and it is dramatic. It is what Rearden has wanted to hear for most of his life, and it speaks to his central situation. The same with the meaning of money speech. I find it hard to imagine anyone in today’s culture having a fist fight while reciting a “free-style” poem that describes the fighting action, and win, as Cyrano does in his sword duel scene. Very few men that I have met can speak about philosophy for long, or stay on the same issue. I knew only one personally and the things that he told me were certainly dramatic given my life situation back then. I certainly needed to hear those long speeches that would end up changing my life; I had one great professor.

But I am re-reading Atlas for the fifth or sixth time. And every page is exciting and I can’t wait to get to those speeches to see how they integrate with the action. I’ve learned a lot about philosophy, life, and the nature of Romantic fiction, and fiction writing itself, since the last time I read that novel. So I will have future missives where I will show how the speeches are necessary as they come up. But maybe someone will beat me to it.

And the reason a Hugo did not have long philosophical speeches is because he couldn’t write them. He was not a philosopher. If had been a philosopher he would have come up with a different philosophy because he was too much of a rebel to accept the Christian Ideal.

Americo.

[Spearmint]

AMERICONORMAN, on Jul 4 2004, 04:38 PM, said:

Spearmint,

You’re view of Atlas Shrugged is one of the silliest things I have ever heard.  Just think of the drama of the big speech.  Look how it happens, when it happens.  The President is about to address the nation about the national crisis assuring them that more sacrifice will solve the problems.  That is what the citizenry expect because that is all they’ve heard.  Suddenly, the radio waves are taken over.  Everyone in the country is listening to something they have never heard before, someone telling them the truth.

It was 130 pages long. I'm really not sure what else I can say in addition to this.

[AMERICONORMAN]

The length of the speech doesn’t matter. If the theme is the role of the mind in human existence, and the definition of a new morality, then certainly the declaration of that new morality in the form of a speech, is relevant and an integral part of the story. Besides, to present that morality in a book form would take volumes. It was a work of literary and artistic genius to condense it to however many pages it is. And the fact that the philosophy is a new one, makes every sentence dramatic.

I’m really not sure what else I can say in addition to this.

Americo.

[Fred Weiss]

Spearmint, on Jul 4 2004, 01:49 PM, said:

To continue your example, if the fictional account of the American Revolution had the entire text of Locke's 2nd Treatise on Government embedded within it, as well as the full Declaration of Independence, American Constitution, and assorted political speeches by Franklin and Jefferson, then I would claim that it would lose its classification of 'fiction' and become a hybrid of fiction and political philosophy. This is essentially how I view Atlas Shrugged.

If Atlas had included the equivalent of the "entire text" of OPAR, yes I'd agree with you. But keep in mind that OPAR itself is a summary of the philosophy. So Galt's Speech is a bare bones summary - and, I might add, a brilliant exercise in essentializing.

As for a fictional account of the American Revolution, yes it should include something like the equivalent of the Declaration of Independence and a number of the key speeches of the Founders. No, not the entire Constitution, but certainly the Bill of Rights and a number of the key provisions which are at the heart of the American system of gov't (such as "separation of powers"). But keep in mind this would be a fictional account assuming that it had never occured, so these would be documents the reader had never seen before. How could anyone grasp anything like the magnitude of the American Revolution *without* those documents? They were what made it possible. In the same way, the speeches in Atlas explain what made the strike possible and what motivated the key players to take the action they did. Without those speeches how could you understand what motivated them?

Again, this is action motivated and driven by ideas - ideas that are entirely revolutionary and which had never been heard before. This is the first time in history anyone had ever conceived of anything like this. So those speeches were not only not superfluous, they were essential to the storyline. Without them the story in Atlas would not have made sense - any more than the American Revolution would have made sense without the Declaration and the ideas of the Founders presented in their speeches and the key documents they produced.

It is entirely arbitrary to declare that since Atlas includes philosophical statements it can't be truly regarded as fiction. Yes, Atlas is also philosophical (and it is hardly the first novel which is). But its essence is a masterful integration of philosophy and fiction. That there are very few, if any, other novels which managed to achieve that integration with the skill of AR can hardly be held against her. It is yet another example of her extraordinary and original genius.

Fred Weiss

[AshRyan]

Spearmint, on Jul 3 2004, 08:27 PM, said:

I doubt that 90% of readers bothered reading more than a few pages of [Galt's speech] on their first reading of the book)

That never even occurred to me. It seemed to be the natural progression of events when I read the novel. Are you sure you aren't just speaking for yourself?