Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead

Atlas

8 (21.6%)

Fountain

15 (40.5%)

Either

8 (21.6%)

Neither

6 (16.2%)

Total Members Voted: 13

[mbd]

Fountainhead. All about the Benjis.

[rabidfurby]

Fountainhead. All about the Benjis.

I didn't know you liked dogs.

[mbd]

Child of the 70's, can't help it.

[Bill Brasky]

I got a pony for my birthday but I broke its back giving it a suplex off the top bunk. 

[Brian Wolf]

Someone voted 'neither' but did not explain why. 

I just did too. 

Thank you for explaining your reasons though. That was much more helpful than a vote on a poll.

Thank everyone for their responses, I have not decided  yet, but I am sure I will be discussing whichever book I decide on here once i finish it.

[Evil Muppet]

I've read cook books and STD brochures that were better written than Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead. 

[bonerjoe]

What do you want from Russian-American writer?

[gandhi2]

You'll probably say Tolstoy was a horrible writer too.

Not horrible, but not very palatable.

God, if Rand is a pretentious windbag...this guy is the veritable Mt. St. Helens of piety and intellectual-masturbation.  War and Peace?!  Fucking come on, Bridgie...could it get any MORE unreadable?

[atheistshawn]

I've read cook books and STD brochures that were better written than Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead. 

Only because they were written at your reading level...

[Evil Muppet]

Ayn Rand's characters just sucks.  Cardboard has more personality.  She writes a book about individualism and the evils of collectivism and the main hero, the super individualist extraordinaire, is at the center of a cult of personality.  and of all the characters in that book, He is the most artificial one of them all. 

[gandhi2]

See, I'm a literature snob.

Ditto...but give me a break, miss.  I waded through 500 pages of class politics and French/Russian dialogue before I finally just quit...Dickens did it too, but he was more understandable.  It's not that I don't get it...it's that I fall asleep halfway through.  Booooooh-ring!  If you want to cover these sorts of things in novel format, you need to add the spice.  Otherwise, you may as well be writing philosophical dissertations.

Heinlein was a good spice-adder.

He was her Deus Ex Machina, that's why he was artificial in nature. Basically, like Sauron was for Tolkien, Galt is the plot driven device and less a character.

Who wants characters who act as machines?  Vonnegut refers extensively to the Author-God, and it is sure sign of an incompetent God to make his presence so visible, with the audience fully capable of seeing the strings that are attached to the marionette.  Rand's characters are little more than puppets, to suit her political diatribes.  That's why I can't read her too much for fun.  She's good for pondering, but others do it better.  Aristotle and Socrates and Plato, even being translated from ancient texts, are more fluid than what is trying to be conveyed in Rand, because they have the benefit of being direct in their speech.

[gandhi2]

Vonnegut is an ass to be honest considering he wrote only a handful of books, and most were not even that decent.

Hmm.  I found him to be slightly similar to Kafka.  Again, as he ostensibly wrote genre fiction, the comparison is not necessarily apt.  His personal character can be called to question, but he certainly did understand some things about writing and character creation.

My favorite stories of his are Breakfast of Champions(for the author-God discussions) and Harrison Bergeron(for exposing how idiotic egalitarianism is).  I found Galapagos interesting in its character progression, although the story itself was relatively weak.  What I like about Vonnegut is that he can general speak to the readers as an audience directly, sometimes even exposing where the story will head, but he is still interesting to read, because one wonders "How?"

[gandhi2]

Breakfast of Champions of Norrath...now wouldn't that be a weird and wonderful world!!  Cross-dressing and cars-salesman, pulp-fiction writers and gay lounge pianists...what more could you hope for in an MMORPG?

[zebraflood]

I've read cook books and STD brochures that were better written than Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead. 

Only because they were written at your reading level...

Hahah.

chest bump.

[gandhi2]

I’m actually rather scared by how much I’m agreeing with Gandhi at this point

Cyro 6:42

And the Gandhi spoke, saying "Blessed are the agreeable, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; their followers shall number the stars in the sky, and all shall marvel in the truth of the Lord God Brasky."

Still, I digress; I'm about 50 pages into that son bitch, and I just keep wandering. Normally I can go 100+ pages a night, but this is better than Nyquil, I've not made it past 5 a night. Not to mention that it's dismally slow and very drab.

War and Peace remains to this day the only book I have started that I have not yet finished.