# Just finished "Atlas Shrugged" -- should I read "The Fountainhead"? \[spoilers OK\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 4, 2006, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335 "2006-08-04T15:40:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2006, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/21 "2006-08-05T20:40:29Z")
[QUOTE=rowrrbazzle] Cite?In a section of Bertrand Russell’s “Unpopular Essays”, he describes a meeting with Lenin. Lenin laughed at how the richer peasants were lynched. Russell’s impression was one of “Mongol cruelty”, IIRC. He fits right into Orwell’s mold. [/QUOTE] I’ll have to look that up – it certainly doesn’t square with the Lenin described in [_Comrades: 1917 – Russia in Revolution,_](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316586986/sr=1-9/qid=1154809842/ref=sr_1_9/103-9791165-4895060?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Brian Moynahan (by no means a ComSymp). Nor even with the Lenin described by arch-conservative Paul Johnson in [url=]_Modern Times._ ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2006, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/22 "2006-08-05T21:14:14Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Communism was founded by truly high-minded, altruistic men like Lenin and Trotsky, who wanted what was best for all – and who had the arrogance to presume they **knew** what was best for all, and to such a degree of scientific certainty that they owed no more tolerance to dissenting views than astronomers owe to the Flat Earth Society. The real tragedy of Communism is that it is a classic case of **good** intentions paving the road to Hell. [/QUOTE] Rand had a chance to personally witness how rapidly altruism turned to despotism, seeing as she’d lived in Russia until emigrating in 1926. Lenin and Trotsky wanted best for the “all” that didn’t include the million so people they’d have to kill first. Plus, of course the constant surveillance the “all” needed so the “all” didn’t step out of line. The _real_ tragedy of communism is that it requires constant vigilance against the citizens, not the government. ---
**Author:** ![sleeepy2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@sleeepy2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeepy2)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2006, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/23 "2006-08-06T00:32:56Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] **The Fountainhead** is a better book, actually. [/QUOTE] Ditto. ---
**Author:** ![Malienation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Malienation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malienation)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2006, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/24 "2006-08-06T04:40:07Z")
There’s an awful lot of overlap between the two, but I do agree that you should read **The Fountainhead** anyway… eventually. Give yourself a break. If you do feel a primal need to investigate Rand more fully, try reading her semi-autobiographical tome **We The Living**. It’s a little depressing, but insightful (in terms of understanding Rand). ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2006, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/25 "2006-08-06T04:55:27Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Communism was founded by truly high-minded, altruistic men like Lenin and Trotsky, [/QUOTE] Nay. Communism was founded by Karl Marx. And Lenin and Trotsky were neither high-minded, nor altruistic-especially not the latter! But I agree Roarke was pretty empty. He never really seemed to relax and enjoy himself. I kinda liked Gail Wynand, if only because he was a bastard, but he was a fun bastard. He amused me. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2006, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/26 "2006-08-06T12:22:52Z")
I do recommend reading THE FOUNTAINHEAD, tho I must admit I’ve actually only skimmed it. I’ve read ATLAS several times, also ANTHEM, & the various essay collections, but WE THE LIVING- not at all. I usually start friends off w/ ANTHEM & then recommend ATLAS if they want to go totally deep into Ayn, with FOUNT afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/27 "2006-08-07T05:05:33Z")
I agree, you should read \*The Fountainhead, \*but not right away. I’ve read them both many times, and have signed & inscribed (to me) First Editions of these, and her other books. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/28 "2006-08-08T18:30:26Z")
[QUOTE=Guinastasia] Nay. Communism was founded by Karl Marx. [/quote] Nay. Marx only provided an intellectual superstructure for a [political movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_League) that already existed before he joined it. Paul Johnson in [_Intellectuals_](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060916575/sr=8-1/qid=1155060325/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4132090-9874429?ie=UTF8) recounts how Marx’ philosophizing rubbed some early Communist League members the wrong way. One, an actual working man, protested he “had not become a socialist to learn doctrines hatched in a study.” Sounds a lot like the relationship between the philosophical-Objectivist Ayn Rand and the Libertarian Party (of which she never approved, from what I’ve heard). Wonder why Johnson didn’t include **her** in his book? She certainly fit his (idiosyncratic and dishonest) definition of an “intellectual”! Asl for Lenin and Trotsky, I cite them as “founders” because they were the first to gain control of a state and try to put the theory (that is, one of many, many variants of it) into practice. [QUOTE=Guinastasia] And Lenin and Trotsky were neither high-minded, nor altruistic- **especially not the latter!** [/quote] Don’t give me that Stalinist agitprop, you betrayer of the Revolution! ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Rieux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/29 "2006-08-08T18:51:29Z")
[QUOTE=JustAnotherGeek] I have also heard that Roark was based on Frank Lloyd Wright. Having been to Fallingwater, I must say that, if FLW was the model for Roark, I can only hope that Raork was a better structural engineer. (But I doubt that Ayn Rand could have made him a better artist.)[/size] [/QUOTE] A retired architect I know told me, “All of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses have one thing in common–the roofs leak.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/30 "2006-08-08T19:54:45Z")
[QUOTE=Dr. Rieux] A retired architect I know told me, “All of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses have one thing in common–the roofs leak.” [/QUOTE] So do Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. A roof is most likely to leak along the edges of its planes, and Fullerdome is all edges. (Doesn’t mean the domes are useless, only that they’re not to be preferred when keeping the rain out is a top priority.) A lot of these problems of disjuncture between architectural ideals and practicality are explored in [_How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built,_](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140139966/sr=8-1/qid=1155066750/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6194209-7829658?ie=UTF8) by Stewart Brand. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/31 "2006-08-08T21:01:09Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] I’m not so sure. There is certainly a strong thread of ‘artistic egalitarianism’ among the left. You often hear comments like, “Who’s to say what’s good in art?” Then you have the deconstructionist movement, avante-garde artists, wacky performance artists - and a depressing tendency among some to refuse to criticise their work because what matters is the act of expression itself, not the result. [/quote] This is true, and those fluffheads annoy the hell out of me. But it’s not, as **BrainGlutton** points out, in any way a tenet of socialism. > [@](#): > > I don’t know - I always got a ‘Frank Lloyd Wright’ vibe when reading descriptions of Roark’s architecture. Years later I learned that Wright was Ayn’s model for Roark’s architecture. I don’t think you can accuse ‘Falling Water’ of being a boring Communist structure. I believe his point was that those buildings are emphatically not boring. Have you _seen_ the Seven Sisters? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/32 "2006-08-08T22:13:44Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] I believe his point was that those buildings are emphatically not boring. Have you _seen_ the Seven Sisters? [/QUOTE] [These?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_%28Moscow%29) Not exactly boring, but – as much as anything Speer built for Hitler – they’re kind of **overwhelming.** Built to embody and express the power and glory of the State. Which would be as far as you can get from what Rand/Roarke presumably was aiming at. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/33 "2006-08-08T22:18:45Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] [These?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_%28Moscow%29) Not exactly boring, but – as much as anything Speer built for Hitler – they’re kind of **overwhelming.** Built to embody and express the power and glory of the State. Which would be as far as you can get from what Rand/Roarke presumably was aiming at. [/QUOTE] I can’t really comment, as I haven’t read the book. I just wanted to counter **Sam Stone** ’s assumption that buildings built in the Soviet Union were by definition “boring Communist structures”. Which buildings were you referring to? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/34 "2006-08-08T23:31:22Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] Which buildings were you referring to? [/QUOTE] I was thinking – and I’m not the first to say so – that Roarke’s “modernist” buildings as Rand describes them resemble, more than anything else IRL, the bleak monumental structures Speer put up for Hitler in Berlin – the latter being described by James Howard Kunstler in [_The City in Mind_](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000C2W6A/sr=8-1/qid=1155079381/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4132090-9874429?ie=UTF8) as Art Deco architecture stripped of all its feminine curves. Certainly they resemble nothing Wright ever did – not even the mansion looks like anything out of Wright (so far as we can tell from verbal descriptions). And the “Temple” might as well be Speer’s projected (but never buitl) “Great Hall of the Reich” on a smaller scale. ---
**Author:** ![Orissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e274bd/32.png) [@Orissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orissa)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/35 "2006-08-08T23:34:33Z")
I hope this isn’t too much of a derail, but does anyone have a theory as to why Rand used Irish surnames for so many of her characters, in both ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’? To whit: Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart, Howard Roark, Peter Keating, and Ellsworth Toohey. Even her former heir apparent, before the falling out, changed his name from Blumenthal to the quasi-Hibernian Branden. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/36 "2006-08-08T23:46:50Z")
[QUOTE=Orissa] Even her former heir apparent, before the falling out, changed his name from Blumenthal to the quasi-Hibernian Branden. [/QUOTE] More likely an anagram. Branden = Ben-Rand As for the OP. Read _Fountainhead_, but not right away. As others have said, it’s a more ejoyable book. Great characters. Yes, there are a few speecehs, but not anywhere near as long as _Atlas_. Do not, however, bother with the movie. It sucks. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2006, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/37 "2006-08-09T01:37:08Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] . . . Do not, however, bother with the movie. It sucks. [/QUOTE] Now there’s a movie that’s crying out for a remake. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2006, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/38 "2006-08-09T01:47:03Z")
[QUOTE=panache45] Now there’s a movie that’s crying out for a remake. [/QUOTE] I don’t know what would be worse-- the original, or an updated version staring Collin Farrell and Angelina Joli. Or maybe Will Ferrell-- he has red hair, doesn’t he? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2006, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/39 "2006-08-09T03:34:08Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] I don’t know what would be worse-- the original, or an updated version staring Collin Farrell and Angelina Joli. Or maybe Will Ferrell-- he has red hair, doesn’t he? [/QUOTE] [Could be worse!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7410372&postcount=78) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2006, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335/40 "2006-08-09T03:47:47Z")
[QUOTE=Orissa] I hope this isn’t too much of a derail, but does anyone have a theory as to why Rand used Irish surnames for so many of her characters, in both ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’? [/QUOTE] Here’s one: She was a Russian Jewish immigrant living in New York. Giving her characters Jewish names would’ve raised too many complicated cultural-political implications (in those days, Jews=Reds). Giving them Anglo-Saxon names would have implied they were negroes (this was New York in the '50s, understand), and that would be totally unworkable considering so many of them are high-powered players (also totally unacceptable to white readers, even those willing to wade through her shrill, tedious Objectivist preaching). Otherwise, as far as she knew, Irish surnames were the only kind to be found in America! 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-atlas-shrugged-should-i-read-the-fountainhead-spoilers-ok/367335.md?page=3)