I’m sitting on the deck listening to a song by Small Faces (wicked messenger) ..I hear the distinctive sound of a Harley roaring by on the street below ..otherwise everything is quiet ..the music drowns out the swoosh of regular traffic ..and the voices in my head aren’t so loud ..the music drowns them out too. I take a sip of coffee and it scorches my tongue .. I spit it out in a spray ..followed by a couple mouthfuls of cold water ..and I laugh at myself ..which tells me I must be feeling better ..things aren’t bothering me ..I’m not shouting the usual string of obscenities. I can hear my plants talking; they’re parched and gasping for water ..I feel neglectful and tell them they’re first on my list. Makes me feel better knowing they’re taken care of. I enjoy the sound of a slide guitar. I’m reading ‘The Fountainhead’ by Ayn Rand ..I remember getting only halfway through her other book ‘Atlas Shrugged’ when I was in college ..but, the characters started speaking in sermons that went on for like five or six pages ..and the storytelling broke down ..it didn’t sound like real dialogue anymore. Fountainhead isn’t so bad ..it’s tells a good story ..except the characters don’t seem real ..it’s not the way people behave. I think it says more about the way the author wishes they’d behave ..a mixture of half-truths and schoolgirl fantasies ..where people never contradict themselves ..and follow ideals that never change. It was written in the 1940’s. I suppose life was simpler back then.
4 comments:
I have a 1949 movie version staring Gary Cooper as Roark and Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey . . but since Ayn Rand did write the screenplay it comes off as propaganda and diatribe.
The visuals are worth the glamor as well as delightful dramatic manipulations.
I read the book about 15 years ago, a couple of her books, it seems... anyways, I liked them, found them interesting. I wish I could recall more of it, but I simply forgot everything, but that I liked it... as for not being real, sometimes I like things that aren't so real, because reality sucks... sometimes I like to feel what it feels like for things to be ideal.
Thanks for this post, ha! ha!
She is one hell of a writer. But extreme detail almost to a fault for my taste. A kid I worled with over 10 years ago told me to read it. I tried, but put it down. I read it about a year ago. Loved it to the point I could not put it down.
Micro detail. Movie was OK but a movie could never capture the book it would be impossible. And just recently I saw a movie on TV with Helen Mirrin playing Ayn Rand. Now that will go on my Netflix Que.
..Your story inspired this search. .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeZ4FMIVqto&feature=related
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