Fountain of what?

Earlier this summer, as an exercise is spiritual self-mortification, I waded through Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Regular readers might recall earlier disrespectful posts in the subject.

It so happened about the time I was done with the book that a friend, who happens to be a Jesuit priest, told me I should check out the film version. I figured, why not? After on, once one has wallowed in a manure pit there is no reason to go out of one's way to avoid stepping in some.

Then I got downright curious about the movie version. The novel, such as it is, stretches on for hundreds and hundreds of pages. How could someone get it into a movie?

It turned out that the 1949 film version was written by Rand herself. And, to give the devil her due, I must say she really did it. For all the inevitable differences between a book and a movie, she got the feel of it...which is to say the film is every bit as comically wretched as the novel.

Gary Cooper stars as the architect Roark. He was a lot cooler in Sargent York. He just looks kind of silly over two hours of posturing and swaggering. And poor Patricia Neal, who played Dominique Fancon. She just kind of darts around the screen like some odd tropical fish in an aquarium.

Roark's buildings are apparently intended to strike the viewer with their originality, although in retrospect they are kind of comic versions of the kinds of architectural monstrosities we've gotten used to over the last half century.

One final thought: Rand in both the book and film continually slams ancient, medieval and Renaissance architecture in favor of modern boxes. After tooling around Italy for a week this summer and viewing all kinds of the old stuff, I'll take it any day of the week.

SOMETHING THAT WORKED. Nutritional assistance programs kept hunger in check during recent hard times.

A BLOG OF NOTE. Here's a link to the Economic Policy Institute's new blog.

WORK SHARING. Dean Baker argues that it should be part of President Obama's jobs program.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Post bad book victory lap

It seemed to take forever plowing, through hundreds of pages of small print and bad prose, but I finally made it through Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

The main reason I decided to read it was that it seemed more sportsmanlike for me to take whacks at her ideology if I read some of her major works. It didn't take me too long to discover that my time would have been just as well spent taking whacks at her literary style.

What to say about it? Uhhh, it was about an architect or something.

The characters were pretty cardboard. It was a kind of morality plan pitting the Heroic Individual against the Conniving Collectivists. The relationships were really weird, including the "love"/hate connection between the architect Roark and his eventual wife Dominique. The man crush between Roark and the news magnate Wynand was even weirder, not that there was anything wrong with that.

I'm still not clear how other people messing with one's design justifies dynamiting a building that didn't belong to the dynamiter in question. And I get the feeling that the whole purpose of the book was to set up Roark's lengthy courtroom speech at the end. The character of Roark was pretty interesting when he was just an architect who wanted to do his own thing but toward the end he just became the author's mouthpiece.

I guess this was supposed to be Rand's answer to John Steinbeck. I prefer the Joads.

UPPER BIG BRANCH. Here's a Washington Post editorial on mine safety.

TAXES AND DEFICITS. If hedge fund managers paid more of the former, we'd have less of the latter.

FOR MICE AND MEN AND WOMEN TOO, here's some research about why exercise makes us feel better.

URGENT CHIMPANZEE AND DOLPHIN UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The Fountainhead of what, exactly?

It has long been the practice of El Cabrero to take swipes at the wretched ideology of Ayn Rand, which, like a movie zombie, keeps coming back to life. But as I mentioned a while back, I have vowed to actually read her major novels.

I am now about 300 pages into The Fountainhead, which is to say less than half way. Now I realize and freely admit the errors of my ways: rather than just whacking her economic and political beliefs, my time would have been just as well spent making fun of her literary style.

The characters are basically cartoonish caricatures strutting and fretting on the stage. The hero is a monomaniacal architect with no social skills who makes buildings like no other (although they sound pretty boxy). He has trouble finding business so far, but isn't that pretty much the way markets work and aren't markets supposed to be all good all the time in Randland?

The author's idea of courtship and romantic relations is really weird. The sex scenes are like rape, but the characters seem to like it that way, to the extent that they actually like anything, which they don't, which is even weirder. Every such contact seems laced with a bit of sadism and hatred.

It's kind of like watching a bad airplane movie when you're too tired to read but can't go to sleep. I can hardly wait for Atlas Shrugged, which is even longer.

OUR WORST DEFICIT might be one of imagination.

TALKING SENSE ON TAXES. Stating the obvious is a good thing these days.

CLIMATE CHANGE DOWNER here.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on free will.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Taking one for the team

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that El Cabrero enjoys taking regular swipes at the ideology of Ayn Rand (methinks it doesn't rise to the level of philosophy).

Most of what I know about her views comes from her own statements, interviews, and non-fiction. However, I must admit that I haven't actually her two most influential works of fiction, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Until now.

I just started The Fountainhead. Holy turgid prose, Batman! Is this what all the shouting is about? I will keep the Gentle Reader updated about my progress, if that's the right word, through this dense forest. But I have a feeling it isn't going to be a lot of fun.

SHOCK DOCTRINE, REVISITED. Here's a rant from yours truly about the federal budget debate.

KILLING MEDICARE. Some Republicans are having second thoughts.

MILITARY SPENDING. Here are some ideas about that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED