• • Editors’ picks 
C. Rollyson, Choice Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  We The Living  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.Although not stinting a concern with Rand's ideas, Heller is mesmerized by Rand the novelist and the person. The biographer pores over Rand's early years in Russia with brilliant results, showing how much Rand (born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum) drew on her experience in the 1920s Leninist state for her impressive novel We the Living.     Share on Facebook

• • Tequila sunrise & into the sunset 
Kasmin Fernandes, Mid-Day The Fountainhead  "I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline," author Ayn Rand wrote in The Fountainhead, "The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?" she asked. "Come to Mumbai," we say.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand, Chapman University and serial killer love 
Matt Coker, Orange County Weekly - Navel Gazing (CA) The Fountainhead  Image  Inaccurate  The Mother of Objectivism and author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged "is the 28th notable figure to have a bust dedicated on the campus of Chapman University," reports Chapman Now. [....] [I]t's a good bet Rand is the only Chapman bustee whose first love dismembered little girls.     Share on Facebook

• • • Internal affairs: How Ayn Rand followers rationalize “welcomed” rape 
Amanda Hess, Washington City Paper - The Sexist (DC) Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Egoism  Rand reportedly had this to say about the [rape] scene [in The Fountainhead]: “If it was rape, it was rape by engraved invitation.” But for young people with no practical experience with sex, Rand doesn’t provide any instruction on how exactly to seal the note. If your sex partner is biting you and beating you in the face, how can you be sure they’ve consented “internally”? Between Rand’s idealized heroes and heroines, why is the ideal sexual scenario a violent rape that the woman only privately desires? And for Rand, who was fond of invoking the tautological principle that “A is A,” when is rape not rape?     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand’s books are deliciously anti-statist, but her philosophy is borderline Nazi 
James Delingpole, The Spectator Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Inaccurate  What I find most off-putting about Rand is her hardness of heart. She has a Nietzschean (indeed, borderline Nazi) contempt for human frailty and a total lack of sympathy for the underdog. In her weltanschauung, you’re either a hero (rare) or — much more likely — a mere filler of latrines. Any form of charity, she suggests, is a kind of grotesque liberal indulgence towards people who really aren’t worth saving.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand, the philosophy of freedom, and a serial killer 
Gus diZerega, Beliefnet.com - A Pagan’s Blog Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Egoism  Rand's admiration for a sociopathic murderer is an eye-opener as to the moral sensibility that appeals to all too many 'conservative' and 'libertarian' Americans. She was one very disturbed and deeply wounded person, as her biographies show.     Share on Facebook

• Chesterfield student wins T-D spelling bee 
Melissa Ruggieri, Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) The Fountainhead  [Ryan Oppenheim is] a devoted reader, currently plowing through Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" for a school project.     Share on Facebook

• •From canyon to cove: A visit to Hangover House 
Cindy Frazier, Coastline Pilot (Laguna Beach, CA) Ayn Rand Archives  Ayn Rand Institute  The Fountainhead  Personal life  As one might expect of such an old and notable dwelling [Hangover House] has its mysteries and urban legends. One such legend surrounds a purported visit that Ayn Rand made to the home before writing her monumental novel about a modernist architect, “The Fountainhead,” where she allegedly interviewed [architect William Alexander] Levy about his theories of architecture. Levy apparently believed that some of his words and ideas were used in Rand’s book, and that scenes in “The Fountainhead” were set in Hangover House. But Benec said this is now being debunked by a representative of the Ayn Rand Archives in Irvine who responded to Benec’s original house listing with a letter citing various facts to prove that Rand “did not set foot in California” from 1934 to 1943 and therefore could not have visited the house or used it in her novel. The archivist also said there is no written evidence, such as notes, in her papers indicating a link between Rand and Levy. “They said it is not possible,” Benec said. But the story persists.     Share on Facebook

• • • Beast of conviction would be much better protagonist 
Claire Luchette, The Doings Hinsdale (IL) The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Egoism  Emerson wrote, "...believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius." Howard Roark, then, according to Emerson's criteria, was a genius. He saw his own principles as the only ones fit for architecture and mankind. He sacrificed the need to be admired and took upon himself the burden of originality. In exclusive settings, the one who is outcast but not downcast is the one I find most respectable.     Share on Facebook

• • • Debating merits of Ayn Rand philosophy 
Spencer Case, Idaho State Journal (Pocatello, ID) Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Egoism  I think of Objectivism as a kind of intellectual chicken pox; most smart people get it when they're young, but usually it runs its course before causing any permanent damage. Don't get me wrong, I think "Atlas Shrugged" is well worth reading , just not as Holy Scripture.     Share on Facebook

• Diary of a tax-free state 
Marshall Fine, Huffington Post The Fountainhead  Humor.Day 33. Didn't get much sleep last night because I had to bone up to teach an English class at the high school. In addition to my new job at the smelting plant, I have to volunteer for a regular teaching rotation, since real teachers were paid in despised tax dollars. I'd never read The Fountainhead before, which is now part of the fourth-grade curriculum.     Share on Facebook

• • Five books I’d read 
Justin Moyer, Washington City Paper (DC) The Fountainhead  Here’s the scenario: [....] Valentine’s Day is over but, by some miracle, you just met a member of the opposite (or same) sex during a trip to the T-Mobile store who, inexplicably, is attracted to you (or purports to be) despite your penchant for Sudoku, secret appreciation of Ayn Rand (“I know it’s wrong, but I kinda liked The Fountainhead,” etc.), and love of the interminable Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire (snoozers).     Share on Facebook

• • Movie time in Westport 
Dave Matlow, Westport Now (CT) The Fountainhead  Image  It was movie time at the Westport Public Library today as it hosted more than 75 persons for a showing of the 1949 film “The Fountainhead.” The event was in conjunction with the “When Cool Was Hot” Westport Historical Society exhibit featuring modernism architecture. “The Fountainhead,” starring Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey, is based on Ayn Rand’s 1943 monumental best-selling book about an uncompromising visionary architect who struggles to maintain his integrity despite pressures to conform and compromise his artistic and personal vision.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand’s character model of a “real man” was child killing sociopath 
Tim McCown, The Examiner Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Inaccurate  Ayn Rand's writings have no more business being the guiding principles of our political and economic policy than do Marx's. Sadly a brilliant but extremely mentally ill woman never got the help she needed. But sociopathy is not a solution but a mental illness to be treated. Rand's ideas were given very little credibility when she wrote them and they deserve even less creditability now.     Share on Facebook

• • Why no writer can match Salinger’s voice 
Shoba Narayan, LiveMint.com The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Tomorrow, as you scramble to get red roses for a candlelight dinner with your sweetie, you could raise a champagne toast to any number of things [...]. Or you could dismiss the whole lot as damn “phoneys”. Jerome David Salinger, who died last month at age 91, would approve. He, along with Ayn Rand, inspires hyperbole and cultish devotion. Their books achieve the troika that every aspiring author longs for: original, long-lasting best-sellers. Best of all, not only are their books and characters unforgettable (remember Howard Roark?), they are immensely readable.     Share on Facebook

• • • “A despicable hatchet job, by a clueless non entity, pretentiously posing as a degenerate scum 
Roger Kimball, Pajamas Media Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  I never made it through either of Rand’s two big novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. To enjoy either, I suspect, you had to have encountered Rand in adolescence, when so many of life’s lasting enthusiasms are forged. In recent years, a few friends have urged Rand on me, and I dutifully tried both novels more than once. Each time, I found myself oscillating between fits of the giggles, at the awful prose, and irritation, at the jejune philosophy. Among the many reasons I am thankful to Whittaker Chambers, his having rescued me from making further attempts to scale the Everest of Atlas Shrugged comes high on my list. His review of the book in an early issue of National Review is a masterpiece of literary demolition and moral interment.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand, hugely popular author & inspiration to right-wing leaders, was admirer of serial killer 
Mark Ames, AlterNet Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  Capitalism  Egoism  Inaccurate  Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" that Rand promoted in her more famous books -- ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe -- former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox -- along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.     Share on Facebook

• • I am the Ultimate Book Geek! 
Blooey P. Singson, Manila Bulletin The Fountainhead  At last, the day of the Ultimate Book Geek Finals came. [....] I made a mistake with What is Robert Langdon’s position in Harvard University?; I answered professor of Symbology, which the judges didn’t accept; he was professor of Religious Symbology so I had to move back a row. And then in my eagerness to make up for it I made another mistake with Who was the architect in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead?”. I had no clue about the book, actually, and for some strange reason I decided to answer a real architect’s name, Mies van der Rohe (Frank Lloyd Wright would have been closer) but the question was actually pertaining to the protagonist, Howard Roark. I slipped another place back.     Share on Facebook

• • Islam is the enemy 
Edward Cline, Family Security Matters Altruism  The Fountainhead  Objectivist author  In war, as well as in peace, as a nation’s policy or as a personal one, the object of selflessness and altruism is to sacrifice a value for a non-value, to elevate mediocrity as a means of razing shrines. (See Ellsworth Toohey’s speech on the means and ends of altruism wedded to collectivism in Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, for clarification on that issue.)     Share on Facebook

• Architect revels in pursuing possibilities 
Hubble Smith, Review-Journal (Las Vegas) The Fountainhead  Profile of Gemie Knisely, owner of GK3 Architecture,Favorite book: "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook