Der ewige Quell (1943)

For those uninterested in taking a look at my review of Atlas Shrugged, and why this is so brief, just know this; no one likes it when you talk about the Fountainhead except other sociopaths who love the Fountainhead. I will accept the accusation of being a philistine — but would argue that Rand errs on the side of poor writing regardless — but the espousal of her, frankly, ill-formed, unnuanced, and entirely unempathetic philosophies make for an uninteresting, uninspired, and unpleasant novel. This should have been cut down to an enumerated manifesto for selfishness, and then stuffed away in a basement somewhere, never to be found again. Why this receives any praise is beyond me. ( )

I picked this up from a LFL on a lark, and ye gods... This is where the dreaded "randbots" came from? This...?!? Infamously influential turgid crap -I couldn't get past the first two sentences. (TBF the 1949 film with Gary Cooper and Patricia O'Neil is a hoot!)

As much as everyone seems to hate Rand nowadays, I think she's a great storyteller. I love the characters in this and couldn't put it down. ( )

I did not like this one nearly as much as Atlas Shrugged. ( )

There's some adolescent appeal to Howard Rourke, but the prose is wooden, the social critique is flat, and the rape-fantasy relationship is horrific. ( )