Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have just finished reading "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" back to back, and man, am I glad I'm finally finished. I had to check them out to see what all the hype was about, and it's clear that many of the comments here about Rand being a bit mentally afflicted were definitely true. You actually feel dirty reading some of this stuff. It's that sick. What disturbs me most about Rand's novels is her twisted idea of romantic love. The heroines are frigid, emotionless robots who only enjoy sexual encounters if they're being treated like garbage the whole time. They're slapped, shoved and snatched around, their arms are being twisted, and they love it. They wouldn't have it any other way. It's disgusting. Dominique Francon seems to only enjoy it if she's lying completely still and unresponsive the whole time. The heros are also cold and robotic, except they enjoy knocking the women around. It's completely joyless. If Rand was trying to create erotic love scenes, she sure missed the mark. When the couples are just spending time together outside of the bedroom, they talk about how the woman enjoys being treated as the man's property because the man is just so perfect and godlike. Otherwise each one seems to just intuitively know what the other is thinking. There is no playfulness, no laughter, no anger or tenderness or any other genuine feeling involved, as you'd have in an actual relationship. They feel no actual need for each other, because that would be weak, so they drift in and out of each other's lives over periods of several years. This is Rand's idea of being in love? Obviously she never experienced the feeling. Because of this, you can't bring yourself to care whether the two "soulmates" get together in the end or not. The characters in this book are completely unlikeable, except for Gayle Wynand, and of course anyone who's read this knows how he ends up. I thought there was much more depth to his character then anyone else in the book. You got an idea of what made him the hard-nosed guy that he was, and you saw that he had genuine feeling for Dominique, even though the part where he builds a house in the country to keep her away from other people was a little much. I didn't understand the appeal of Roark at all. By the description given, he didn't seem all that physically attractive (not that that matters, but he IS supposed to be the perfect man, right?), and his so-called individualism didn't inspire me at all. It seemed like most of the time he was just doing completely illogical things in order to be difficult. He didn't strike me as very bright or charismatic, and I certainly don't understand why anyone would worship him. Dominique basically has no personality that I can tell, except that she also does silly and illogical things, like dumping a basically decent husband because he wouldn't let his business be run into the ground to save her hero Roark. As for Keating, one minute you loathe him, the next you feel sorry for him. But you never actually like him. Toohey is just ridiculous with his "I'm going to take over this newspaper...and RULE THE WORLD!!" speeches. He's not exactly a villain who strikes fear into the heart. I wasn't even sure he WAS the villain until halfway through the book. Not that I need to have it spelled out for me right away, but I do like to have some sense of who I'm supposed to be rooting for or booing, especially when I'm 400 pages in. The characters were just so flat for the most part that I really couldn't be sure. Oh, and Roark's big speech with the "not guilty" verdict at the end? Total cheese. Some of the dialogue throughout the entire novel is so cheesy that you can't help laughing (Like Roark saying the guy who discovered fire was put to death? How did he know that?). I feel sorry for Ayn Rand, because it seems she was just a massively insecure person, with no ability to connect with other people. So, to make herself feel better, she decided to throw together a so-called philosophy justifying her complete lack of love or empathy for anyone at all. Unfortunately, she attracted a lot of other miserable people who have decided to worship her as some sort of all-knowing sage. I also feel sorry for them. I'm no student of philosophy, as you can probably tell since I have focused on the novel aspect instead of the idealistic one. But it seems as if most people would be level-headed enough to see that the very principles that Rand constantly condemns, are in fact the principles that make life in a hard world bearable. They're an undeniable part of mankind's being. If you take away man's love for his fellow man, you take away the part of him that makes him man, and he becomes an animal. If every man (and woman) lived only for himself, it would not be a pretty world. If you don't realize that, you need to grow up. Or get some therapy and medication, quickly.