Sunday, October 12, 2008

The Fountainhead

This morning I posted my first thoughts on The Fountainhead at my friend Nancy's blog:

I'm reading The Fountainhead ... I just started. And this seems like a group that I could share some first impressions with.

I've never read anything by Ayn Rand and, in fact, don't know anything about her. But I'm about 60 pages into the novel and it feels for all the world like I'm reading the script of a Hollywood Movie circa 1939.

I never picture characters when I read but I hear the sound of their voices. As I read this I'm hearing that almost monotone staccato way they talked in old movies. Think Humphrey Bogart.

It was distracting me so much that I finally googled Ayn Rand and, sure enough, she was a Hollywood screenwriter.

I can't say that I dislike this style but it was not at all what I expected. (Nobody give away the storyline to me. I like to be surprised.)

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot is one of those classics of English Literature that show up on most "you must r...