It’s a novel, stupid…The Fountainhead

It’s a novel, stupid…The Fountainhead

a real good story…

 

 

Book review:

The Fountainhead

 

by Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943

754 pages

 

You already know something about what The Fountainhead is all about, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this review.

Here’s my contribution: think of The Fountainhead as a novel, as a love story, as a heroic fable, as a celebration of human virtue and the urge to do the right thing. Think about that moralistic gem from Hamlet: “To thine own self be true.”

The Fountainhead is an elaboration of Ayn Rand’s imagination about ambition, self-actualization, courage, endurance, and a kind of love that needs more marshmallows and less of the kind of talk that you wouldn’t expect to hear in the library stacks.

It’s a real good story. Roark, Dominique, and a couple other characters aren’t sketched, they’re lushly painted with many words that you don’t hear in ordinary conversation.

Forget about the political claptrap that’s bandied about using a rubric of “Ayn Rand’s philosophy.”

She was a novelist first, and her talent ran dry when she stepped out of the literary sphere.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

The Unknown American Revolution (book review)

in the streets, says Gary Nash

click here

 

Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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 “…be ready for every good work.”

 “…be ready for every good work.”

they’re out there…

 

 

“…be ready for every good work.”

 

Titus 3:1 (KJ21)

 

…including your own good works!

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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

For All the Tea in China (book review)

Sarah Rose brews the whole ugly story

click here

As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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at Duck Harbor Beach… “Sea quell,” my poem

at Duck Harbor Beach… “Sea quell,” my poem

quiet is what it was…

 

 

Sea quell

 

The immensity

   shrinks to my gaze, and is still,

and the silence grows.

 

Duck Harbor Beach

Wellfleet, MA

September 9, 2019

 

Sitting on the sand at Duck Harbor Beach,

the bay was making absolutely no noise, it was dead quiet.

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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle…

Colin Woodard makes it easier to understand…(book review)

click here

Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

 

Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.

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The Paris Wife…book review

The Paris Wife…book review

aspirations, vagrant needs…

 

 

Book review:

The Paris Wife

 

by Paula McLain

New York: Ballantine Books, 2011

320 pages

 

Paula McLain has done it artfully. The Paris Wife is a richly nuanced account of the transformation of the 1921 marriage of Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway, the first for each of them.

I had not known in detail that Hemingway was as much of an inconstant lover as he actually was.

Now I know that Paula McLain tells me as much as I need to know about the life-interrupting aspirations of Hadley, and more than I care to know about the destructive potency of Hemingway’s vagrant needs.

Excerpt (Hadley is speaking):

“[Ernest] needed me to make him feel safe…yes, the same way I needed him. But he also liked that he could disappear into his work, away from me. And return when he wanted to.”

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

Remember the Tallahatchie Bridge?

Molly Johnson sings it right…

click here

 

Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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“whisper codas in the dark…”…“Singing,” my poem

“whisper codas in the dark…”…“Singing,” my poem

night songs

 

 

Singing

 

We explore our song of love,

with words that find our joys,

we trace our rhythms and a key,

we make new verses,

solve new rhymes,

and whisper codas in the dark,

and murmur of beginnings

   as we drift to sleep.

 

February 28, 2023

For Barb, my dearest one

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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.

 

Old Friends (book review)

Tracy Kidder really tells truth about old age…

click here

As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

 

Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.

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