#the failed secular Jewish old Hollywood screenwriter is strong

[isaacsapphire]

I've been trying to drag myself through listening to Atlas Shrugged as an audiobook after failing to read it as a physical book, and managed to get through The Fountainhead as an audiobook and didn't hate the whole thing. (I read Anthem ages ago, found it "fanficy" in a not entirely good way.)

Last time I tried to read it, I got as far as Reardon's shitty family and his wife who doesn't appreciate his token of his special interest. Now I'm into the retrospective of Dagney and Francisco's childhood and youthful afair and the whole thing 1. Reminds me of The Room in that the author clearly has no understanding of the motivations of the villains and has a deep interest in relitigating their personal relationships in fiction and 2. Would be much better as full hog science fiction, because if you aren't going to understand anything about the technology you are writing about, it would be better to have it actually be made-up so it's easier to suspend disbelief, especially since things like laws, governments, and the seasons in South America are changed anyways.

Dagney's experience of gender and all the good guys' quasi autism are enjoyable for me as story elements, and Rand has an amazing ear for bad passive aggressive family dynamics, so there's that on the plus side, in addition to whatever enjoyment I can derive from the sex scenes.

I gotta say, I got distracted hard by Francisco's alma mater being Patrick Henry (and apparently several other characters as well).

For those of you who weren't homeschooled and raised far right, the real life Patrick Henry college was founded in 1998, essentially by the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, as a conservative Christian Republican feeder institution with goals of rivaling the Ivys. I took a distance class as a high school student, so I suppose technically on some level I can claim to be a student therof, although they rejected my application to study on campus, presumably because I was honest about my doubts with the Christian faith in my admissions essay, which iirc was basically begging them to help me with my doubts.

Aaanyways, I was fly on the walling the entire creation of Patrick Henry College from as close a perspective as anyone who wasn't actually involved had, and nobody ever mentioned that the name was inspired by an Ayn Rand novel, even though it's blindingly obvious that it was. Which is suspicious as fuck in it's own way.