The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers (Ayn Rand)

[**] ISBN: 0786188847

This is a frustrating work. It's filled with wonderful thoughts and ideas about how fiction works, how to make characters live and breath with emotion and how authors can enhance their own creative process. On the other hand, it's also full of preposterous ideas about the purpose of fiction, what makes a book worth writing or reading and her own philosophical invective.

To top off my frustration, I watched the film version of her book The Fountainhead, in order to get a flavor of her writing. As I feared, it's full of the same melodramatic, selfish, intellectual drivel. I felt like Ayn (who wrote the book and the screenplay) was constantly pounding the sides of my head with a philosophical two-by-four using her completely ridiculous dialog (this stuff might work in some sorts of books, but it never works in film). It ruined what could have been a fascinating film with amazing directing and acting (very evident when no one was speaking). Whatever inclination I might have had to actually read some of her fiction has been squeezed out of my brain.

My hope is to remember and use the more practical and reasonable ideas that Rand puts forward in The Art of Fiction. I also hope to forget the crap (and never again hear the word bromide). It's too bad that's unlikely.