I attempted “The Fountainhead” in high school and found it quite unreadable. The film version starring Gary Cooper was not much better; when he and Patricia Neal were on screen together the screen nearly caught fire but the rest of the movie sort of lay there like a dead fish, especially the excruciating final monologue which director King Vidor wanted to cut because Cooper didn’t understand it (!!!) but Rand, the queen of self-worship, would not allow a word of her Gospel to be excised.
As for “Atlas Shrugged,” I never even bothered. And when I investigated Rand’s philosophy of “Objectivism” (read: selfishness on steroids), I was appalled.
Now we’ve got a bunch of “I’ve-Got-Mine-The-Rest-Of-You-Can-Go-Fuck-Yourselves” Randians who know a thing or two about business but nothing whatsoever about government. They are not the same thing and if we permit the marriage they are proposing people will be starving in the streets and there will be riots and looting and millions will die because of the twisted philosophy of a greedy, nasty woman who was enough of a hypocrite to take Social Security Benefits when she got old enough.