Enter: Ayn Rand

I've found it.

I approached this blog from the wrong perspective initially - while I think there was something noble in my intention to refine my feelings for Krakauer's writing, that endeavor panned out differently than planned.

I will write a review of Under the Banner of Heaven someday, because I said I would. But it suffices to say that Krakauer's works were so interesting to me that I promptly dropped the project and didn't return to the blog that hosted it for four months. His approach to a sensitive area of human emotion - conviction - was not without potent lacing of his own convictions, in a manner meant to lead the reader along in agreement, which was clarified at the very end of the story. Krakauer believes in something, it's just something vague that he can't quite identify. Good on ya, bro. And good for everyone else who names their passions, who dedicates themselves to a cause that helps, not harms, the lives of their fellow men. It exists, within and without the confines of religion. And of course, across the canvas of humanity everywhere, there are whack-ass crackers aplenty. Interesting enough to write about, but the story would have been as easily told from surfing news clips, and I feel I would have gained as much from a google search.

Great stories, truly ravishing plot lines, the stuff that changes the atmosphere of the room it's being devoured within... now that sort of writing I feel inclined to review.

My passion for literature has fallen into the cracks and between the dry sheets of textbooks since I've been back to school. The zapped emotion for the written word has been set afire by a stunning gem of literary GENIUS I've encountered recently - the works of Ayn Rand.

I have become so deeply engrossed in The Fountainhead, even in the first hundred pages, that I have lost my appetite, sense of time, social obligation, awareness of anything outside of the gentle caress of potent words and the unfolding of a story I feel I belong to.

Ayn Rand is a favorite of my maternal grandmother. I have a theory blooming about the formation of paradigms within a family having a direct correlation to the literature consumed within the family - something in Rand's writing is familiar to me, common threads I identify and know in Rand's characters - speech patterns and behavior that I knew even before I could speak.

I'm going back to reading now.