title: The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers
author:  Ayn Rand 
description: In 1958, a year after the publication of <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451191145/${0}">Atlas Shrugged</a></i>, Ayn Rand gathered a group of student readers and writers in her living room for a series of 12 four-hour lectures about fiction. <i>The Art of Fiction</i> evolved from that course. Though Rand's <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451149165/${0}">Romantic Manifesto</a></i> was also partly based on the same lecture series, this book omits (for the most part) Rand's discussions of other art forms. Its gist is a case for fiction that is "Romantic" (deriving from a belief in free will) rather than "Naturalistic" (allowing for fate).
zlib_text: AYN RAND
  
    
  
  THE FOUNTAINHEAD
  
    
    
  
  To Frank O'Connor
  
    
    
  
  Copyright (c) 1943 The Bobbs-Merrill Company
  
    
  
  Copyright (c) renewed 1971 by Ayn Rand.
  
    
  
  All rights reserved. For information address The Bobbs-Merrill Company, a
  division of Macmillan, Inc., 866 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022.
  
    
    
    
    
    
  
  Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition
  
    
    
  
  Many people have asked me how I feel about the fact that The Fountainhead has
  been in print for twenty-five years. I cannot say that I feel anything in
  particular, except a kind of quiet satisfaction. In this respect, my attitude
  toward my writing is best expressed by a statement of Victor Hugo: "If a
  writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it
  away."
  
    
  
  Certain writers, of whom I am one, do not live, think or write on the range of
  the moment. Novels, in the proper sense of the word, are not written to vanish
  in a month or a year. That most of them do, today, that they are w