An Objectivist yet never read Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged?

I don't think so! (That's a No!) The reason, as given by Peikoff when posed that question goes something like this. To read Rand's non fiction is great, very instructive, indispensable in fact, but if anyone does that but does not read the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged they could not be regarded as Objectivists simply because the novel is a device whereby a concretised representation and realization of the philosophy is played out in the form of action and interractions, dramatised conflicts among people involving a novelised plot. Philosophy lifted  out of academia and abstract principles to characters and events, illustrations of what living in an objectivist world look like and be  comprised of, in fictional form, by virtue of the principles of  the art of Romanticism in this case.

It's the I'm a Christian but have never read the Bible syndrome all over again.One could read books about Christianity, theological tracts by the score but to have not read the Bible is to miss out on all the action,the events of Christ and co, how they put their philosophy into action -as whacky as it was. Such a thing would be incredible,fantastic ,absurd, ridiculous, yet too many so-called Christians as I have pointed out in a recent post do just this.

What would be the motivation of such behaviour? Peikoff at least suggests that such readers who avoid the dramatised works of said philosophies do not see their professed philosophy as being guides to action, something to be lived, and stick instead to the theoretical writings which can remain therefor something separate from their own lives - a call in effect to non action and non integration -nothing more than an intellectual parlour game in effect. I think this has more than a ring of truth to it myself.