The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff
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Book Reviews of The Fountainhead
Book Review: THE FOUNTAINHEAD VERSUS THE CORNERSTONE
Summary: 3 Stars
Once upon a time, in what now seems like a previous lifetime, I had an industrial-strength crush on an Ohio gal named, Amy. To this day, I cannot hear the 1975 hit song, 'AMIE' by the Cincinnati-based Country-Rock group, Pure Prairie League, without thinking of her. Amy was nice, intelligent, creative, attractive, and had a good sense of humor. I don't have to tell you just what a rare combination THAT is!
In 1985, she gave me a copy of THE FOUNTAINHEAD as a birthday gift. On the inside cover she inscribed it : "To Stephen -- This book reminds me of you! It is the story of a man who holds his values high; who will never sell out or compromise. -- Of course he was never offered stadiums. Enjoy! Love, your friend forever, Amy." (Didja notice the correct use of the semicolon? I told you she was smart! The reference to "stadiums" was an inside joke about Bruce Springsteen.)
Amy eventually moved to Hawaii and over the years, I kind of lost touch with her. But in 1998, I sent her a (rather awkward) letter with the hope of reestablishing our friendship. I'm still waiting for her reply. Well, you know how slow that darn Postal Service can be sometimes! Meanwhile, I just finished reading THE FOUNTAINHEAD, and I now present my book review. (OK, I'm a slow reader, so shoot me!)
From a strictly literary viewpoint, THE FOUNTAINHEAD is well conceived and executed. There are three principal skills that the novelist employs in storytelling : plotting, characterization, and dialogue (with the the last actually being an extension or subdivision of the second.) Very rare is the novelist who is a master of all three of these elements : for every Twain or Dickens there are thousands of writers who have their strengths and weaknesses in these areas. Ayn Rand is one of the thousands. But anybody who can get me to turn nearly 700 pages addressing that most exciting of all characters, the architect, must be doing something right. (My apologies to all of you architects out there. Only 'avin' a bit o' sport, I was. Please don't 'old it agin me!)
In terms of plotting, the story takes a number of surprising and intriguing turns and these conflicts do keep the reader interested enough to continue following the development of the narration. "Wynand's voice sounded clear and brittle, like the color of the sky above them, with the same quality of ice-green radiance," Rand writes in Part IV. Make no mistake about it, only genuine writers create lines like that. I do respect her talent as an author. Despite what she would like us to embrace, there are no completely likable characters in this story, and although each is well drawn, they exist primarily as opposing viewpoints in philosophical discourse. They are all interesting in their own right, but none are entirely believable. It is 'dialogue' which is Rand's weakest skill within the three elements of storytelling. The dialogue primarily serves (as the characters do) to debate and define a variety of viewpoints and therefore it is frequently stilted and exaggerated. While it's true that each character inhabits the same geographical location and most exist within the same general economic strata, there is not sufficient diversification in their language. They all seem to employ a kind of cool and coy linguistic style and too many of them tote the word "bromide" in their vocabulary satchel. Rand's book scores points in arguing for the value of an individual's commitment to personal vision and for free market enterprise, while exposing the rotting underbelly of collectivism and the apathy of society's "second-handers." While certainly not essential reading, if one can overlook the extremes in her surprisingly superficial "manifesto", THE FOUNTAINHEAD is by and large, quality literature and a worthwhile read.
But to review THE FOUNTAINHEAD primarily on its literary merits is to miss the point entirely, because the book is not really about architects at all, and the story was born only as a vehicle by which Ayn Rand might disseminate her philosophy of 'OBJECTIVISM.' Evidently, Rand believed herself to be history's greatest philosopher after Aristotle, and her baby, 'Objectivism', posits that the individual exclusively is real, objective, and the sole source of pure ethics. From this can be extrapolated the premise that sacrificing the "selfish" or "egotisitical" vision and quest for happiness of the individual on behalf of altrusim is to relinquish reality, and is self-destructive, hence, immoral. Individualism, cultivated through the "virtue of selfishness" (as she described it), is the singular path to life. Man's destiny, she believed, was to be a "self-made soul."
Ayn Rand wrote that "progressively, as my idea developed, I had more and more a sense of loneliness." According to her biographer, Barbara Branden, when Rand's life was over, she had barely a friend in the world. Buried in 1982, her coffin bore a six-foot replica of the dollar sign. Professor Donald DeMarco has observed that "it was inevitable...that a philosophy that centered on the self to the exclusion of all others would leave its practitioner in isolation and intensely lonely."
In the introduction to my edition of THE FOUNTAINHEAD, Rand makes much of the atheism shared by herself and Howard Roark, her protagonist. She charges religion with having "pre-empted the field of ethics, turning morality AGAINST man" and identifies "the sense of life dramatized in THE FOUNTAINHEAD as MAN-WORSHIP." This explains Howard Roark's response of "because I've never believed in God" to the question "why did you decide to be an architect?"
In likening the sublime style of his integrated architecture to the beauty of the human body, Roark concedes that it "hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man." If someone asked Roark whether one of his ingeniously designed buildings could have come into existence apart from its "creator" - that being his mind which conceived it - I have to believe that he'd answer, "Nonsense." And yet this artist would have us believe that the physiology of the human being - at least a trillion times more intricate and integrated than his most unified architetctural achievement - coalesced as a result of countless random mutations within a primordial ooze over several million years in the happy accident of an environment perfectly suited to "life." Sorry, but I can't travel on this train-of-thought.
When the celebrated naturalist and noble abolitionist, Henry David Thoreau was not splashing in clear crystal streams and sniffing dogwood blossoms, he was recording insightful details about human nature. He found common ground with Rand and her Roark in the humorous statement, "Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new." But he eclipsed them both by an unfathomable scope when he advised, "Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory."
There was another Philosopher who espoused a world-view diametrically opposed to Rand's OBJECTIVISM. And coincidentally, He once referred to himself in architectural terminology : "The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone", meaning that He and His principles were someday destined to be recognized as the foundation of mankind's true and eternal happiness.
This Philosopher, the "Cornerstone", considered Himself a servant, having subjugated His will to the preferences of His Father. The greatest among us, He said, would be a servant to all, and only in losing our PERCEIVED "life" would we find our REAL Life.
What if the fundamental anthropological postulation of Howard Roark is faulty? What if each "ego" is not actually an individuated entity but a visible appendage of an unseen organism? The Cornerstone cautioned us against judging "according to appearance", because like visible fingers on an otherwise invisible spiritual Hand, ONENESS is the truth that undergirds our experiences. The Cornerstone taught that we are members of ONE Body. Consequently, a person could theoretically maintain that two fingers applying salve and a bandage to a wounded finger on the opposing hand practices not only altruism, but Roark's extolled "selfishness", because what benefits another appendage benefits the whole body and thus, ALL of its members!
Unlike Ayn Rand, the Cornerstone was never lonely; He was constantly thronged by the masses, and still today His Life and philosophy is celebrated by millions of people the world over. And there was no dollar sign replicated on HIS casket, in fact, He has no grave for His followers to venerate because the truth is. . . .He didn't stay in it very long. Hopefully, you realized numerous sentences back that the "Philosopher" to whom I refer is Jesus.
OK, so in the final analysis, what? Look, in a nutshell, all I'm really trying to say here is this : be skeptical of the woman who uses the word "forever" in professing her feelings of friendship and admiration for you. Whereas by "forever" you may think that she means "eternally", my experience shows that her definition of the word may be closer to "ten years."
Book Review: Difficult to be objective about objectivism or Jesse Ventura
Summary: 5 Stars
Ayn Ventura by Jerry RyanThe intuitional scrambling of my scholarship makes for some strange bedfellows. I've just finished reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Simultaneously the crystallization of Jesse Ventura as a political candidate has begun. When Jesse was a wrestler for the WWF and the WCW, the essential idea behind grappling was that of a carnival act pitting good guys (baby faces) against bad guys (heels). The good guys were at one end of the moral spectrum and the bad guys at the other. A newcomer could be defined immediately by his interaction with the established order. If a newcomer used questionable tactics to defeat a baby face, then he became a heel. A newcomer who used the same questionable techniques to defeat or even lose to an identified heel became a baby face. Life was simple then. Not simple really, but objective. Black and white. Objectivity, taken to the nth degree, becomes Objectivism, the philosophy that Rand created and used throughout her writing. Ayn Rand once told Alvin Toffler: "I most emphatically advocate a black and white view of the world. What is meant by the expression black and white? It means good and evil. Before you can identify anything as gray, as middle of the road, you have to know what is black and what is white, because gray is merely a mixture of the two. And when you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil" Much of Jesse Ventura's perceived allure comes from his willingness to "speak his mind". In general, Jesse's mind remains a carnival of baby faces and heels; a non-intellectual version of objectivism. So Jesse speaks his mind to Playboy and a tempest in a teapot starts about his demeaning views of religion. Ayn Rand also rejected religion because both of religion's fundamental premises; a) an all powerful being and b) acceptance of that being's existence through faith rather than logic are rejected by objectivism. Rand once explained her position thusly. "First, there are no reasons to believe in God, there is no proof of the belief, second, that the concept of God is insulting and degrading to man- it implies that highest possible is not to be reached by man, that he is an inferior being who can only worship an ideal he can never achieve". Ventura contrasts and distances himeslf with other politicians, once again because of his willingess to clearly speak his mind in spite of political ramifications. Ventura holds great contempt for politicians whose philosphy is disguised with weasel words. Ventura seeks only to be understood not necessarilly to be embraced. Rand contrasted and distanced herself from other novelists of her time. She told a Newsweek reviewer, "one cannot write about life without discussing philosophy. Most novelists today try to be as vague as possible in order to be misunderstood by the greatest number of people. I want to be understood, so I present my philosophy openly and consciously. Ventura is a reform candidate which means he is not accepted by Democrats nor Republicans nor liberals nor conservatives. He is an entertainer although his medium of entertainment is not accepted whole heartedly by other entertainers. He is an athlete whose sport is not accepted by other athletes. His sport is, in fact, defined as sports/entertainment with nods towards the lowest common denominator of each. Likewise,Rand was either ignored or denounced by the critics of her time. The literary community considered her an outsider. She was exiled by philosophers. Glowered at by liberals and swallowed hard over by conservatives. Both Jesse and Ayn have had made for teevee movies made about them in the past year. If Ayn Rand were alive today and if Jesse was looking for a female to round out his ticket... hmmm let's see. I'm sure they would oppose George W Bush whose "gray" compassionate conservatism would be viewed as anarchy and W himself as an irrational hoodlum playing at politics without philosophy or consistency. They would also oppose Ralph Nader, the ecology movement and women's liberation. Of course Rand, feeling too often misquoted would never appear on the Sunday talk shows unless she could be interviewed alone without editing and without being confronted with quotations from her enemies. Those qualifications sound like a perfect match for theLarry King show. She would not be bringing her saxophone nor discussing her underwear. Jesse, on the other hand, would soak up all of the other media invitations and whereas Rand would refuse debate, Jesse would welcome it...after all his confrontational oratory skills skills have been polished under the tutelage of Vince McMahon and Mean Gene Okerland. And the economy? Allen Greenspan is a graduate of Nathaniel Branden's Institute formerly located in New York City. Branden's institute became in the sixties the headquarters for Objectivism and studied "The Fountainhead" as other institutes study the Bible. Of course this campaign will never happen because Ayn Rand died in 1982. Rand's death reminds me of one of my favorite bits of 60's graffiti. Crossed out on hundreds of restroom walls across America was the quotation "God is dead" signed "Nietschze" and underneath that quotation, was this correction "No, Nietschze is dead" signed "God".
Book Review: Brilliant, very flawed work by brilliant, very flawed woman
Summary: 3 Stars
Funny how most of the reviews are either unqualified adulation from Rand worshipers or slams from Rand haters. IMO, "The Fountainhead" is neither a prophetic work of great genius nor a piece of evil tripe. It is a brilliant work, perhaps even with flashes of genius -- but as flawed as its author.I think Rand had the potential to be a great novelist, which she largely ruined when she decided she was the world's greatest philosopher since Aristotle. Any dogma is the enemy of art. If you read Rand's three major novels -- "We the Living", "The Fountainhead", and "Atlas Shrugged" -- you can see her dogma becoming more and more rigid, and her characters less and less human. "The Fountainhead" is a novel you can still appreciate even if you don't agree with the philosophy (and I think the philosophy has some excellent points, just taken to an absurd extreme).
Unlike some reviewers here, I don't find Howard Roark to be completely inhuman. He does feel pain -- not only the pain of his own struggle but of his mentor Henry Cameron and his friend Steve Mallory, the sculptor. It's just that, as Rand says, the pain "only goes down to a certain point" because it can't touch the core of his independent soul. But consider this passage when Dominique tells Roark she has married Peter Keating: "It would have been easy, if she had seen a man distorting his mouth to bite off sound, closing his fists and twisting them in defense against himself. But it was not easy, because she did not see him doing this, yet knew that this was being done, without the relief of a physical gesture." Clearly this is a man who feels and suffers. He can feel sympathy as well: for Gail Wynand, even for Peter Keating.
At that stage, Rand herself was still capable of sympathy for less-than-perfect characters. Guy Francon, Dominique's father, is an opportunist -- but ultimately still more a good than a bad guy. His relationship with his daughter, sparsely depicted, is nonetheless very "real" and touching. Even Keating, the ultimate "second-hander" and in many ways a despicable man, is to some extent sympathetic and is shown as having some good in him. His failed romance with his true love, Katie, is very poignant -- and the scene near the end where he meets her years after dumping her, when she has "gotten over" him and lost her humanity, is truly heartbreaking. (Though her loss of humanity and selfhood is a little too complete.)
Gail Wynand is a fascinating, tragic character throughout -- and in a way, his relationship with Dominique is more interesting than the Howard/Dominique romance. The story of his childhood and his rise in the newspaper industry is absorbing and very well-written.
Some reviewers mention stilted dialogue. I don't agree. Yes, there are long passages where the characters preach/philosophize instead of talking, and become nothing but vehicles for Rand's ideas. But apart from that, the dialogue is mostly dynamic, crisp, and quite believable (e.g. the first meeting between Wynand and Dominique).
Rand also has a terrific descriptive style. Take this passage describing the aftermath of rain: "The pavements glistened, there were dark blotches on the walls of buildings, and since it did not come from the sky, it looked as if the city were bathed in cold sweat. The air was heavy with untimely darkness, disquieting like premature old age, and there were yellow puddles of light in the windows."
And there are wonderful, memorable lines; one of my favorites is, "All love is exception-making."
Now the flaws. The character of Dominique, particularly in the first half of the book, is not very plausible. I don't "get" her masochism, the wallowing in her degradation at Roark's hands in their first encounter. (And yes, it was definitely rape -- Dominique herself repeatedly describes it as such.) Her motives for trying to destroy Roark's career when she has already realized she loves him never feel "real," no matter how Rand tries to rationalize them. I enjoy twisted love-hate relationships as much as the next gal (one of my favorite books is "Wuthering Heights") but this is twisted beyond plausibility. (Dominique becomes much more believable in the second half of the book, though; the scene where she finally comes back to Roark is great.)
Ellsworth Toohey with his grandiose plans for world power is even more implausible. And the idea that the dumbing down of culture is some sort of deliberate plot to pass off mediocre works as great ones in order to debase cultural standards ... puh-leeze.
Rand has an annoying tendency to restate every idea a dozen times and hammer the reader over the head with it. Eventually you just want to shout, "All right, Ayn -- I got the point!"
As for the philosophy -- yes, the occasional super-individualist like Howard Roark is great. A lot of great geniuses, including apparently Leonardo da Vinci, didn't have the "people" gene. But if everyone behaved like that ... I'm not sure it would be such a great world to live in. No matter how much Rand might pretend otherwise, her worship of the great man does have a flip side of contempt for the mass of humanity. See Wynand's comment to Dominique, "One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name." That's scary. So is Rand's palpable disgust for the imperfections of unheroic human (and particularly female) flesh.
A readable, thought-provoking book, but hardly a guide to life. Read it -- but with a critical mind.
Book Review: The reviews Tell All
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm 38 years old and just read The Fountainhead for the first time. That probably gives me a little more life experience than others who have read it, so here's my two cents.The characters in this book are somewhat exaggerated, but nonetheless are very, very real, in that they have counterparts in the world we live in. Roark is cut from the same cloth that Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Edison, Thomas Jefferson, the Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs, Sam Walton, etc., were. They all had a burning passion for one field of human endeavor. They held revolutionary ideas that were met with scorn by the status quo and the chronically insecure. They struggled against overwhelming odds to see their visions become reality. And, in the end, the proved to be benefactors of all mankind.
Keating, Toohey, and Wynand are all parasites to one degree or another. Keating has no real talent, but is a master of back-stabbing and rear-end kissing. In short, he would be a huge success on "Survivor." However, his lack of talent and integrity ultimately destroy his career, and his desire to please everyone but himself destroys his soul. Anyone who has ever dealt with office politics has met a Peter Keating.
Toohey cripples the very people he says he wants to "help." He puts them down in subtle ways and loads them with pathological guilt. He uses people's dependence on him to hold up his faltering self esteem, so he dares not allow them to become truly whole and independent human beings. I have met ministers, teachers, social workers and "advocates" of various causes who mirror Toohey quite nicely. Jim Jones is a well known real world example. Tony Soprano's mother on the HBO show is a fictional type of Toohey. The atrocious Disney movie "Pocohontas" was shot full of Tooheyisms.
Wynand is a pimp. He makes money off of society's shortcomings, all the while making those shortcomings worse. He's like the executives who produce bilge like "gangsta rap" CDs,publish rags like The Enquirer, make stars of people like Britney Spears, and create shows like Jerry Springer.
Roark is hated and feared by them and people like them, because they would rather cling to the trash at hand than reach up and snatch a pearl.
I've dealt with Keatings, Tooheys, and Wynands all my adult life. You can find them in business meetings, on church boards, working for government agncies and participating in civic groups. They are real, they are numerous, and they really are a threat to the progress of the human race.
Ms. Rand felt that the world was full of lazy idiots, and that it is kept going by the blood, sweat and tears of a handful of people with intelligence, passion and integrity. If you read the past reviews, you'll realize she was right. So many of them must have been written by people who didn't give the book the careful reading it deserves, if they actually read it at all.
If you decide to read this book, be warned now that it's no walk in the park. I spent the first half of it thinking "Roark, chill, dude, it's just a damn building!" It's only later that you understand how architecture is used as a metaphor for all fields of human pursuit. Also, it is subtly revealed towards the end that Roark's real beef with historical architecture is not that it is deficient or worthless, but that nothing has been added to it since its development. The architects of his day paid homage to the past, but did not seek to develop new and improved techniques of their own. In this way, they were living "second hand" off the genius of others.
Journeying through the Fountainhead is like walking through a field of diamonds that are buried just beneath the surface. There are innumerable treasures waiting to be found, but you must be observant and careful to find them. Be assured, the reward is worth the effort.
I give the book four stars because it does have some significant flaws. Ms. Rand exercises poor word choice. For example she speaks of the folly of "living for others" when she really means "living for the approval of others." This, plus her use of words like "selfishness" versus "altruism" to describe things like self confidence versus neurotic co-dependency are major problems. It's almost as if she wanted to blur what she was saying just enough to force the reader to think deeply about what they were reading. Or perhaps the fact that English wasn't her first language was a hindrance - I don't know.
Warning: the initial, violent love scene between Roark and Dominique is probably an extension of her own sex fantasies, which apparently had a strong sado-masochistic element. It is detrimental to the message of the book, and is it's greatest shortcoming. Also, she seems unneccessarily antagonistic towards religion. There is much in the Bible, ex. the parable of the talents, as well as Jesus' admonition to not cast pearls to swine, that dovetails nicely with the book's message. I believe that she over reacted to what she saw happening in her native Soviet Union, throwing out all notions of collective effort and responsibility in favor of an absolute emphasis on the individual.
Nonetheless, it is extremely well written, especially in its descriptive power. Ms. Rand knew and loved New York City intimately, and that comes forth strongly. Also, its message, if you take the time to properly understand it, is profoundly true, and applicable to the human condition as a whole. All in all, this book is highly recommended.
Book Review: More than a book
Summary: 5 Stars
In Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, Rand paints a world with two extremes of human nature. On one side of the spectrum there is Peter Keating. Keating illustrates the second-hander, a chameleon, willing to adapt himself to his surroundings to appease others. Juxtaposed to the second-hander is Howard Roark. Never adulterating his own opinion, Roark remains an originator, a first-hander. Between these two extremes, lies a middle ground where people are a mixture of both. Gail Wynand, a newspaper magnate, believes he controls the public because of his power and wealth. But in the end, he realizes that it is they that control him. A man who controls others through the acquisition of souls, Ellsworth Toohey is a first-hander who promotes second-handedness. Through these characters, the novel is an allegory of real-world people. There are selfish individualists and then there are devout followers of altruism. Whatever it may be, all people exist on a continuum between Roark and Keating. Peter Keating lives his life through others. When Keating is first introduced, he is valedictorian at his graduation looking for a former competitor to reaffirm his triumph over a rival. Keating cares only for defeating someone else. He does not care for himself. Keating has no passion, no driving force to make decisions for himself. His mother decides he will accept the offer from the Francon firm. The lack of an individual self manifests itself also in his pliable code of ethics. On the job, Keating repeatedly uses sycophancy and other such ruses to woo Francon and to propel himself to a higher position within the firm. He caters to their vices and lets their tastes dictate his life. Keating's pretentiousness cannot hide his incompetence in designing buildings. Second-handers need the help of others to achieve success. Peter Keating needs Howard Roark do his drawings for buildings through his career. Keating needs journalists like Dominique Francon and Ellsworth Toohey to give him a good name. Peter needs his fellow men for their respect and competency. By the end of the novel, Peter Keating realizes that he has tried to live his life through others. But it is too late; Peter has already compromised his life so that it is more acceptable to the general public.
The second-hander represents the foil to the individualist. The individualist relies on no one. Howard Roark embodies the soul of the individualist or first hander. Growing up, Roark had no family and thus worked on building projects to support himself through school. After being expelled from the Stanton Institute of Technology for designing free-thinking houses, Roark is called into the Dean's office. The Dean offers him a second chance to return to the school and begin anew. Roark refuses; he asserts that he has learned all that he has needed from the school. With this tone set, Roark's resolve will be tested. When asked by his mentor, Henry Cameron, to develop projects more suitable to popular tastes, Roark responds with a decisive answer that he would rather starve. His uncompromising attitude toward catering to tastes prevents him from attaining numerous commissions. But the few that Roark does receive are from individual men who admire his audacity. Throughout the novel, Roark is static, never compromising his morals.
While Keating is naïve and easy to manipulate and Roark is obstinate and maverick, there is a middle ground. The self made man, the American businessman, closely resembles Gail Wynand. As a youngster, he was always told by superiors, "You don't run things around here." He rises to this challenge and through individual effort; Wynand builds a vast newspaper chain that sways popular opinion. However, Wynand rarely agrees or qualifies the opinions presented in his paper. In fact, he privately despises them. He compromises his beliefs in order to attain greatness. When Wynand marries Dominique, he adamantly pursues a hard policy of banning his wife from being mentioned in the papers. He creates a barrier separating his personal life from his public life. His love for his work is tested morally when Roark is put on trial for dynamiting Cortlandt. On one hand, he can give up his newspaper and power in order to try and sway public opinion for Roark. The alternative is to let his passion sit idle while he sees his paper denouncing his friend. He fails to realize it is the people whom he holds power over that ultimately control him. When he finally does understand his mistake, he decides to compromise his morals to maintain his newspaper and reputation. Wynand is a creative man capable of capturing the unattainable, but in the process he sacrifices his morals to reach his goals. In that sense, they have lost their place among the respected in society. Wynand is not a true uncompromising first-hander, yet he is not a leeching second-hander. These people may attain greatness but at a hefty price.
The Fountainhead illustrates an allegory of characters that symbolize types of men. In the novel, there are true first-handers and second-handers. The few extremists like Keating and Roark represent only a minority of men. Wynands meet a tragic end And it is the Keatings that feed off Roarks to prevail. It is ultimately the individualistic spirit of Howard Roark that will rise above it all.