The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff
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Book Reviews of The Fountainhead
Book Review: One small voice, mine.
Summary: 5 Stars
Read just about any four or five star customer review and you have a fine summary of this book. It is not necessary for me to repeat what has already been said. I myself would like to talk about the individual characters which keep me rereading this book as much as the philosophy does. Roark, Keating, Toohey (shudder), Dominique, etc., all represent facets of humanity, good and evil. But characters like Keating and Wynand are more complex than the characters in Atlas Shrugged. Yes, they are Randian archetypes but they have taught me much about human nature.Keating, had he a little more backbone, might have actually been able to make something of himself. Unlike the villains of AS, he was somewhat sympathetic. He was in love with Catherine, a woman who may not have possessed the glamor and poise of Dominique but who was right for him simply because they were happy when they were together. Fool that he was, he instead opted for what he thought he was supposed to, just as he chose architecture over his true calling, painting. His story is a lesson for all of us. To detractors of the book who call it contemptuous of people I say you don't HAVE to be this way. Don't be a Peter Keating. It is up to you.
Ellsworth Toohey is a villain for the ages, somebody you just love to hate. I won't even describe him as a man. I relish the creepy, slimy feeling I get rereading the passages about him. Every patronizing, smarmy sentence that comes out of his mouth is designed to make one cringe. The fact that he DOESN'T seek out wealth, or even happiness, makes him all the worse.
It is through him and this book that I learned what is evil: holding society and "the greater good" over the individual. Now, whenever I read or watch the news, I am acutely aware of the malice in people who would say they are trying to protect society when their actions result in harm to an individual, or worse, equate society with an individual as I recently heard from a prominent proponent of the death penalty. Again, he is a lesson to all of us: beware the Ellsworth Tooheys of the world. They are out there.
Rand wrote Roark as the ideal man. He certainly is that. I could never expect to be as he is but I firmly believe that he is something to strive for. He had the courage of his convictions. He did not care what other people thought, except those whose opinions mattered to him, such as his mentor, Cameron. Such is the lesson I learned from him. If I find myself jealous or resentful of somebody, I asked myself what my weakness is because fear of one's own shortcomings is from whence hatred and jealousy arise.
If it is difficult to relate to a man who does not even see you, as he is frequently described, consider for a moment why it is important for him to see you and why you feel your own worth is based on how others see you. Then consider the friends that he makes in the book, competent and intelligent people who feel about the world as he does. And finally consider what true friendship is. It is not alms to be doled out in the name of compassion. It is respect and love for those whom we enjoy having around us.
Dominique Francon is a strange bird (Rand said that Dominique was her in a bad mood). Her motivations are complex but when I think about them, they make sense to me. I see her as somebody who has so much contempt for the world that she doesn't think it deserves a man like Roark (or a woman like her). Hence the reason she works against Roark, not to deprive Roark of a living but to deprive the world of Roark. Clarifying the reasons behind her actions also clarifies that controversial rape scene. It is the ideal man saying to the ideal but obstinate woman that the world cannot destroy him. They spar violently to show how strong they are.
Gail Wynand is less interesting to me but an intriguing character nonethless, the man who could have been. He had the drive and the intelligence but, like Dominique, too much contempt. His contempt for humanity at least was purer and cleaner than Toohey's love for humanity. I wonder if, had his childhood not been so brutal, he might have gone a different direction. But then I think that had Roark had a brutal childhood, he still would have come out the same. Such is Wynand's weakness. A sad waste, really.
Atlas Shrugged is THE definitive Rand book. I myself certainly feel this way. Nevertheless, The Fountainhead has virtues that one does not find in that mighty tome. As in AS the characters are largely archetypes but interesting in different ways. Even though Atlas Shrugged is several hundred pages longer than The Fountainhead, it also feels more streamlined. The characters are more complex in the latter (except, admittedly, for Roark), maybe because where Atlas Shrugged deals in the steel and railroad industries, The Fountainhead deals in the more aestetic field of architecture which, incidentally, Rand describes beautifully.
Book Review: One man versus Altruism - al_94930@yahoo.com
Summary: 4 Stars
The Fountainhead is a story of one man, Howard Roark - Ayn Rand's ideal man- and it is the story of how he fights the natural tendency of our world toward collectivism. Roark is a lone creator in a world of fakers, followers and phonies. For those out there who follow a religious sect who believe in compassion and altruism as lofty goals - the atheistic objectivist credo of Ayn Rand may be hard to swallow. For me, it was not difficult at all. In fact, I had no difficulty at all reconciling Howard Roark with my religious beliefs. Simply, God and the highest ambitions and accomplishments of a creative individual, to me, are one and the same. Compassion and pity are not the loftiest Godly virtues in my world. I can reconcile compassion with objectivism.
In my religious world, individualism and achievement reign supreme. Compassion does exist but is secondary. Simply, the American experiment works so well because it has done a masterful job of balancing both fundamental needs of man: the need to create in an unfettered environment(liaises faire capitalism) and the need to believe in God. Ayn Rand's objectivism is a necessary antidote to our present condition to help restore the balance in a world where altruism is becoming the highest ideal. Although Ayn Rand is a proclaimed atheist, I do not think it is impossible to be both an objectivist and a believer. Man does not have to destroy the greatness in the individual to be God-like. One does not have to be a sociopath to be like Howard Roark. (One reviewer called Roark a sociopath and I totally disagree.) Roark has no use for most of the world and unlike the warped sociopath, he does not scheme to get his way - he merely works and achieves. The textbook sociopath feeds off the sickness of the world and achieves through cunning and deceit. Perhaps Wynand could be considered sociopathic, Toohey - definitely - but not Roark. His selfishness is the virtuous kind - directed toward creation. If one is religious - Roark is god-like and of course, blasphemous to the secular and non-secular priests - like Toohey - that are not willing to allow another god in their presence. (Toohey's god is power.)
In this novel, Ayn Rand describes her philosophy of objectivism through the interactions between characters. Peter Keating, an architect, achieves greatness by copying others. He is immoral and despite wealth and seeming success, his life is empty. He is the ultimate user and hypocrite. Keating is the immoral user that is the antithesis of the moral hero of the objectivist philosophy.
But Rand does not favor altruism as an answer to immoral deeds. In fact, altruism itself is evil because a society, which fosters it, always does so at someone else's expense, and that someone is, as in Roark's case, the true creator and ndividual. This warps and compromises the rightful way of things and inevitably leads us down the path to collectivism. In the person of Ellsworth Toohey, a sociopathic newspaper columnist, Ayn Rand shows how the power hungry manipulate the masses by setting a standard of mediocrity which fosters collectivism. Altruism is a favorite method of manipulation.
In our own time, over 50 years after the original publication of the Foutainhead, we can see how in the name of altruism, greedy and soulless politicians are still selling us an Altruistic nirvana. What started as an altruistic call to help the underclass and the oppressed, Affirmative Action and other programs of its like have become programs of evil. Though well intentioned, Affirmative Action programs allow the mediocre to take the place of the best and the brightest in our schools and other institutions. And the sickness is not merely that it advances the stupid and slow among us. There are some very bright but terribly misguided people who think that Affirmative Action is a good thing. Out of guilt and the need to conform, many intelligent people have been led astray as well. And for the people of color who think it is a good thing - it is nothing more than the face of slavery in a new costume.
So, in the end, Roark's passion for his work and uncompromising creativity in accomplishing his professional goals set him apart from the second-handers - the same one's that feed off the creativity of the greats thinkers of history: the Galileos, the Edisons, and yes, even our modern Prometheus - the Edward Tellers of the world!
Roark is a hero because he will never compromise despite enormous pressures to do so. Although many argue about the necessity to compromise depending upon circumstance, compromising to misplaced altruism or the forces of evil leads to immorality, or fascism, or downright stupidity. Does anyone really want to be operated on by an Affirmative Action brain surgeon?
Roark did not sell out. He is certainly a valuable model in this world of immoral leaders and corrupted politicians willing to sacrifice even the greatest among us for their collectivist agendas.
Book Review: Well, it has no philosophical merit...
Summary: 2 Stars
Ayn Rand was, at one point, a novelist; I'm convinced that she was half decent at it, too. However, at some point in her life, Rand decided that she was the most important philosopher in history. This came after her first novel, We the Living. Now, I would say that you should read Rand because she's a half-decent novelist, and in addition her philosophy is a fascinating view into the Narcissistic Personality Disorder she suffered from (Howard Roark, in this book, is a Narcissist and a sociopath to boot).Fountainhead is interesting in that it does try to work in architectural ideas, and when Rand's not busy slamming you with her aesthetic tastes (or her philosophy) it does have a point about originality, and how a work should really be composed as a whole. Now, Rand never finished her thought, and Roark really just seems to do it through sheer instinct, but it's a good thought nonetheless.
The characters of the Fountainhead are what set it above Atlas Shrugged. Howard Roark and Dominique Francon are party line Objectivists, whose ideas flow from the mouth of Rand. However, there's more of a spread in the rest: Peter Keating is really just a man with no self-worth (Rand's Narcissism stopped her from seeing a middle between no self-worth and selfishness), Gail Wynand is a failed idealist (more interesting than Roark), and Ellsworth Monkton Toohey is a standard Objectivist villain (he would get the award for worst name in English literature if not for Balph Eubank in Atlas Shrugged; yes, BALPH). Since the non-Roark/Toohey characters don't just spout Randisms (Roark is Objectivist; Toohey is the evil Anti-Objectivist that Rand set up as a strawman to knock down), they get to have some philosophical doubts and worries, and are just more interesting than the Producers and Looters of Atlas Shrugged.
Don't get suckered in by Rand's philosophy. It's not that good, especially when you consider that it doesn't reflect upon reality. Egoism is a false and evil ethics. Don't believe me? Okay...one, Rand's defense is based in the false assumption that rational people have no conflict of interest. This is obviously not true--if you and I are each trying to sell a car to a potential buyer, who will not buy more than one car, isn't it in both of our interests to sell him the car? So don't our interests conflict, even if we're rational people? Two, one is incapable of ensuring the survival of the human race. Ever notice that Rand isn't concerned with kids, of which she had none? Well, under an egoist ethics, there's no reason to have them. Indeed, it may be considered "irrational" to desire children in the first place, and hence evil. Three, selfishness is considered bad because it is too much concern for the self with no regard to others. There is nothing wrong with caring for one's own needs, but this does not have to be at the expense of caring about other human beings as well. It's one of the things that makes a society possible.
Rand, because of her psychological disorders, saw only hard dichotomies and was a master of the false dilemma. Self-sacrifice is not the giving up of a greater value for a lesser one, it is the giving up of a lesser value for a greater one. Unlike in Rand-world, other people and society DO matter. Her altruism is a false strawman made so that her evil egoism could seem rational by comparison. I suggest the Christian ethic: LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. Think about the two things that this implies: one, love your neighbor; two, love yourself. The command is not one or the other. It is both. This is the error Rand makes in her ethics, and which is perpetuated by her followers (I was in an introductory philosophy course taught by Allan Gotthelf, who wrote a book called On Ayn Rand, and he specifically used these false dichotomies to argue in favor of Rand's position on almost all accounts).
Ultimately false is Rand's account of love. There is no such thing as real conditional love. That is a projection of certain values one has upon another person, and the idealization of those values, never of the actual person "loved." Real love is unconditional, stemming from emotional bonds that Rand herself was incapable of growing. That's why Rand's romance seems depressingly...unromantic. (The way it happens in the Fountainhead is called rape.)
As I said at the beginning, I'm convinced that Ayn Rand was a half-decent novelist. I'm giving this book 2 stars because its philosophy, not its story or characters, is bad. If this seems contradictory to my prior post, it's because I've reconsidered Rand as an author since. I think a bit better of her, but without accepting her philosophy. If you read this book, be sure to ask yourself not only: does this follow logically? but also: does this reflect on the world I live in, or simply on a fantasy world created by the author? I think that the answer, frankly, is the latter.
Book Review: Really disturbing...
Summary: 1 Stars
I have just finished reading "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" back to back, and man, am I glad I'm finally finished. I had to check them out to see what all the hype was about, and it's clear that many of the comments here about Rand being a bit mentally afflicted were definitely true. You actually feel dirty reading some of this stuff. It's that sick.What disturbs me most about Rand's novels is her twisted idea of romantic love. The heroines are frigid, emotionless robots who only enjoy sexual encounters if they're being treated like garbage the whole time. They're slapped, shoved and snatched around, their arms are being twisted, and they love it. They wouldn't have it any other way. It's disgusting. Dominique Francon seems to only enjoy it if she's lying completely still and unresponsive the whole time. The heros are also cold and robotic, except they enjoy knocking the women around. It's completely joyless. If Rand was trying to create erotic love scenes, she sure missed the mark. When the couples are just spending time together outside of the bedroom, they talk about how the woman enjoys being treated as the man's property because the man is just so perfect and godlike. Otherwise each one seems to just intuitively know what the other is thinking. There is no playfulness, no laughter, no anger or tenderness or any other genuine feeling involved, as you'd have in an actual relationship. They feel no actual need for each other, because that would be weak, so they drift in and out of each other's lives over periods of several years. This is Rand's idea of being in love? Obviously she never experienced the feeling. Because of this, you can't bring yourself to care whether the two "soulmates" get together in the end or not.
The characters in this book are completely unlikeable, except for Gayle Wynand, and of course anyone who's read this knows how he ends up. I thought there was much more depth to his character then anyone else in the book. You got an idea of what made him the hard-nosed guy that he was, and you saw that he had genuine feeling for Dominique, even though the part where he builds a house in the country to keep her away from other people was a little much. I didn't understand the appeal of Roark at all. By the description given, he didn't seem all that physically attractive (not that that matters, but he IS supposed to be the perfect man, right?), and his so-called individualism didn't inspire me at all. It seemed like most of the time he was just doing completely illogical things in order to be difficult. He didn't strike me as very bright or charismatic, and I certainly don't understand why anyone would worship him. Dominique basically has no personality that I can tell, except that she also does silly and illogical things, like dumping a basically decent husband because he wouldn't let his business be run into the ground to save her hero Roark. As for Keating, one minute you loathe him, the next you feel sorry for him. But you never actually like him. Toohey is just ridiculous with his "I'm going to take over this newspaper...and RULE THE WORLD!!" speeches. He's not exactly a villain who strikes fear into the heart. I wasn't even sure he WAS the villain until halfway through the book. Not that I need to have it spelled out for me right away, but I do like to have some sense of who I'm supposed to be rooting for or booing, especially when I'm 400 pages in. The characters were just so flat for the most part that I really couldn't be sure. Oh, and Roark's big speech with the "not guilty" verdict at the end? Total cheese. Some of the dialogue throughout the entire novel is so cheesy that you can't help laughing (Like Roark saying the guy who discovered fire was put to death? How did he know that?).
I feel sorry for Ayn Rand, because it seems she was just a massively insecure person, with no ability to connect with other people. So, to make herself feel better, she decided to throw together a so-called philosophy justifying her complete lack of love or empathy for anyone at all. Unfortunately, she attracted a lot of other miserable people who have decided to worship her as some sort of all-knowing sage. I also feel sorry for them. I'm no student of philosophy, as you can probably tell since I have focused on the novel aspect instead of the idealistic one. But it seems as if most people would be level-headed enough to see that the very principles that Rand constantly condemns, are in fact the principles that make life in a hard world bearable. They're an undeniable part of mankind's being. If you take away man's love for his fellow man, you take away the part of him that makes him man, and he becomes an animal. If every man (and woman) lived only for himself, it would not be a pretty world. If you don't realize that, you need to grow up. Or get some therapy and medication, quickly.
Book Review: My guiding philosophy through a turbulent life
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I read Ayn Rand was when I was about 18. It was a life-changing experience. It was one of those moments when one finds the right words to describe what one feels, especially when one did not know that such words existed or had been expressed. All my life up to that point, I had been stymied by the will of the collective, as enforced by a domineering father hell-bent on molding me in his image, and a stifling cultural environment that valued fitting-in, rote memorization and academic succee bss as described by narrow definitions limited to doctor and engineer. I grew up in the hyper-competitive rat race world that is the Indian middle-class, where intelligence, curiosity and creativity are all to be sacrificed at the altar of a steady job and one's total devotion to the pursuit of the ultimate goal, public adulation, typically based on a facade of 'normalcy'. I had a hard time trying to adjust to a world that constantly told me, "Well yes, you are intelligent and have the brains, so why dont you use them to get better grades and become a doctor or an engineer?" Just at the time when this pressure was rising up to a crescendo, I happened to find "The Fountainhead" in my first year of college.
It was like a new dimension had opened up and this person, Ayn Rand, knew exactly the mind-set that I was struggling against. I recognized the Keatings and the Tooheys I had dealt with and would have to deal with for the rest of my life, and rarely, the other mavericks that walked their own path to their own drumbeat. I knew instinctively that this was more than a book, it was an instruction manual for a certain type of person. For others, especially those of the Peter Keating, "i want people to love me and I will do anything to fit in" mentality and of the Toohey "He enjoys what he does and so he must be destroyed" mind set, it was a load of crap. Now, I am sure there are a lot of people that do their own thing, don't worry about others and still don't like Ayn Rand, but for someone thats drowning in a sea of negativity, Ayn Rand is that piece of driftwood that comes at the right time just before one is about to go under. It gave me the strength to survive the constant barrage of naysayers telling me what I couldn't do, how I was stupid to try things my way, the critiques, the ridicule and stifled laughter behind my back for daring to go against the grain and just for trying something in my life that had nothing to do with their own lives. In later years, I learned to gauge the degree of 'rightness' of a course of action by the amount of uproar it created among a certain set of people. I learned to use the negativity to my advantage.
The upshot, well, life is an ongoing process, but I am happier through all my successes and failures precisely because they are mine and I have lived them on my terms. It has been very very hard at times, but I have never felt despair or the need to ask others about the course I need to set at every turn. The successes have been extremely rewarding and the failures, mere setbacks that just make me stronger for the next battle. Reminiscing about the younger days (I am 33 as of this writing) and meeting the sheep-like Peter Keatings that were in my life back then only affirms my self-belief and the strength I got from Ayn Rand when no such reassurance was forthcoming from the people around me.
There are several reviews and opinions here, some I agree with and others that I dont. They all have a right to their opinions, however, my only request to the negative (and some positive) reviewers is, please don't assign current political terminology such as liberal and/or conservative to the Ayn Rand canon. No matter what you think about her ideology and literature, lets get something straight. She talks about individuals and their strength as such. Even her harshest critics will grant her that. The very idea behind "The Fountainhead" is to be whatever brand of ideologue one wants to be and to have the freedom to be that regardless of public opinion. She cannot be hijacked to serve the purposes of a political party or of any other ideology besides the one that she espouses in her books, that of objectivist individualism. It transcends 'manufactured consent'-era spin doctor created labels such as liberal or conservative that have lost all objective meaning and only serve to evoke knee-jerk responses in the minds of the readers to push the right buttons that spin-mongers have programmed within the collective consciousness. The ideology that comes closest to her ideals is Libertarianism but even that has branched off into myriad flavors further underlining the fact that individualism cannot be summed up easily into one philosophy. It means different things to different people, which is exactly the point.