The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff
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Book Reviews of The Fountainhead
Book Review: One of the most complicated literary achievements of the 20th century
Summary: 5 Stars
When you assess Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, a lot has to be taken into consideration. First of all, this book was written in 1943. And though many authors from that era still are fresh and contemporary, the Fountainhead has definitely aged ungracefully. The characters of Roark, Toohey, Keeting, and others are both complicated and yet at the same time horribly two dimensional. The morals of feminism and the morals of the idealist are stilted in a pre-post-modernism fashion that is alien to our present culture.
Aside from the surface level of this novel (what usually is 100% of a work of fiction), underneath all of the dry and difficult interactions of the characters is a philosophy that Rand expounds. It is that of the idealist and how that person must stand up against just about every one else in society who will be attempting to tear him or her down. That is sort of a simple read on Rands fascinating work, but essentially it is what the book is about. Rand is setting forth a philosophical agenda like Nietzsche, Freud, and all the other old fellows, only Rand is using a fictional vehicle to structure her ideas around.
So in essence, Rands work is an amazing towering achievement that is worth reading due to the fact that every page hums with her ideas. On the other hand, her characters are so terrible and dead you really don't want to aspire to be these people. Roark, the subject of her treatise, is like a lobotomized Forrest Gump with a knack at architectuare. I wouldn't want to be him or know him. Yet this is Rand's ideal. Her characters also wander in an area of cultural entitlement that alienates just about every reader.
While reading this book, I kept thinking of what kind of person Rand was. If she is like the characters and the ideas of her book, or is essentially the person who wrote the forward of her 25th anniversary reprint, she is one of the coldest, most unhappy people every to walk the face of the earth. Her ideas are those of superiority and snobbish to an extreme beyond those of anyone I have ever come across. Her husband, Frank O'Hara (a painter), was not a very good artist and seems to my eye to have represented Keeting, Roark's foil and the embodiment of everything wrong in her world view. Her ideals strip all that is soulful in an existence and yet she is expounding thoughts of the perfect creationist who might embody humanities very best. I could go on and on... but I think you get the idea, this book in contradictory to an extreme.
Lastly, and this is just a personal aside... Ayn Rand has completely poured her soul out onto these pages. But what a soul it is. Rand has portrayed herself as the coldest, ugliest person I have ever come across. Its fascinating to see her warped world view that is devastatingly bleak and morbid.
This is one of the more important books of the 20th century, it is also very enjoyable to read, though dated as I said. I would suggest this book to anyone as a book to put on a personal reading list and hope you decide to give it a try.
Book Review: A powerful and thought provoking book
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked up _The Fountainhead_ again after having last read it 20 years ago in high school. As a high school Junior, I appreciated many of the points discussed, but ultimately thought the book was dry and underdeveloped. The characters were too stilted, and the dialogue and situations were implausible, it seemed to me.
While cleaning out a box of old books in my garage, I stumbled on my old copy of this book. I picked it up and surprised myself by finishing it in a week and a half. (Given its length and my two kids, that is fairly quick reading.) What I had remembered as a dry treatise was to me now one of the most powerful and compelling books I have ever read.
My changing perception certainly reflects my increased maturity and life experience, in that I now realize that the book's fundamental issues of ethics and humanity's place in the world are central to a well-grounded life. Rand's arguments are as powerful as they are profound, with a fictional world serving as a backdrop for a morality play between dominant, and in many ways unyielding, characters. This book reminds me of the structure of Greek tragedies, in which characters are placed against each other by fate, and there is little to do but watch until their struggles end.
It is clear that Rand believes in free will, but her characters establish their choices early in life and continue in accordance with their chosen principles throughout the story. This gives the characters a consistency that is unusual in modern literature, in which characters tend to be "nuanced." There is no nuance here. The characters do not reflect people. They reflect ideas. And it is the interplay between these ideas, and ultimately the merit of each one, that is the focus of the author.
In this context, the structure of the book works brilliantly. This is not an adventure book in which cowboys save the ranch, or a romance in which the hero seduces the illusive heiress. Instead, it is an allegory for the decisions we all face, and the competing demands on our morality and desires. Do we pursue what we believe to be worthwhile, our dreams? Or do we spend our lives doing what others tell us we should do? Should our own happiness be our paramount goal? Or is self sacrifice the pinnacle of morality? How should we treat those who have provided us with the resources we use daily? And how should we treat ourselves? Upon what basis do we recognize moral acts and immoral deeds? These are all questions to which Rand provides a compelling answer; the individual's happiness should be the goal of the individual's life, and productivity (along with its recognition) is the key to happiness.
Over the 20 years since I had last read _The Fountainhead_, I have come to appreciate both the author's questions and her answers more than I would have expected. I would encourage others to read this book (again). Regardless of whether or not one accepts Rand's answers, one's life can only be improved by considering these fundamental issues.
Book Review: I read it all only because I was paid to read it.
Summary: 1 Stars
About 6 years ago, I read this book because someone with whom I was co-teaching a course put it on the reading list. I actually read it twice, the minumum number of times I read anything I teach. I would not have finished it even once if I had not been paid to read it. Don't get me wrong--over the previous 20+ years I had read most of Rand's non-fiction, and her play(s). I had used essays by her in classes I had taught. Her non-fiction I find mentally stimulating, partly because I strongly agree with some of her ideas, but definitely not with all; so it is a challenge to disentangle them. But reading her non-fiction first had warned me about her fiction--for Ayn Rand is her very own favorite authority to quote in her essays. These copious quotations from her novels had given me the idea that her fiction was non-humorous and greatly didactic. The Fountainhead proved that Rand quotes herself fairly--it's gossly didactic and has little intentional humour. It is, though, a good example of camp--probably the Hollywood influence on Rand--in the posturing of it main romantic pair. Dominique, who I gather is supposed to be an ideal female character, strikes dominatrix poses, but when it comes to the "right" man, she's an enthusiastic masochist. There's the notorious "rape" scene, but even more grotesque is her marriage to someone else for whom she feels no real attraction but who keeps in close contact with the "right" man, and most grotresque is the scene where she swooningly slashes herself--with shattered windshield glass, I believe. This Aryan-featured female turns out to be the right woman for the Aryan-featured hero, who is supposed to be an ideal man. (It's interesting that in a book set mostly in the 1930s and published during WWII, a Jewish author would choose to make her two ideal characters both physical types the Nazis would have approved of--surely Rand could have found beauty in variety.) Looks aside, one wonders if an ideal man wouldn't have loved someone less perverse that Dominique. Rand also does not play fair politically--in that the book does take on elements of the New Deal, but doesn't seem to acknowledge the Great Depression, so that the New Deal seems wholly perverse and arbitrary. The book does have some virtues. It describes non-organic things well. It describes work--especially work involving more than one person-- well. The long trial oration is a relief, because the ideas are presented openly and therefore Rand doesn't get so gummed up in the demands of matters like plot and character or in matters of irrational, incompletely examined sexual feelings. The main villian is very boring--Rand avoiding a flaw that writers such as Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens sometimes fell into, the flaw of making a story's main villian more interesting and compelling that the good or heroic characters. Unfortunately Rand' main villian has several subtantial scenes, which are excrutiatingly dull. shakespeare, Milton
Book Review: A Stunning Literary Achievement
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I read "The Fountainhead", I was deeply impressed with the plot, characters, and events it portrays. Howard Roark is one of the few fictional characters I've encountered that I would definitely want to meet. His capacity for sheer joy is almost unequaled in literature. Yes, the characters are abstract, but that's infinitely preferable to yet another novel about yet another damsel in distress, or poor man crushed by the evil capitalists. In my opinion, Dominique Francon was the least "believable" of all the characters, but one of the most interesting...her motivations may not have been realistic, but she is fascinating from a philosophical perspective. After reading "The Fountainhead", you'll be amazed how many Peter Keatings you see in everyday life.After reading reviewer after reviewer complain about the book's lack of realism, I want to say that I was amazed at the number of events in this book that rang true for me. The description of Gail Wynand's schooling still stands out in my mind, along with the contest held by Wynand's Banner to see whether they could raise more money for an unwed mother or a struggling scientist. I've said this before, in my review of "Atlas Shrugged" - Rand's minor characters are incredible. Mrs. Keating is exactly what she needs to be, and she is such an accurate picture of so many well-meaning but intervening parents! The description of Mrs. Wayne Wilmot, a potential client of Roark's, is just staggering - it so perfectly characterizes so many people.
I'm currently in the middle of my second reading of the book, and I'm surprised how many little details I'm noticing now that I skipped right over before. This is definitely a book you have to read twice. Rand had such an acute sense of contrast and irony, and it's such a shame to miss all the little details she put in for the reader to find. It's like an irony gold mine. Just compare the descriptions of Roark and Keating walking down the same street and you'll see what I mean.
There's just one thing missing from this book - illustrations. I would give anything to see a building that Howard Roark could have designed, and the movie adaptation's models were so bad I cringed when I saw them. I'd love to see someone design the Stoddard Temple, or the Enright House, or the Wynand Building...basically any of the buildings Roark did. Even the gas station. It would be great if the Ayn Rand Institute or some other Objectivist institution sponsored an architectural contest for a design for one of these buildings.
The first time I ever heard of this book was in an essay about Objectivism which called "The Fountainhead" poorly written and awkward. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Say whatever else you like about Ayn Rand, she was a phenomenal writer (that English wasn't even her first language still amazes me). I highly recommend "The Fountainhead" to everyone - even if you don't agree with the philosophy, the story and the writing are sheer delight.
Book Review: The Fountainhead: Valuable Even for Altruists
Summary: 2 Stars
As a disclaimer for this review, I must hereby state my political postition: I am a devout liberal. So devout, in fact, that I considered making myself a nice book cover out of brown paper in order to disguise the fact that I was reading such an infamously aliberal book as The Fountainhead. (I decided against it-- paper is a valualbe natural resource, you know, and it shouldn't be wasted for something as frivolous as my vanity). But I must confess, after toiling through all 704 pages of it, that I didn't abhor it. Not consistently, in any case. One of my main comlaints is that most of the characters, including Howard Roark, the hero, and his lover, Dominique, are entirely static throughout the book. There is not one point at which Roark's incredible integrity is compromised enought to make him seen even slightly human. While Rand's stated goal is to portray life "as it might and ought to be," it becomes ineffective when the characters are too obviously godlike for humans to even aspire to. Also, for all his supposed integrity, Roark (and all the other characters in the book, for that matter) think and act entirely in contradictions. No one ever sinply eats a piece of bread because he is hungry; he eats it because it is the best way to make someone else conscious of his indifference toward them, even thought what he wants most is their love. Here is a prime example: "It hurts me every time I think of him. It makes everything easier-- the people, the editorials, the contracts-- but easier because it hurts so much. Pain is a stimulant also. I think I hate that name. I will go on repeating it. It is a pain I wish to bear." Huh? Another complaint: after years of the world's absolute contempt (at least outwardly) for Roark, I found his final triumph completely unbeleivable. Finally, I resent Rand's manipulativeness. Face it: this book is not an artistically written novel, but a piece of Objectivist propaganda. I suppose I resent the fact that, no matter how much one may, in principle, agree with the opinions of the antagonist, Ellsworth Toohey, his positions are so radical, and taken to such ridiculous extremes that the reader has no choice but to hate him. Who could possible agree with the sentiment that all reason should be automatically discounted in favor of intuition and "feelings"? Toohey's lengthy diatribes against selfishness and his sermons about his plans for the world come off more like the rantings of a mad scientist than a sane (if "misguided")philosopher. I did say, however, that I don't hate the book. I like the message of the triumph of artistic individualism against the garbage of the masses, and I even found the scene in which Gail Wynand (a man who understands Roark and tries oh-so-hard to be like him and stand up for his beliefs) is finally crushed by the power of the ignorant masses rather moving. To this end, I say read the book. Yes it IS long, I know. But at least you will have broadened you horizons. If only to understand the mind of the enemy. ;-)