Fountainhead

Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: Ayn Rand out-did herself on this book. Though usually overshadowed by Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead is arguably Rand's greatest piece. It is the true story of a hero with his back against the wall, in a struggle to fight for what is right. For all of you socialists out there, pay close attention to Ellsworth Toohey- it might be like looking in the mirror.

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful!
Review: First off, I am by-and-large a conservative, so I do not find Ayn Rand's ideas objectionable on their face. In fact, I very much enjoyed the book Anthem, also by Rand, which is essentially an anti-communist manifesto. Rand's style of writing leaves quite a bit to be desired, but she is passionate about her ideas, and that is laudable.

But, this book takes stark writing to the extreme. I was never once amused or saddened or made happy because of this book, and I never for one instant believed any of the characters. To make the sick little world she creates more "believeable", Rand sprinkles a bunch of obscure, lengthy references to architecture throughout the already too-long tome. And, just to make sure she really pounds all of her points home, Rand makes all of her characters self-absorbed philosophy-spewers so you can't escape her tedious diatribes about the worth of the individual over society and the foolishness of any kind of selflessness, including charity. You can't help feeling disgusted by all of these terrible people who populate Rand's book.

Now, I must admit that I never finished this book. I got about halfway through, but then I was entirely sickened by the fact that the supposedly "perfect" main character, Howard Roark, rapes an independent, self-made woman, Dominique, and she is HAPPY about it! That's right, Dominique WANTED to be raped - indeed, she falls in love with Roark after the event! It's this kind of sick rape rationalization that is the cause of sexual abuse around the world - how can people claim that a book that contains such smut to be a "classic"?

Needless to say, I don't recommend this book; it's not even worth the ink it's written with, not to mention the paper it's printed on.

Rating:
Summary: Run for Your Lives!
Review: I can understand why young people would like Ayn Rand: she tells us to love ourselves, tells us we are capable of great things, tells us to persist. And these teachings are, especially for high-schoolers, good things to embrace. But the other stuff she espouses, i.e., selfishness, social darwinism, compassionlessness-- these things are profoundly destructive. Sadly, Ayn Rand never realized there was a way to love yourself, help yourself, do great things, and still love and help others out, too. For some reason she thought the two were mutually exclusive.

Moreover, from a literary point of view Ayn Rand is an aggressively bad novelist. Her characters are one-dimensional; her prose is bizarrely bland and plodding (and that's not even mentioning the forehead-clutchingly-bad dialogue); and her plots are as predictable as third-rate soap-operas. If you want to read great long novels try Dickens, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Woolf, or Melville. These cats make Ayn Rand look as sophisticated as a hyperactive first-grader with her first Etch-A-Sketch.

Rand's vision of existence ultimately was a very cowardly one: she only saw what she wanted to see. Instead of opening herself up to life and all of its beautiful complexity, she vainly sought to reduce it to neat, tidy, hateful philosophy. And plus philosophy-- as any philosopher whose worth his salt will attest-- can only solve so much.

Rating:
Summary: A Dangerous Book
Review: You can probably refer to the other 755 Amazon reviews to get a sense of this book. I will explain quickly, however, why it's a pernicious force, based on my own experience. The Fountainhead takes a very powerful hold on a lot of young people who read it just before or just after arriving at college. At a time when these young people are going through a lot of upheaval in their lives, and often feeling very alone, this gives them a false sense of security; rather than going through the hard work of making friends and generally being an adult, this book feeds notions that we don't need other people. That's not a healthy outlook for an 18 year-old striking out in the world.

Life is complex and none of us make it alone. It's true that we need a strong sense of self, but Rand takes it to a sociopathic extreme. Luckily, I had a respected college comp professor who told me that "this is a dangerous book for a young guy," and who suggested that I rethink what a world of complete individualism would look like. I'm the better for having known him, not Ms. Rand.

I hope that those of you who see value in human interaction and feeling, and reject Rand's almost incredible view that any of us can be truly independant, will avoid giving this book as a gift, reading it, or recommending it to anyone. If you want to give a good gift, choose something that will challenge your loved ones to be more thoughtful, caring individuals, not something that will turn them inward and give them a god complex.

PS - This is not philosophy. Rand wasn't that smart, or if she was, it's not demonstrated in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Intro to Rand
Review: The Fountainhead has, in one way or another, generally found its way into the hands of must [psuedo]intellectuals. While many people have qualms about the "philosophy" of objectivism, The Fountainhead is a shining example of Rand's "real-world" (albeit fictionalized) philosophy in action.

The protagonist and center of the story is Howard Roark, an architecht. Throughout his career, he refuses to compromise his own integrity, creativity, or desires under the will of others. Such is the ideal of Rand, who, in objectivism, champions logic over emotion, rationality over irrationality. Roark embodies these traits, and as a result, is met with either applaud or with sneers. This book is many things to many people: To some, Roark is an uncompromising fool, a weak man. To others, (myself included), Roark is a pillar of strength and the definition of, quite literally, what it means to be a man.

The Fountainhead, much like most of Rand's fiction (that is, Atlas Shrugged) is also an exercise in patience. While Rand's underlying ideas are most assuredly worth the time it takes to get through them (her tomes tend to stretch from 600 - 1000 pagse). This is, to be frank, the largest drawback to this book - a drawback severe enough to merit the dreaded four stars instead of five. Rand could have convincingly boiled down The Fountainhead to about one third of its original size. For whatever reason unbeknownst to me, she most evidently did not -- hence, you have either a remarkable testament to the triumph of man, or a doorstop.

Your choice.

If you are looking for a "cheap and easy" way to introduce yourself to Objectivism, then I suggest you look at the ARI's webpage or the various volumes on just objectivism. However, the most important service The Fountainhead provides is as an example of objectivism: It is the humanity of the story, which supports objectivism, which has the ability to convince a reader of the merits of objectivism. The intellectual searching for something to chew on will happily find it nestled in the pages of The Fountainhead.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatness of Independence
Review: A beautiful story of extremes - in Howard Roark we see the greatness of complete independence; in Elsworth Toohey we see a dependent striving to be great. The contrast of these two figures is not fully revealed until the last hundred or so pages, but it is startling and, when looking back, always present. First, the dependent - a man who relies on others for his survival. Rand shows us that the great dictators of the past are these people - the ones who have no power unles they control others; destroy them and rule them. Yes, it's power - but it is still dependency. The people under Toohey - Peter Keating, his authors and playwrights and architects - all broken and relying on this man's tyrany. Toohey boosts the mediocre so that "greatness" can be achieved by anyone. He discourages people from taking a course that they would be good at and that would make them happy, all to eliminate the chance that anything truly great could exist. In one sad scene he even tells poor Peter this, and Peter, at the end of the confession, still clings to Toohey, because he has nothing else left.

Second, the independent. Roark has no concern for others because he expects to be scorned. Far from hating man-kind, he loves by making them cope with the truth - letting them see what they could be and allowing them to heal themselves. He can only respect those that have respect for themselves. The only way to live is to be completely selfish - unwilling to give up integrity, truth, courage, kindness, greatness. People lose themselves briefly in the blinding truth embodied by Roark - and then heal, become better people because he looked upon them.

The Fountainhead is a stunning examination of the power of the independent, written in such a way that a single character can become that term and another its opposite. Too often we hear that worthiness is defined by "selfless acts" with egoism being the true evil. Rand argues that the center of selfishness depends on what you're speaking of - selflessly giving away your integrity is suddenly not such a selfless act. Told within the context of architecture, the story gains scale. What does the audience see of Roark's buildings - his modern masterpieces - and what do they see of the filth (excuse me - the things everyone else build) that quickly fill the skylines? Roark respects all aspects of designing and building - enough to insist it be done his way, with complete integrity as he knows few others are capable of.

I found this book to be beautiful and sad - a startling model of two disceptively similar roles blown completely out of proportion. If you find Roark to be emotionless than you did not read correctly, for he cares about many things, and if you blindly believe my words you have missed the point. We may never be able to reach Roark's independence, if ever we want to, but it never hurts to know what a purely selfish and undeniably great person can do.

Rating:
Summary: Not as abominable as her other book, but bad enough
Review: Abominable selfishness posing as a philosophy, perhaps from the very same demonic muse that infected/possessed Nietzche.
I couldn't even get into the actual prose, so hideous was the author's hatred toward her fellow people.
Rand's philosophy was a mixture of cartoonishness and arrogance--the kind of stuff usually seen only in straighjacketed philosophers or totalitarian dictators.
By the way: IF ANYBODY WOULD LIKE TO ENCOUNTER A QUAINT, SIMPLE, YET UTTERLY RUTHLESS DESTRUCTION OF RAND'S PHILOSOPHY, READ "OLD SCHOOL" BY TOBIAS WOLFF. Wolff destroys Rand in one fell swoop, and does it through the voice of a near child.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece
Review: Annotation: The Fountainhead is about an architect, Howard Roark, who builds for himself and not for society. He is hated because he won't sacrifice his ideals in order to please a client. Other architects use designs from prior periods in history that many times serve no functional purpose, such as Roman columns or gargoyles. There is not much originality and society likes what they are told to like. Howard is often considered a rebel, but should be considered a genius because he doesn't steal others' designs but relies on his own standards.

Author Bio: Ayn Rand, the founder of her unique philosophy objectivism, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905. As a young child she taught herself to read and write and decided at the age of nine to become a fictional writer. In 1925 with Russia under communist rule she obtained permission to visit family in the United States; she would never return to communist Russia. Her first novel, We the Living, was published in 1936 but it was not until The Fountainhead was published in 1943 that she became nationally recognized and acclaimed. She died in 1982. Every book published during her life remains in print.

Evaluation: The Fountainhead is the best book I have ever read. Howard Roark was created as the perfect being, the hero of this novel, according to Ayn Rand's philosophical views. It is a very good introduction to this view, called Objectivism. Roark is the beneficiary of everything that he does; he acts in his own rational self-interest. This is a highly condensed version of the basis of Objectivism. In order to appreciate this novel you must open your mind to anything, you may not agree with the philosophy but I assure you that you will learn more about yourself and your own morals. To understand this book you need to see the deeper meaning of things not just the simple plot. This book is not a thriller nor a mystery, but a thought-provoking masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Architecture and Philosophy
Review: Ayn Rand managed to find the perfect way to capture my attention, because I am an architecture nut. Maybe it comes from growing up in Chicago--Frank Lloyd Wright territory. At any rate, early in the book, the protagonist Howard Roark is "accused" of designing buildings that don't look like anyone else's. They're great, as everyone with an eye for architecture can see, but they don't conform to everyone else's expectations. I can relate to that, because I am a struggling fiction writer, and have yet to "categorize" my own writing. Reading Rand made me realize that this is not such a bad thing. This is a story about the value of achievement, and how the world is made better by the unique contributions of creative minds.

To get the story of The Fountainhead, you can rent the movie (which is great, and stars two of my favorites, Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal). However, to get the flavor of Rand's ideas, you need to read the book. In fact, if you have a serious interest in philosophy, it might not hurt to read all of her books. The fiction is mostly just an excuse to expound upon the philosophy.

I read The Fountainhead at a time when I was pretty aimless in life, and so I'd have to say that the book gave me courage and the desire to read more Rand. I did. This is probably Rand's best piece of fiction. Atlas Shrugged, while impressive for its relentless, moral defense of capitalism, is more of an extended lecture in philosophy.

I read one review which referred to the behavior in this book as "masochistic" or "sadistic." I think, somehow, that that's a misreading of the text. You have to accept (at least for the purpose of "willing suspension of disbelief") the author's viewpoint, or you just won't get where these characters are coming from.

There are strong characters and there are weak characters. The strong characters' "masochism" derives from their temporary willingness to submit to the whims of others. The weak characters' masochism comes from deliberately submitting themselves to the whims of others when they KNOW that others are wrong but don't have the strength of character to stand up for themselves. Rand's vision is not compromising, nor terribly sympathetic, but it does make you think.

I will add one bit that I read somewhere else. Frank Lloyd Wright, when asked about The Fountainhead, said that Rand neglected to include those moments when an architect laughs, looks at a problem from a new light, and says, "What a fool I've been!" I agree, and that is where I part company from Rand. Many of us learn much from error and laughter. Rand's characters are a little too "perfect" and a little too cold to appreciate the value of either. If you've read this far, you might as well pick up The Fountainhead. It's only a little longer (kidding).

Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction to Ayn Rand
Review: If you've been thinking of reading a book by Ayn Rand but think that Atlas Shrugged is a little to mountainous to tackle right off, The Fountainhead is an excellent way to introduce yourself to the method of writing by Ayn Rand. Rand is a wonderful writer--all of her stories are excellently writen, have a very well defined plot, her characters are extremely well thought out, and she is able to weave a strong purpose into the story. Ayn Rand is my favorite writers because the plots and storylines in her books are very well thought out. I hate reading a book that leaves gaps and loop holes in the story and where the characters are whish-washy at best. If you're tired of books that leave you feeling empty and that your time was wasted, then pick up this book. This book is a worthy investment!