Rating: 
Summary: Philosophically silly, the style and characters are wooden
Review: THE MOUNTAINHEAD (a parody) Chapter 1 Howard Rock pulled himself to the summit. He was the first to climb Mount Everst. Or was he? There was flag planted at the summit. And that flag belonged to Peter Cheating! Rock's attention was diverted by a growing whirlwind. The heavens parted and Rock hafl expected a repentant God to offer an explanation. Instead, he saw a helicopter. A rope ladder was lowered and he saw a shapely pair of legs desend. Rock would recognize those legs anywhere: he pried them open once before.l "Hello, Rock," Domino said, now joining him at the summit. "Too bad Peter was here first." Rock did not reply. "If it means anything to you, Peter didn't climb Everst; he took a helicpoter. Rock smiled. He knew Cheating was no mountain climber. Cheating and his ilk would never be more than mere social climbers. "But the credit will go to Peter," Domino said. Rock said not a word. What did her care for the recognition of fools and humanitarians? "Anyway, Howard, I just wanted to let you know that I'm filing rape charges against you. I might have enjoyed it, but it was still rape." Rock said not a word. There was only one person who could have put such dangerous ideas in Domino's head, and it wasn't Susan Brownemiller. "Fooey will represent me," Domino said. Of course, Hellsworth Fooey! Fooey, a humanitarian plotting to destroy the world through la ethal injection charity. Fooey would start with a soup kitchen and wouldn't stop until he had housed all the world's poor. "You'll spend a few years in jail," Domino was saying. "You can use the time to study and get a real job." Yes, that's exactly what he would do. Cheating had beaten him to the top of the highest mountain, but he - Rock - would build and scale the world's highest building. Chapter 2 Five years later, Rock's plans were complete. There was a knock on the door. Rock knew it was Domino. "Hello, Howard," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't visit, but the slammer is such a depressing place. Are these your plans? Why, I'm flattered, it looks just like a domino." "It will be the world's tallest building," Rock said. At thirty thousand feet, it will be taller than any mountain. I'll be the first to climb it." "But Peter will beat you; hel'll take the elevator." "There will be no elevators." "Then he'll take the stairs." "There will be no stairs." Domino was struck with awe. She was in the presence of no mere ordinary date rapist; Rock was a man who could stick it to the world. "But, Howard, don't you think it will be hard to get financial backing for a building without elevators and stairs?" "Fooey has arranged everything," Rock said. Chapter 3 Howard Rock looked skyward. His building, Mount Neverest, was complete. He, Rock, had refused to pander to softed-hearted philanthropists and hard-headed corporatists alike. Only true mountain climbers would scale his building. Let social climbers like Peter Cheating design buidling with stairs and elevators. Why word had it that Cheating had included wheel chair ramps in his last building! "So, Howard, we've finally done it," Fooey said. "Where is your climbing gear.?" Rock looked at his feet. Fooey understood: Rock would pull himself by his own bootstraps. Chapter 4 Rock toiled for forty days and forty nights. Why mounting Domono hadn't caused him half so much trouble! Finally, he pulled himself to the top. And there, fluttering in the wind, as though laughing at him, was the flag of Peter Cheating. But how!? "What's the matter, Howard?" Rock turned. It was Hellsworth Fooey. "I took the elevator," Fooey explained. He smiled and added, "I'd like you to meet some of my friends. Fooey opened the door and a procession of wheel chair bound invalids rolled out onto the roof. Hellsworth was in his glory. "Express elevators, local elevators, escalators, emergency stairwells. All the creature comforts a degenerate public and a unionized work force could ask for. Rock said not a word. He knew what he had to do. Chapter 5 "The People rests," Fooey said. He had presented an ironclad case. Howard Rock had, with malice and forethought, firebombed Mount Neverest, killing three hundred children in the day care center. Rock did not deny the charges. "If you wish to apply the letter of the law, I am guilty," he said. "But I appeal to a higher authority. Mount Neverest was an affront to artistic integrity. Elevators and stairs and worst of all, priority parking for the handicapped!" Rock continued on for another three hundred pages, after which he said not a word. Chapter 6 Has the jury reached a verdict?" the judge asked. "We have your honor. We find the author, Ayn Rand, guilty of wooden language, cardboard characters and contrived plotting. Worse, we find her guilty of foisting her infantile philosophy upon us. Any Rand said not a word, but fourteen years later replied with fifteen hundred pages of nonsense.
Rating: 
Summary: OK, but...
Review: Why are all the protagonists in Ayn Rand's novels male? And with a female playing against him or submissively joining him, etc.? Is Ayn Rand really a man or is it the sign of the times or what? It seems that it would make much more sense if Rand had made the protagonist a female.
Rating: 
Summary: Chachee reads a book.
Review: The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, was about Howard Roark, who based his reality on reason and thought, rather than siding with the majority. He is an architect, struggling to sell his "modern" designs. His buildings exhibit flawless efficiency and beautiful style. Nevertheless, the masses, choked by the intellectual stranglehold of the tyrannical Ellsworth Toohey, columnist for the most powerful newspaper in New York, refuse to accept his designs and force him into poverty and hopelessness. Will Roark overcome the masses and become a successful architect? Once I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. I was pulled in by its fast paced dialog and sharply detailed characters. It never moved slowly. I never got bored with it- it had deep meaning and it kept my mind busy with all of the details that made Ayn Rand's vision of a perfect world interesting and original. I am excited to read other Ayn Rand books.
Rating:
Summary: Some books make you think, this one makes you understand
Review: I read The Fountainhead as a senior in high school as I passed through the most fantastic and emotional time of my life. Every single time I picked up this masterpiece I had a feeling of outright euphoria as I entered into the realm of true imagination. Every discription, every small word on every page made me wonder what I am doing on this earth and why no one understands me. Howard Roark was like no one I could possibly imagine, he was a manifestation of everything I wanted to do and be. I finished this book very late the night before I threw the shot put at the state meet in Denver as I tasted the best years of my life drift into nothingness. The whole plot and ending represented all that I admire and I can't let go of. Every time I cry, I cry because Howard Roark exists now as a part of me. And every time I wonder what heaven would be like, I know who builds God's temples.
Rating:
Summary: Philosophical imperfection; a guideline for nutballs
Review: Paraphrasing another reviewer: To rate with a star, or a hundredth of a star, what Rand has created, is like measuring interatomic distances with a ruler, but for this purpose, One Star must do.Some of this book's fans think that "only a brilliant--free-thinking--mind might understand" it, and take poor reviews as evidence of "the corporate mentality that imbues America today." Horse puckey. Rand's style is melodramatic and stodgy, her characters wooden, and her plot contrived and pedantic despite her own contention that art did not exist to serve didactic purposes. Her central character, Howard Roark, whom some think "is what all men should seek to become," is a creative enough fellow in architecture but has a peculiar blind spot where people are concerned (including himself). There isn't the slightest reason why a seeker of value can't seek, and find, value in the lives, health, and happiness of other people, nor any reason why a rational human being should deny his own emotional states; yet Rand's most die-hard fans mindlessly ape Roark's indifference to other human beings and his ruthless repression of his own feelings. Why? Probably because Rand herself had the same traits -- which she rationalized, and "objectified" as human "ideals," in (and by means of) tripe novels like this one. As a projection of the ideal man, even of the ideal creator, Roark falls miserably short _even_ by the standards of rational egoism -- just as Rand herself did. Objectivists, wake up; this woman was the victim of numerous psychological disorders, and her philosophy shows their influence. Libertarians, beware; the ideals of liberty do _not_ depend on the ravings of this arrogant and megalomaniacal lunatic -- and whatever her lunatic admirers tell you, she was _not_ the first person in history to cobble together a philosophy of reason and liberty. Oscar Wilde's comment on someone else's work applies also to Rand's: it is both original and good; unfortunately, the good parts aren't original and the original parts aren't good.
Rating:
Summary: Philosophical perfection; a guidline for individualism.
Review: To rate with a star, or a hundred stars, what Rand has created, is like measuring Everest with a foot ruler, but for this purpose, Five Stars must do. The fountainhead is written with caustic wit that only a brilliant--free-thinking--mind might understand; definitely not a book for the corporate mentality that imbues America today. Rand has an uncanny ability to weave words into a beautiful mosaic; her characters come alive on the pages and dance before the reader's eyes. One character in particular, Howard Roark, is what all men should seek to become. Ayn saw this; why can't we all. I would like to exit with a quote from the book: "We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into a physical reality, to state it in gesture and form." Read on!
Rating:
Summary: Idealistic & Unrealistic , but Excellent
Review: I re-read it because I miss the characters
Rating:
Summary: good love story
Review: i realy like this book it has a good love story about howard rourk and his girl freind plus it made me want to be a GREAT arcitect like howard rourk is in this book. but i have to give it three star's because howard rourk is pretty selfish he blows up some house's and once he even rape's his girl freind. my favorite caracter is peter keating who seem like a very nice man. i think the book should have been more about him and not rourk.
Rating:
Summary: rand contradicts herself with her views on architecture
Review: I read fountainhead for the first time when i was 16. At the time, although I had a high interest in architecture and urbanism, i was generally ignorant in both areas. Since then I have become very learned in architecture, urban design, and urbanism. Correspondingly my opinion of the Fountainhead has moved from one of my favorite books to mediocre at best. This has happened even though my political, economical and moral views have remained the same. When Rand wrote fountainhead the modernist movement in architecture was in full swing. The modernists were a group of architects who applied the philosophical views of communism to architecture. They thought that any structure on a building that didnt have some sort of untilitarian purpose (these communists embraced utiliarianism, but they must have never heard of John Mill who was the founder of utilitarianism and was a libretarian), was the "expression of the elite". So, because in their ideal communist world, people would all have equal incomes they would also live in equal places, and capital that would have been spent on expressions of the elite(things such as balconies, overhangs, columns etc.) could be directed to more "useful purposes". The end result of their thought was an architectural movement that built such things as the housing projects along the Dan Ryan expressway and other such cubes. This movement was never liked by the general public. But since it was avant-garde it found its expression in housing projects in cities all across the country and other projects done by beaurocrats. This was the architectural view that Ayn Rand expounded which shows the absurdity of the book.In fact she even lived in a house constructed by Frank Lloyed Wright who was one of the founders of modernism and was a socialist. She advocated individualism yet any architect who put their individualistic touches on buildings was not individualistic. Or any architect who built what people wanted ( i.e. supply and demand. A person supplies what another person wants which is a central tenet of capatilism was rejected by Howard Roark)was not individualistic. According to Ayn Rand,in order to be an architect and be individualistic one must build cubes, but because all cubes are alike how is it possible for an architect to be individualistic since they would be all building the same thing. This is just one of many contradictions in the Fountainhead and Ayn Rand's philosophy. Anyone interested in libertarianism and wants to read people who are philosophically sound I suggest Hayek, Von Mises and Nozick. They do not contradict themselves and they contribute far more to libertarianism than Ayn Rand ever did. All Ayn Rand did was rehash ideas that have been around for along time in a dogmatic way.
Rating:
Summary: How odd...
Review: How odd it is that those who dismiss this book with one or two stars rail against it so passionately. It's apparent that no one takes this book lightly - even those who pan it. What this says, I think, about the reviewers is that the ideas in the Fountainhead contain difficult challenges to closely-held beliefs. Bravo, Ayn Rand, for making people think.
|
