Fountainhead

Rating:
Summary: the truth
Review: c'mon, people. the fountainhead is only about two things : sex and architecture. if you think you read any more into it, you need to set the book down and go play ball.

Rating:
Summary: A Gripping Book That Doesn't Convince
Review: I'll give this book one thing, it is very gripping. I can barely put it down, but not because I agree with it. Rand has characters use terribly written arguments for socialism, society and religion in order to mock them. Instead, we should all behave without sympathy, emotion, compassion, altruism, feeling or religion. Reason will be our absolute, and everyone will be an absolute individualist. "Egoism is the fountainhead of human progress." she says. We all know nothing good ever came from cooperation. It's a good book, but I don't agree with it.

Rating:
Summary: Novels, Realism, and the Individual
Review: In reading the reviews of this book, I found that many sounded incredibly alike. The people who rated this book highly all spouted the same praises - "this book changed my life," "it will force you to look at yourself differently." etc. Those who did not like the book also said many of the same things - "unrealistic" "boring" "too long." One thing which Rand states in her non-fiction writing is that each individual has the right to form their own opinion. I find it interesting that so many have the SAME opinions on this work.

To address a few comments made in earlier reviews... Novels do not need to be about REAL characters, nor about REAL events, in a REAL world or have to do with anything considered REAL by current standards. A novel is a work of fiction. Nothing in it needs to be based in reality or in believability. Rand used her novels to bring the fundamentals of her philosophy to the public. This is an impossible task to do by using REAL characters. The only way to illustrate clearly is with charicatures... kind of like Nietchze's ideal man... these archetypes will never exist, they are there for inspiration and aspiration. As for realism in general as it relates to fiction... and this book... will anyone dare to say that George Orwell's "Animal Farm" was REALISTIC? I mean, hey, it took place in a farmyard, with pigs being the governing officials. To me, this is more than unreal... it is absolutely crazy to expect that anyone will actually think that pigs could become such incredible politicians. Yet, we read it and learn various things from it. We can do the same with Rand's books. Admittedly, the writing is difficult. The things she says are in discord with many things we are taught from childhood. The biggest of these is the concept of the individual. The part of the book which I feel exeplifies that concept the best is the scene before Dominique leaves Rourke's apartment after she married Keating. The scene where they say that they love each other. Rourke says "To say I love you, one must first be able to say the 'I'." For me, that means that before you can call any feeling or opinion you have valid or real, you must first acknowledge yourself. The way you think, the way you work. You need to discover your own self before you can actually feel anything with it. This applies to reviews of books as well. Rand said that she did not like reading Victor Hugo's work. She disagreed with what he had to say, but she can not say that he was a bad writer... she has acknowledged his tale! nt at what he did aside from the fact that she did not care for his works.

If you are thinking of reading this book, please, decide for yourself if you want to expose yourself to something new which you may or may not like... which is essentially the case - the decision you must make - with everything in your life.

And, as so many have stated, if you have any questions or comments which you would like to discuss, feel free to contact me.

Rating:
Summary: Do you have the courage to think (and act) for yourself?
Review: The danger Ayn Rand warns of is not fascism, as the Amazon.com summary suggests, but statism and collectivism. Of the review writers' letters, this one best displays the problem of willful ignorance the best:

"[e-mail] from USA , 10/30/97, rating=1: what head? please read the review by [e-mail] They express exactly how I feel about this so-called "novel". Mountains of Triteness, Plateaus of Platitude. Except that, in my case, I give it a "1" because I haven't read Atlas Shrugged (thank god)."

Unfortunately, this type of person often winds up setting policy somewhere, disregarding thoughtful evidence, to come to a "politically correct" conclusion. When the policy doesn't work - it rarely if ever does - this hapless sort proposes more of the same poison.

Rating:
Summary: funny if read as satire
Review: It does help to get an idea of what some people are thinking, particularly the type of folks giving this book 9s and 10s. Adult readers who approach this flavor of unadorned enthusiasm with due skepticism will be abruptly put off. Hence, the lack of points in the 3 - 7 range. There is stuff worth thinking about in here, but the story takes place in a fantasyland, not in the real world, and of course its lessons don't apply as neatly here as they do there. But approached as an instance of human foibles and vulnerabilities (Rand, it appears, was herself a quite unhappy person) it has some poignance. Read it, but don't forget to read between the lines. If you decide to believe or disbelieve, you'll be intoxicated or exasperated. Read this book with skeptical ambivalence and you'll get something out of it. And plough through the humorlessness with a sense of humor, and you'll get a good chuckle or two. This is not really an average book. It is both a very good book and a very bad book at the same time.

Rating:
Summary: a lot of problems
Review: Certainly this is a powerful and, obviously, an enduring book. It is a gigantic, massive moreso treatease than novel. Every single page is drenched in Rand's philosophy and, after a while you are tempted to go find her grave, dig her up and rattle her crumbling bones and scream almighty high that hey! I get it it! OK? OK? I understand your goddamn point now could you please get on with it or stop passing off your fifty page novella as a 700-page plus work of fiction and please please please just allow something to happen more frequently than once every fifty or sixty pages? Also, one reviewer made a comment that I found rather amusing. Just think about what they said. Something to the effect that this book changed their life and taught them how to think, told them how to think and not to buy into what anyone else says. A wonderful moral, but let's count how many of these reviews spout literal gospel of Rand's philosophies.

Rating:
Summary: This book is about life.
Review: This book changed my life, I don't think the same way I did, I don't see things like I did before. I thought I was happy, I thought it was a good life. This book changed it all. I've learned to say I, this is how I changed. I gave nine because I'm currently reading Atlas Shrugged and I seems even better.

Rating:
Summary: Selfishness is not subjective
Review: The Fountainhead describes a fundamental moral conflict, the choice to think for oneself or to live second hand by depending upon the minds of others. Thinking, in this context, means objectively identifying those values necessary for the life of a rational being. It doesn't, as some reviewers mistakenly apprehend, mean living the life of a hermit; or becoming a sadist; or repressing one's emotions; or acting on whim. To be selfish requires that one be objective.

Howard Roark does not design buildings in the manner that he does because he feels like it; or to be different; or even to make piles of money. The form of his architecture is a result of his inventiveness in a context which is determined by actual requirements, beginning with the function which the building will serve. Site, material, cost -- all are real life determinants which serve as a basis for his designs.

The same, Miss Rand points out in her brillantly written novel, can be said about the manner in which one designs one's life. Function, nature and means of survival are real life determinants of how one should live.

Because man faces a basic choice -- life or death -- and because without life no values are possible, man's life must be his moral standard. Acting selfishly is not a matter of inclination -- a point so clearly made in the novel that one wonders how the reviewer from Mass. who gave it a 2 missed it. Selfishness is a matter of objectivity.

A word about the so called rape scene, which offended the feminist sensibilities of one reviewer. If it was rape, honey, it was by engraved invitation. And if Dominique is a wimpering weakling, then Kipling was a Russian.

The Fountainhead speaks to youth -- why much of it's praise comes from that quarter -- because it speaks of life. The young are ready to live, not give up and die. They need a basic architectural design in order to succeed, i.e., to be happy. The Fountainhead provides it; and in spades.

I give the novel a rating of 11.

E-mail responses welcomed.

Rating:
Summary: My life transformed
Review: As an archiecture student, I can feel the fire that drives Howard Roarke, and understand the cowardice of Peter Keating. In any art form, the artist must decide between the art for the soul, and the art for the masses. This book has inspired me to fight for the soul. My ideals on architecture, life, and love have been questioned by Ayn Rand, and now I know the answers. Individuality cannot be suppressed by family, friends, and the collectivism. That fire that is within all of us should burn without shame or fear. To live for one's art is noble, but to die for that art is far greater.

Rating:
Summary: new every time
Review: I read the book the first time and was absolutely fascinated by Howard Roark and his ideas on life,architecture. I read it the second time and I felt it was a completely different book.The strange love story hit me in full impact only then.This time when I read it I got to understand the fire and frenzy and love and sacrifice and hate and agony and strength and weakness of Dominique. The third time I read it it was Elsworth Toohey who seemed to dominate.This time I realised his actual being and ideas and his role in the book. And the fourth time I met Gail Wyanand... The book is so powerful and all it's chcaracters have got so much substance that one reading is not enough.Keep reading it again and again and again and then you can faintly come to terms with it....Learn to enjoy the book without it making a revolutionary cahnge in your life.