The Fountainhead (Centennial Edition Hardcover),   ISBN:9780452286757

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It's simultaneously subtle and obvious. The first clew comes when the protagonist, Howard Roark, is booted out of architecture school for having ideas that are 'too original,' although all his professors admit that his ideas are quite brilliant.

'Wait a minute,' the reader thinks, 'that's not realistic. Professors in the liberal arts are desperate for students with original thoughts, practically begging them not to echo back the same tired ideas that they hear year after year after year.'

Finally it hits; the reader realises that this is EXACTLY the description that persons of certain personality types would say if they had failed out of school, especially if they had a few good ideas that their professors liked, but kept interrupting class repeating them as a mantra and furthermore refusing to study any of the material that they are actually meant to be learning (which the narrator practically confesses to the main character doing). Perhaps there is some merit to Roark's ideas, but that doesn't mean he should lack a background in neo-classical, or any other style of architecture (and personally I despise the style he's clearly promoting, which is seen readily in all those horrible spiritless poured concrete buildings that Americans were erecting in the 1960s).

So here is the secret to understanding this book: It's written entirely in a sort of third-person unreliable narrator. The character of the narrator is Howard Roark, and the Howard Roark described is a sort of trippy idealised version of himself. Think of it as a sort of grotesque caricature of the conservative economic and social ideals emerging in the US at the time of the writing where we learn about what the narrator holds dear and his distorted picture of the world through the distorted retelling of the events that befell him. It's the goal of the reader to read between the lines and try to figure out what actually happened, that the narrator is reinventing to cast himself as the hero (imagine Theodore Bulpington of H G Wells' The Bulpington of Blup). For example, it's cleverly glossed over that Roark is practising architecture without a license, or passing any of the various certification exams required to show fitness in producing habitable buildings, but instead foils some backwater rube into allowing him to design a 'revolutionary gas station' or something, which probably by blind luck doesn't collapse or burst into flames. As the story continues (and forgive me if I get details wrong, it's been two years since I read this book) he starts submitting plans for some housing development to an old schoolmate Peter Keating (possibly unsolicited) who he describes as being rather devoid of creativity and originality. The buildings turn out looking quite different from how Roark designed them, and at some point he's challenging the allegedly spineless Keating (possibly reinventing himself stalking Keating, noticing some resemblance between a project Keating is working on and some schizophrenic scrawl he had posted to Keating's office unsolicited) and instead of just removing his name from a project that he was never officially connected with, blows the things up. He's captured, makes some ridiculous (but obviously quite meaningful to both Roark the narrator and Roark the reinvention of the narrator's self) rant about the value of ego(!) and is heroically set free. It's pretty safe to guess at this point that this is what the narrator wished had happened, but that he is probably writing his life story from behind bars.

Other character emerge as the story progresses, including Ellsworth Toohey (an incarnation of the conservative view of the progressive movement) and Dominique Francon (a terribly board rich girl who gets her kicks breaking things, picking out random quarry workers (in this case Roark), imagining them as the men of her dreams, getting herself raped(?) and falling in love with them even more).

There are other characters (all strangely on the same page with their thoughts), and one could do quite a sophisticated analysis of how these characters reflect an emerging conservative world view at the time or writing, and parody them to illustrate it's fundamental absurdity. Amazon reviews, however, aren't the place, and I haven't the time nor the desire, but if you want to read a rather chilling tale told from the point of view of a psychopathic rapist/terrorist and is at the same time a parody of the ultra-right-wing movement then I strongly recommend Fountainhead. This is a book that will stay with you for a long time.

Customer Rating: 

I'm sorry but Rand's novels are just plain boring. I've read three of them and all three of them have bored me toward near-death experiences. She seems to hold up creative people as some kind of heroes but the problem I see is that highly creative people never behave the way she portrays them. Her characters are always so stilted, so two-dimensional, so much like cardboard cutouts of what real heroic people are like. She seems to be marketing some ideal about running a world without emotions as though rational thinking sets atop some kind of rock-solid pedestal that is completely separate from and immune from our emotional lives. It's not the way our brains are "wired" and it's certainly not the way the minds of creative people work. Creative work involves tons of intuition, which is closely linked to our emotional inner world. From what I can tell Rand experienced little or none of the intuition necessary for creative life. She seems to dream of a world operated by some big mathematical computer program that she, and she alone, wrote over and over and over into all of her novels.

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I cannot believe it has taken me so long to discover Ayn Rand! The Fountainhead was an excellent introduction to her and her objective philosophy. Poetic writing, expertly weaved plot, and unforgettable characters...what's not to love?

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What I love most about this book is the great plot and the very well developed characters. I find The Fountainhead is a bit easier to read and digest when compared to Atlas Shrugged (which I also love), and in my opinion, The Fountainhead also has a lighter touch when it comes to pushing objectivism.

This book is a great story about a man against the world, a man with strength of character who believes in what he does, and does it to best of his ability no matter the obstacles put in his way. Howard Roarke is a solitary man who who excels at architecture, despite the fact that all of peers believe that his work is rubbish. The truth of the matter is that most of them know, but won't admit, that it's really their work that is rubbish, not Roarke's.

It is well worth the read, and a great entry point before reading Atlas Shrugged, which is much longer, and delves more into the philosophy of objectivism.

Customer Rating: 

A different view on the same concept as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. They should be sold as a set. Motivation for excellence!