The Fountainhead

Customer Reviews

• Brilliant despite stilted dialogue  Mar 10, 2001 (288 of 320 found this helpful)

  This is one of the fastest paced books I have ever read. Ayn Rand's characters come to life as she paints very clear pictures of who they are and what they represent. She does this in spite of the fact that the dialogue is sometimes a bit wooden and stilted. In this novel, she sets forth her philosophy of "objectivism." She exposes those, such as a character named Peter Keating, an architect, who seemingly achieve greatness by copying others but somehow give the illusion of originality and creativity. In order to achieve "greatness," Keating was literally willing to sell anything, including his wife. Thus despite wealth and apparant achievement, his life was empty. Rand begins to formulate her values that altruism is an evil because a society which seeks to achieve this must do so at someone's expense and therefore leads to collectivism. In the person of Ellsworth Toohey, a flamboyant newspaper columnist, she shows how the power hungry manipulate the masses by setting a standard of mediocrity which fosters collectivism.

  This book is full of passion, including a flaming, complex romantic affair between individualist architect Howard Roarke and socialite Dominique Francon. Their relationship develops from one in which they each seek to assert power over the other while achieving sexual release to one of true love between genuine soul mates. Roarke also has a passion for his work and is uncompromising in his creativity in accomplishing his professional goals. He will not ever compromise these goals despite enormous pressures to do so. Rand believed that there is only black and white in moral issues; there is no gray. Therefore, giving in a little is not compromise but rather, selling out your values and giving in to evil. Roarke was not a man to sell out, he had the courage of his convictions.

  While setting forth her philosophy, Rand has also given us a novel which has a well developed plot. I found the novel to be gripping and I couldn't put it down. Following the career of Howard Roarke and the machinations of his enemies was fascinating. The plot had enough twists to provide surprises and to hold the reader's interest. This book is both an enjoyable novel as well as a challenging philosophical statement. I like Rand's philosophy and I love this book.

• Taking one's self too seriously  May 2, 2003 (192 of 336 found this helpful)

  The successful philosophical or political novel is a rarity. Of the former, Sartre's "Nausea" is a modern masterpiece. Of the latter, I would nominate Zola's "Germinal" and Steinbeck's "In Dubious Battle" as leading contenders. Of course, "War and Peace" and "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" present philosophical ideas, but neither is a novel in the traditional sense. The secret of success in these endeavors is to to present the ideas through the media of sympathetic characters and a compelling narrative. "No sense in useless tub-thumping," said Zola. Ayn Rand should have heeded that advice. Her characters are mere types, employed repeatedly (and I mean repeatedly) as mouthpieces for specific points of view.

  There are three telling omissions in "The Fountainhead": the first is that, although this is an epic tale, covering several decades in the lives of many characters, there are no babies born, no children reared. I'm afraid a philosophy of selfishness has to go the way of dirty diapers when Baby arrives. The second omission is humor. There are no laughs here. Egoism is a serious business. The third omission, perhaps arising from the first two, is emotional warmth. Ironically, Rand's essentially Humanist (that is, atheistic and anthropocentric) view lacks humanity. Her heroine can only achieve sexual fulfilment through being forcibly raped, her hero's heart and soul are centered on bricks and mortar. This novel will oblige you to think, but will not move you to laugh or cry.

  "The Fountainhead" is well written and thought provoking, but in addition to the points I mentioned above, I was left wondering what the problems were supposed to be in relation to the architecture of the time. This was the age of Art Deco and of Frank Lloyd Wright, surely a golden age in American architecture. And is the era of the the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal really the best advertisement for laissez faire economics?

• Brilliant, very flawed work by brilliant, very flawed woman  Feb 4, 2003 (160 of 191 found this helpful)

  Funny how most of the reviews are either unqualified adulation from Rand worshipers or slams from Rand haters. IMO, "The Fountainhead" is neither a prophetic work of great genius nor a piece of evil tripe. It is a brilliant work, perhaps even with flashes of genius -- but as flawed as its author.

  I think Rand had the potential to be a great novelist, which she largely ruined when she decided she was the world's greatest philosopher since Aristotle. Any dogma is the enemy of art. If you read Rand's three major novels -- "We the Living", "The Fountainhead", and "Atlas Shrugged" -- you can see her dogma becoming more and more rigid, and her characters less and less human. "The Fountainhead" is a novel you can still appreciate even if you don't agree with the philosophy (and I think the philosophy has some excellent points, just taken to an absurd extreme).

  Unlike some reviewers here, I don't find Howard Roark to be completely inhuman. He does feel pain -- not only the pain of his own struggle but of his mentor Henry Cameron and his friend Steve Mallory, the sculptor. It's just that, as Rand says, the pain "only goes down to a certain point" because it can't touch the core of his independent soul. But consider this passage when Dominique tells Roark she has married Peter Keating: "It would have been easy, if she had seen a man distorting his mouth to bite off sound, closing his fists and twisting them in defense against himself. But it was not easy, because she did not see him doing this, yet knew that this was being done, without the relief of a physical gesture." Clearly this is a man who feels and suffers. He can feel sympathy as well: for Gail Wynand, even for Peter Keating.

  At that stage, Rand herself was still capable of sympathy for less-than-perfect characters. Guy Francon, Dominique's father, is an opportunist -- but ultimately still more a good than a bad guy. His relationship with his daughter, sparsely depicted, is nonetheless very "real" and touching. Even Keating, the ultimate "second-hander" and in many ways a despicable man, is to some extent sympathetic and is shown as having some good in him. His failed romance with his true love, Katie, is very poignant -- and the scene near the end where he meets her years after dumping her, when she has "gotten over" him and lost her humanity, is truly heartbreaking. (Though her loss of humanity and selfhood is a little too complete.)

  Gail Wynand is a fascinating, tragic character throughout -- and in a way, his relationship with Dominique is more interesting than the Howard/Dominique romance. The story of his childhood and his rise in the newspaper industry is absorbing and very well-written.

  Some reviewers mention stilted dialogue. I don't agree. Yes, there are long passages where the characters preach/philosophize instead of talking, and become nothing but vehicles for Rand's ideas. But apart from that, the dialogue is mostly dynamic, crisp, and quite believable (e.g. the first meeting between Wynand and Dominique).

  Rand also has a terrific descriptive style. Take this passage describing the aftermath of rain: "The pavements glistened, there were dark blotches on the walls of buildings, and since it did not come from the sky, it looked as if the city were bathed in cold sweat. The air was heavy with untimely darkness, disquieting like premature old age, and there were yellow puddles of light in the windows."

  And there are wonderful, memorable lines; one of my favorites is, "All love is exception-making."

  Now the flaws. The character of Dominique, particularly in the first half of the book, is not very plausible. I don't "get" her masochism, the wallowing in her degradation at Roark's hands in their first encounter. (And yes, it was definitely rape -- Dominique herself repeatedly describes it as such.) Her motives for trying to destroy Roark's career when she has already realized she loves him never feel "real," no matter how Rand tries to rationalize them.

• Really disturbing...  Aug 5, 2003 (105 of 226 found this helpful)

  I have just finished reading "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" back to back, and man, am I glad I'm finally finished. I had to check them out to see what all the hype was about, and it's clear that many of the comments here about Rand being a bit mentally afflicted were definitely true. You actually feel dirty reading some of this stuff. It's that sick.

  What disturbs me most about Rand's novels is her twisted idea of romantic love. The heroines are frigid, emotionless robots who only enjoy sexual encounters if they're being treated like garbage the whole time. They're slapped, shoved and snatched around, their arms are being twisted, and they love it. They wouldn't have it any other way. It's disgusting. Dominique Francon seems to only enjoy it if she's lying completely still and unresponsive the whole time. The heros are also cold and robotic, except they enjoy knocking the women around. It's completely joyless. If Rand was trying to create erotic love scenes, she sure missed the mark. When the couples are just spending time together outside of the bedroom, they talk about how the woman enjoys being treated as the man's property because the man is just so perfect and godlike. Otherwise each one seems to just intuitively know what the other is thinking. There is no playfulness, no laughter, no anger or tenderness or any other genuine feeling involved, as you'd have in an actual relationship. They feel no actual need for each other, because that would be weak, so they drift in and out of each other's lives over periods of several years. This is Rand's idea of being in love? Obviously she never experienced the feeling. Because of this, you can't bring yourself to care whether the two "soulmates" get together in the end or not.

  The characters in this book are completely unlikeable, except for Gayle Wynand, and of course anyone who's read this knows how he ends up. I thought there was much more depth to his character then anyone else in the book. You got an idea of what made him the hard-nosed guy that he was, and you saw that he had genuine feeling for Dominique, even though the part where he builds a house in the country to keep her away from other people was a little much. I didn't understand the appeal of Roark at all. By the description given, he didn't seem all that physically attractive (not that that matters, but he IS supposed to be the perfect man, right?), and his so-called individualism didn't inspire me at all. It seemed like most of the time he was just doing completely illogical things in order to be difficult. He didn't strike me as very bright or charismatic, and I certainly don't understand why anyone would worship him. Dominique basically has no personality that I can tell, except that she also does silly and illogical things, like dumping a basically decent husband because he wouldn't let his business be run into the ground to save her hero Roark. As for Keating, one minute you loathe him, the next you feel sorry for him. But you never actually like him. Toohey is just ridiculous with his "I'm going to take over this newspaper...and RULE THE WORLD!!" speeches. He's not exactly a villain who strikes fear into the heart. I wasn't even sure he WAS the villain until halfway through the book. Not that I need to have it spelled out for me right away, but I do like to have some sense of who I'm supposed to be rooting for or booing, especially when I'm 400 pages in. The characters were just so flat for the most part that I really couldn't be sure. Oh, and Roark's big speech with the "not guilty" verdict at the end? Total cheese. Some of the dialogue throughout the entire novel is so cheesy that you can't help laughing (Like Roark saying the guy who discovered fire was put to death? How did he know that?).

  I feel sorry for Ayn Rand, because it seems she was just a massively insecure person, with no ability to connect with other people. So, to make herself feel better, she decided to throw together a so-ca

• A Great Book -- But Not Perfect  Oct 19, 1999 (76 of 103 found this helpful)

  I think the Fountainhead is inspiring and capable of actually changing one's entire attitude towards life. However, it can also be a bit damaging in that it makes unrealistic demands of its "converts." One thing that really bothers me: Ayn Rand seems to believe that repressing all emotion, even the deepest pain, is "heroic" while allowing emotion to show is a sign of "weakness." Howard Roark seems to be completely untouched, emotionally, by the setbacks and attacks he suffers. To me, this seems inhuman, but the message in the book is clear: He's superior to those of us who spinelessly exhibit emotion. In fact, in Atlas Shrugged, one of the good guys is actually physically tortured and barely exhibits discomfort! Does this mean that to be a true "hero" of your life you - almost literally - must not feel pain?

  I still think this is one of the greatest books ever and it influenced me deeply in a lot of positive ways. However, be alert for the flaws. Ayn Rand and her philosophy were not quite perfect. I spent a few years after the first time I read her works believing that if I got "too emotional" over a situation, or preferred a folk song to a symphony, that I had serious character defects.

  Still and all, I'm glad after all these years people are still reading and being inspired by her works.