5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
A Philosophy and a Character Study.
Date of Review: Jan 12, 2000
This is the first book I read by Ayn Rand. I started trying to read it in high school for an essay contest and was not able to get all the way through it at the time. It's quite a read for young minds, and mine was far too frenetic to stick with the winding plot.
As I grew older I decided to give the book another try. Once I got into "The Fountainhead" I found it difficult to stop reading it. Ayn Rand paints such intricate pictures of her characters that you feel joy and dread right along with them.
Rand's hero, Howard Roark, is portrayed as strength personified. Ms. Rand has taken all the characteristics of a superman and packed them into a visionary architect. He is confident, a genius, unable to compromise his principles, comfortable in his body and his ability to use it. Howard Roark is the kind of man people find themselves following. Not because he leads, but because he can see the path we're all trying to find.
Roark, though he is clearly the hero of the story, is also at times doing less than heroic things. There are points in the book where you're asking yourself, "what the hell?", as Roark pushes the limits of acceptable behavior. Roark always know's he's right, and sometimes we can't always see that he is right.
On the other hand, there's Peter Keating, Rand's anti-hero. Some may dispute whether Keating truly is the anti-hero of "The Fountainhead," but I think that insofar as Keating allows himself to be manipulated by those around him, he is in direct opposition of Roark. Keating is weakness personified, pushed into architecture by his mother, forced into taking jobs he cannot hope to complete by propriety, and marrying a woman for the simple reason of advancing his career and social standing.
Keating never knows that what he is doing is right. He is always seeking the council of others, trying to find meaning for his life through their plans for him.
Keating and Roark come in and out of one another's lives through out the book. There are several other characters which need to be mentioned for there to be a complete picture of the novel, but I refrain to try to keep this as short as I can.
When you read "The Fountainhead" you will perhaps like other characters more than Roark, and you will most probably hate other characters more than Keating, but they are the center of the tale. Without them, "The Fountainhead" is just so many disconnected stories.
As you read "The Fountainhead" you will be exposed to Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. She doesn't quite beat you over the head with it here, as she does in "Atlas Shrugged," but it colors the entire text. Every passage describing Roark or his work is dripping with objectivism. I don't mean to say that Ms. Rand is on her soap box telling the reader to repent. Certainly one can read the book cover to cover, and not think about philosophy once. I couldn't, but perhaps you could.
Objectivism is an interesting philosophy. Like any philosophy I take from it what I like, and ignore what I don't. If you really detest the ideals of Ayn Rand, it goes without saying that you should not read this book, or any of her books for that matter. But frankly, I cannot imagine anyone hating Objectivism so much that they cannot enjoy this book.
Philosophy aside, I found "The Fountainhead" to be an utterly enjoyable read. The length of the book is certainly daunting, but don't let that stop you. You'll get so caught up in what's happening to the characters, that you'll lose all sense of time and never want to stop turning pages.
Read it, I think you'll enjoy it.
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