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From the Back Cover
'The Fountainhead' is one of the greatest books of its time. In it you will meet, head-on, the brilliant young architect Howard Roark. You will witness the beauty, desirability and dangerous ambition of Dominique Francon. You will reel, stunned, like the millions of other readers who have assured this book a place in the century's history, at the meeting, and mating of these two most powerful creatures in modern America.
'The Fountainhead' is about ambition, power, gold and love – a love so firm that it triumphed over slander, separation, jealousy, and the cruel assaults of those who sought to destroy it.
"Ayn Rand is a writer of great power… she writes brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly"
NEW YORK TIMES
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fountain of Sorrow Fountain of Light,
This review is from: The Fountainhead (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
I read this book when I was 17, 37 years ago. Waiting in a Doctor's Surgery is no fun so I had decided to take the book as a distraction from my waiting. My father had recently read the book and I knew nothing about it or the author. I am not a avid book reader, though I really enjoy reading, most books disappoint me and nothing was anything different back then. To me you need the first 10 pages or so of a book to grab you. To everyone that 10 pages will be different in content and style offcourse. Wow I have now read the book off and on for 30 years. Maybe 15 times and each time reading different parts more than others, sometimes all, sometimes only the most relevant to me at the time. The book is special to me ( and clearly to many others ) Only a few other books have entranced my imagination so completely. No other book I like is as "deep and meaningful" as this one either. Ultimately this book is about love and finding oneself. Liking oneself. Aspiring to be the best one can be. Not always easy to be the best one can be. Many people do achieve it. Most of us though enjoy succumbing to the pleasures of life. Yet we often watch movies and read books not to re-live our lives rather to see the ideal of our lives. I like the love triangle of Howard, Gail, Dominique - each intensely needing each other, which ultimately is the greatest joy in our lives - the sense of belonging to something more than just ourselves. We as humans need to cohabitate. To block ourselves from ourselves is unbalanced. The relationship triangle is also more real world than it appears initially. The book is really a melodrama like Casablanca and the reason why most Rand enthusiasts either like The Fountainhead and dislike Atlas Shrugged ( and vice versa ). If you want to mix romance with philospohy that is still of value today, no other book can match the combination of surrealism, intensity and passion Rand put into this book.
91 of 107 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you read one book, make it this one.,
This review is from: The Fountainhead (Paperback)
This book was recommended to me by a friend who described it as a life-altering work and the best book he had ever read. I greeted this with the cynicism that such emotive comments often deserve. Nevertheless, I bought the book and have bought it for many more friends since. No book (or other art form, for that matter) has influenced me, encouraged me, excited me and criticised me as much as Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead".I find it impossible to describe precisely what I took away from the book other than an overwhelming desire to meet the protagonist, Howard Roark. I compared myself (somewhat unfavourably) to his inspirational character; a man of complete integrity (in the sense of being whole and unimpaired) and, above all, a man who remains incorruptibly faithful to himself (odd though that sounds - read the book!). I fell short in almost every respect because he is, of course, a work of fiction living in a stylised world. However, I have since found that in some small measure we can attempt to lead our lives in a manner which more closely resembles Roark's philosophy (or, rather, his way of being). I agree with another reviewer that this is not The Answer, but I believe it is some small part, without which the remainder may be unobtainable. This book will not be universally liked. It polarises opinion because its message is not to everyone's taste. Nor is it the most beautifully crafted prose (it was the author's second language, after all). And, Ayn Rand sometimes verges on being self-consciously clever. However, if the measure of a book is how often you refer back to it, how heavily you rely on its message and how vociferously you recommend it to others, it is clearly the best book I have ever read (and the only book I have felt obliged to review online). Just my thoughts - I hope you enjoy it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting read,
By
This review is from: The Fountainhead (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
This is a review on a fictional book, not on a movement or on the authors opinions and ideas.Fountainhead starts out strong. Strong characters, strong ideas... but it just ends very weak. The characters evolve very little, everyone is "black" or "white". They talk for hours, with speechs lasting several pages, repetitive speechs that add very little, as if to convince you that who speaks the longest has the most reason behind. Repetitive is something that happens a lot in the book. It's as if to hope that if you read something enough you'll imagine it even though you have no reason not to. (e.g. why is every single character unable to answer back to someone who says how the world is without provinding proof? There is a clear hierarchy of characters who can convince anyone of anything with any proof. And any character below is always unable to provide basic doubts to those ideas) This contrasted often with the lack of decription of some characters/places/buildings. Often they are described by their impact of being either the same as viewing a god, or as viewing the most awful thing possible. And thats the description many times, just that it's either amazing or awful. The main character is described so many times that everyone is amazed when meeting him just by looking at him, that after a while he losses depth, and the same with the buildings. Rand describes them functionally, (square, round, tall) but to emphasis it's beauty shes just states that it is the most amazing building ever several several times, and that it, no attempt to actually build it's beauty into the readers mins, just repetitive mentions of the fact that it is the most amazing building ever. Was dissapointed in the ending with the lack of reasonable or even balanced characters in what seems to be a book based on a non-fantasy world.
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