Rand Ayn : Fountainhead (Signet) [Mass Market 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.

I have waited a long time to read Ayn Rand. I thought I might disagree with her politics but came to it with an open mind and was interested in a novel that I knew had been influential and highly rated by so many people. I'm a bit of a sucker for self-help books and always looking for new ways to live my life.

Well, what a load of twaddle. You could digest the (727 page) philosophy about being true to yourself and put it in a Christmas cracker. The passionate romance at its core is like something from Mills and Boon, right from the opening scene where the hero, Howard Roark, dives naked into a rock pool. I'm tempted to say that the prose is also worthy of cheap romantic fiction, but it's worse, much worse. The God-like Roark who you are supposed to worship as the epitome of integrity is a brutal rapist, but don't worry, she likes to be humiliated and comes back for more. Again this is very much Mills and Boon circa 1960 where this kind of scene was almost obligatory.

Everybody in this book is on the path to self destruction. Some people pretend to care about others but they are either evil schemers; simply deluding themselves, or weak and unworthy of notice. The behind-the-scenes plotting for power by the first category is pitched at the level of Lex Luther. The characters are all hateful sociopaths. Their actions are dictated by twisted logic and bizarre motives and they have overwrought impenetrable conversations with each other. If anybody behaved like that in real life they would be sectioned under the Mental Health Act and if you take any of these people as role models you are in need of a psychological intervention yourself. I make it a general rule not to insult people with different taste from my own, but honestly!

The plot is ludicrous. To call it melodrama would be an understatement. It is pantomime. Rand goes on at length about clarity, pared down simplicity and purity in architecture. It's a pity she couldn't have applied some of those qualities to her own verbose ramblings. She does seem to have a genuine passion for architecture. She ought to have given some consideration for those of us whose passion is for literature. She has committed some kind of atrocity against this discipline. Her device of utilising a novel for her ranting polemic is worse than adding a Greek portico and a few gargoyles to a modernist building.

In addition to my aesthetic objections there is something deeply unpleasant about Rand's view of human nature that left me feeling queasy. There is no warmth or kindness in evidence at all. Moreover, there is a complete absence of subtlety or nuance. She hammers home her message on every page, and ironically, for a champion of free thinking, she leaves no room for individual interpretation, issuing rigid directives about how you should view every single character and situation. Good novels leave scope for the reader to make their own mind up but she bludgeons you relentessly into submission. Her paean to individualism is underpinned by the notion that the majority of people are superficial unthinking sheep who simply follow the crowd. But you, intelligent reader, are one of the discerning ones - you can follow Ayn Rand instead!

This really is one of the worst books I have ever read. I am astounded and depressed by its popularity.

Some books are clearly works of literature, and others are clearly intended to appeal to lovers of philosophy or politics, and there are also clearly works which are intended to operate as a means to philosophical or political inquiry whilst being framed as a literary work (a venerable tradition). There are, however, relatively few novels which can immediately and effectively communicate the myriad of positions within a dialectic framework (you might immediately think of Orwell's '1984' or Tressel's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist), and 'The Fountainhead' is an attempt by Ayn Rand to produce a work that falls within this latter tradition.

As a work of literature, with the primary aim of communicating the human within the structures and framework provided by Rand, this novel establishes the template replicated in her other major novel 'Atlas Shrugged'. Each character is necessarily intended to be representative of a particular position within the dialectic that Rand explores, unfortunately often resulting in superficial, stylised characters lacking the complexities essential to maintaining interest in the narrative.

The most obvious example of this approach is the rendering of Rand's ideas in to large tracts of text which are meant to be representative of human speech - but the effect merely highlights the superficiality of Rand's commitment to the novel as an artistic literary form. This can be further seen by the predictable parallels existing between 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'The Fountainhead' - the apparently independent and wealthy female, perceived as emotionally detached yet sexually alluring, the iconoclastic male, prepared to suffer apart for the values which remain ignored or misunderstood by his fellows. There is also the notable fact that the apparent freedoms enjoyed by the lead female in both 'The Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged' are predicated on a position of inherited wealth and security, founded on the unquestionable and inherently moral excercise of capitalism.

As other reviewers have noted, this artificiality, this attempt to provide amplified ideals by way of character, largely fails to engage a genuine interest in the reader. These are not characters that you would wish to meet, even if you were sympathetic to 'objectivism'. Such is their dysfuntionality.

Perhaps, of course, this is entirely the effect that Rand intended. These are hyper-characters, expressions of Rand's ideals whilst others represent all that she loathed and despised. Perhaps Rand never intended to produce a naturalistic novel or text, but given the apparent effort to place the events described within a recognisably real and familiar world and time frame, this is not likely to have been the case.

A further criticism can be extended to the size of the text, owing more to the verbose than the necessities of analytical philosophical exploration. Points are repeated, with the effect that the reader is likely to feel harangued as the subject of an extended lecture. Yet the essential substance of Rand's position could be articulated in less than five hundred words; here the reader has to negotiate through page after page of repeated stock descriptive phrasing and language which does little to conceal the paucity of Rand's vocabulary or imagination. For a novel to succeed there has to be more than this!

And ultimately, in my view, this is why the book does not function well as a work of literature. The vacuity of character, the inability to engage beyond the superficial, the purely functional language, these are critical failings in what might be described as the base framework of a book. With such a poor base structure the superstructure of 'Objectivism' (despite its relative ideological simplicity) can not be functionally supported, and for this reason the book fails as a contribution to the art of literature.

This remains the most telling failure of the book. It is difficult to imagine a writer producing such a self-destructive and damaging literary introduction to their philosophical and political ideology.