The Fountainhead {book review - Amanda}

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

- Fiction -

reviewed by Amanda (reread)

purchased from the bookstore

Links

Author’s Website : http://www.aynrand.org/

Amazon :  paperback / eBook

Add To Your GoodReads TBR list

This book in 6 words:

The book that changed my life.

Why did I read this? And am I glad I did?

I reread this book because as I stated previously elsewhere, “The Fountainhead has been a very influential book in my life, and remains one of my favorite books.  While I have already read it two or three times, I think it deserves another read, especially since I have changed a lot since reading it last.  I want to see if it still touches me in the same way I did when I first read it.”  While I would say that the book still touches me, it is certainly not in the same way as it once did.  I feel as though what I understood of the book changed from when I previously read it until now.  I understood less, but I also understood more.  Certain parts seemed silly and inconceivable, others still resonated with me.  I am definitely glad that I reread this book – it has launched a rediscovery of who I am, as well as my own personal beliefs.

Brief Summary

The Fountainhead has become an enduring piece of literature, more popular now than when published in 1943. On the surface, it is a story of one man, Howard Roark, and his struggles as an architect in the face of a successful rival, Peter Keating, and a newspaper columnist, Ellsworth Toohey. But the book addresses a number of universal themes: the strength of the individual, the tug between good and evil, the threat of fascism. The confrontation of those themes, along with the amazing stroke of Rand’s writing, combine to give this book its enduring influence.
-via Amazon.com

Plot/Pacing/Writing Style

I won’t lie; Rand is a hard novelist to love.  The plot seems implausible, and is dominated by her philosophy.  While I have picked it apart and chosen the pieces that make the most logical sense to me, there are other parts of the books that I had a hard time following.  For such a long book, the pacing was decent, and I would routinely get sucked into the book; however, I also remember failed attempts at rereading this book.  From my first successful attempts, I remember skipping over long passages of descriptions that didn’t seem to contribute to the story; this read through I had very little trouble reading without skimming (except at the end when I was racing to finish the book).  I’m a little torn on this book, because I know that it’s not fantastically written, but I also know that it’s still important to me.  I guess it’s like the Twilight series for some people, except on a different level.

Characters

This was probably the first time I went from admiring Roark to understanding him.  I struggled with Dominique’s character; she was difficult to figure out, at least in the first part of the book.  The dialogue between these two were often confusing to me (on this read through anyway).  It felt as if I was supposed to understand what was going on between Roark and Dominique without an explanation.  I didn’t.  And I wasn’t particularly fond of the first “love” scene between the two.  I’m sure that there was some “reasonable” explanation for it, but I can’t agree with it.

Favorite Quotes

“Don’t say that I’m beautiful and exquisite and like no one you’ve ever met before and that you’re very much afraid that you’re going to fall in love with me.  You’ll say it eventually, but let’s postpone it.”

“That’s it.  You’re completely natural only when you’re one inch from bursting into pieces”

“I came for a simple, selfish reason–the same reason that makes a man choose the cleanest food he can find.  It’s a law of survival, isn’t it?–to seek the best.  I didn’t come for your sake, I came for mine.”

“Maybe it hurts so much that I don’t even know I’m hurt.  But I don’t think so.  If you want to carry it for my sake, don’t carry it more than I do.  I’m not capable of suffering completely.  I never have.  It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops.”

“Most people go to very great lengths in order to convince themselves of their self-respect.”
“Yes”
“And, of course, a quest for self-respect is proof of its lack.”
“Yes.”
“Do you see the meaning of a quest for self-contempt?”
“That I lack it?”
“And that you’ll never be able to achieve it.”

“It’s extremely cruel to be honest.”

“We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form.”

“Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient.  Happy men have no time and no use for you.  Happy men are free men.”

Recommendations

As much as I love this book, it’s not one that I’m going to say everyone should read.  Many people don’t like this book, others love it.  I feel like my review is an overly negative one, but it’s not a perfect book.  If you can look past the book’s flaws, there are some philosophical gems here.