Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

  Ayn Rand is a very famous name. Over and over, she is connected to conservatism. I am a liberal. Therefore, I expected not to like this book. Due to it's length of over 900 pages, I thought it would be a particularly painful book to slog through. This first thought, that of being a very long book and therefore a long torture, proved to be false. For the most part, it was not a torture. In fact, I found it to be a real page turner. In many ways, it really is the antithesis of who I am politically. This becomes increasingly clear as I neared the ending. I have even seen the video where that idiot, Jordan Peterson, tears her down. Jordan Peterson is famous today. But I would be surprised if people continue to talk about him 40 years after his death. Jordan Peterson is a kind of joke played on gullible people. Ayn Rand is an excellent writer, regardless of where I lay my viewpoints on this book.
   A computer virus or trojan is an interesting thing. It is like a thought or an idea that a computer shares with another computer. As a result, the computer becomes damaged. Perhaps the information of the user becomes compromised. Regardless, what if this sort of virus was possible for a human being? A human being can cough on another, have sex with another, touch another, or even prick one's skin on some innocuous looking thorn, and pass all kinds of viruses and bacteria into the system which may go on to damage and possibly even kill the victim. But is it possible for a human being to be reprogrammed by a book and become damaged?
   So, for instance, certain books have had their major effects on me. One of these is a poem by Emily Jane Brontë called "Remembrance.""Remembrance" is a poem written to honor the death of someone Brontë loved. The key lines for me are as follows:

 

But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,

And even Despair was powerless to destroy,

Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,

Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

In a time when I suffered from severe depression, reading this poem over and over again somehow brought some healing to me and a great deal of thought: what if life could be enjoyed without joy? Or another way to look at it: life can be worth living without happiness. This line of thought eventually lead me to believe that the pursuit of happiness is a kind of blind ambition. It is not that I am unhappy. It's just that I can move on from this idea and not worry too much about it. It had a great deal to do with who I became, and who I am today. In some ways, it was an inoculant against many of the ideas present in this book.
   With all that I have said, there are a number of absurd ideas in this book that are worth discussing. The first is the idea of the ideal woman. Who is she? We are really only presented with three female characters throughout these 900+ pages: Dominique, Catherine, and Mrs. Keating. Dominique is a haughty female. Her first encounter with sex is a rape. It is a rape that ultimately forces her to fall in love with the books main character; its hero, Howard Roark. After falling in love with him, she tries to punish him and to make herself suffer by marrying the wrong kind of inferior men. The first was Peter Keating. The second was Gail Wynand. In both cases, her body was theirs. With Peter Keating, she allows him sexual interaction with her anytime he wants, or never if he wants. She is merely a kind of doll for him. A doll cannot say yes or no. It can only lie on the bed and allow itself to be used. It has no feeling or ability to say no. Of course, for her, it is her choice to be like that. She refuses to allow her personality into Keating's house. She does everything for him professionally: she lines up the customers, hosts dinner parties, makes the right kind of friends. But she herself she denies. It is a kind of punishment. But for what? Perhaps she is some kind of masochist. But she is not the only one. Both Mrs. Keating (the mother) and Catherine both show similar signs of simply being support for the men they are connected to. Feminist critic, Susan Miller, wrote in the 70s that Rand was a traitor to her own gender. Apparently, there are some other ideas, that Dominique had essentially invited Roark to rape her, and therefore it was not a true rape. But Dominique even states later that Roark had raped her, and she becomes self destructive.
   The main antagonist in The Fountainhead is Ellsworth Toohey. He is essentially considered an inferior man. He is inferior physically. He is not strong. He barely survived childhood. But he is intelligent. He is a sponge. Rand says of him that he has nothing original to give. Due to his inferiority, he wants to bring the whole of civilization down to his level. He uses his power and intellect to put the average person with no real abilities at the top and destroy those, like Roark, who are individualists and essentially better than everyone else.
   For me, the most interesting character is Peter Keating. Peter Keating is the foil in this story. He has no real talent of his own, according to Rand. Yet, he manages to get to the top of the heap for years. He is the most celebrated and successful architect of the novel. Yet, his best work is that which has been heavily influenced by Roark's designs. He hates Roark throughout most of the book for being able to live and enjoy life without the approval of others. He is the first to marry Dominique. In the end, though, he loses Dominique and his popularity.
   Most of the characters do not go through any kind of real change. The exception is probably Toohey's niece, whose ego is ultimately destroyed by Toohey. However, while her essence is essentially destroyed, The Fountainhead leaves off when Keating is going through a kind of personal renaissance. He has gone back to his original love for painting. Roark looks at those paintings and declares that it is too late for Keating. But what is too late? Keating, though not as wealthy as before, is still quite rich. He does not need his artwork to sell in order to succeed. He only needs to paint for himself. In fact, when he paints, it's the only time he can really escape his unhappiness. Further, when he goes to trial to speak about Roark, he no longer cares what other people think of him. He is his own man and still evolving.
   Roark is a caricature. He has all the depth of a cardboard figure. He does not change. He does not evolve. He is already basically perfect, from Rand's perspective. But he is fundamentally wrong about the individual being better alone than working together with others. It is true that sometimes when there are too many cooks, the broth is spoiled. But it is also true that a single bad cook can spoil the broth. He has an artistic integrity which he refuses to subordinate to the wants of others. The others end up wanting his work. Society changes, not him.
   He ends up destroying an installation of government housing projects because he did not like what others had done to his original design. The jury ends up letting him go because of a very long speech about how the individual is more important than the collective. It is the perfect anti-communist speech. But his idea that true leaders do not need others is absurd. Roark has to follow the laws of physics. He is a follower of material sciences. He does not learn how to make plastic in order to evolve as an architect. He watches the work of others and creates from the new inspiration. That is as it should be. He depends on the work of engineers before him, and physicists, to let him use the science of structure to make sure that they do not fall down for a lack of strength. He must stand on their shoulders. Rand often makes mention of him shunning the work of the previous architects: where the form and facades of columns become unnecessary to the structure, but still employed for the sake of art. Yet he is as dependent on the laws of nature as any of them, and he is a follower in this regard and has nothing of his own to add.  He is a designer who follows the same laws as everyone else. He is not a scientist who is discovering the laws of the universe.
   Ironically, I can see parts of myself in Roark's character. Perhaps they are flaws, or maybe they're strengths. Perhaps there is a little Roark in everyone, and this is the reason for the appeal. Perhaps it exists as a sort of "I'm the oddball rejected by my society because I'm actually better than everyone else and that's why they hate me." It's a kind of sour grapes approach to one's ego. A way of saying it's the fault of everyone else. I have learned one thing: it is easier to change myself than it is to change the world. Not changing and not adapting is in fact the sign of an absence of intelligence. It is saying "I don't have to change because I'm better than everyone else" rather than "How can I maintain myself, be who I am, and still fit into the culture and expectations of my society?" I wrote to my friend about the concept of common sense that it is 'usually inaccurate and unimaginative.'
   Rand is a great writer. The Fountainhead is a great book. It is fun to read. The philosophy which Rand extols, and to which the book is a vehicle for its oration, is well illustrated even if it is short sighted and foolish. Roark is not the hero. Keating is the hero. But she ends the book before we get to see the rebirth of his character as an independent man who finds his love in art. He is on the verge of becoming his own man. If there is a real hero, it is Peter Keating. But Rand kills the book before that can happen. I can't help but wonder if Rand knew it.