Ayn Rand and Leonard (AFT) Peikoff - Fountainhead

Note to High School and College Students:

This review isn't for you. This review is for old people like me who are no longer as idealistic as yourself, but who might get something out of reading The Fountainhead if they're not scared away by the thought that only high school or college students read it.

Be assured that what I'm about to write isn't based on some dusty memory. Although I bought my copy of Fountainhead 10 years ago, I just got around to reading it this week. Like yourselves, I read Atlas Shrugged when I was a student (20 years ago). I know all about Objectivism. I have a nephew who thinks he's Howard Roark.

Now, for those of you who are over 40:

There are, in fact, some good reasons to read The Fountainhead. To begin with, Rand writes like nobody else. Her narrative is instantly recognizable. Her vocabulary is a unique mixture, where terms like "exhibitionism" and "bromide," along with her own neologisms, acquire unusual connotations. Rand is often criticized as a "bad writer." In fact, she writes perfectly well, but has occasional problems with structure: the penultimate chapter of The Fountainhead, for example, consists of a speech that goes on (and on) for eight pages. (And a 75-page speech comes toward the end of Atlas Shrugged.) In general, however, Fountainhead reads quite fluently, considering its 754-page length.

The second reason to read The Fountainhead will appeal mainly to people who live in the United States. This is a book that could only have been written in America, and only by an immigrant from a country, like Russia, with a weak tradition of individualism. Rand thus provides an unusual perspective on certain American values, which she acquired by fervent adoption rather than simply being born into them. The context in which The Fountainhead was published (in 1943) will also be of significance to readers who know their American history. In case you don't know it, 1943 was the peak of the U.S.-Soviet alliance in World War II. The achievements of the USSR were being lauded everywhere in the popular media, from Hollywood pictures to the pages of National Geographic. Industrial production in the United States saw unprecedented government control in the interest of the war effort. Under these circumstances it wouldn't have been especially eccentric to wonder whether some sinister convergence with the Soviet system was underway.

The third reason to read The Fountainhead is for the raw shock value it provides. I'm not referring to the rape scene (which was so memorably portrayed by Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal in the 1949 film). But rather to the extremism of its philosophy, its blunt dichotomization between egotism and altruism as guiding principles for a noble life. In a world where "choice" has been trivialized to variations on the latte, it is refreshing to think, for awhile, in bigger categories and between starker alternatives.

All this being said, there are plenty of reasons not to read The Fountainhead. Sometimes it reads like a gospel of hate for the mediocre, unattractive, and weak of character. Not an ounce of humor contaminates its pages. Its treatment of sex is rather unsavory by any standard. And I was gravely disappointed not to find in the book the famous line from the movie: "I wish I'd never seen your skyscraper!" Still, there's nothing like revisiting Rand in middle age. Like the smell of spilled beer or an episode of The Real World, it takes you back to your younger days: to late-night conversations in the college dorm, to your first encounter with a strange and different way of thinking, to a moment when it seemed possible to solve the problems of the world.