The Fountainhead

For the review: The ability to read this book across devices is invaluable! I can read this book on my kindle, on my iPhone while waiting in line, on the PC on my desktop, and even listen to the audible version while I stand on a crowded subway. The WhisperSync feature is nearly perfect and the only glitch that occurs is when there is no coverage in the subway. This is a very enjoyable way to read books and the transition between reading and listening is so seamless that it begins to feel very natural. You can read a long book like this much more quickly this way. The novel is one of ideas, ways of looking at life, and a story of characters who live those ideals. Quotes: First, from the introduction: "This is the motive and purpose of my writing: the projection of an ideal man." "IT is a sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one's life is important, that great achievements are within one's capacity, and that great things lie ahead." "The Fountainhead's lasting appeal: it is a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming man's glory, showing how much is possible." "It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature - and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning. The rest are no concern of mine, it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls." First sentence: "Howard Roark laughed." "My dear follow, who will let you?" "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?" Roark: "I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards - and I set my own standards." "I don't propose to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me." "You've made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know? How can you let others decide for you?" "One can't collaborate on one's own job. I can co-operate, with the workers who erect my buildings. But I can't help them to lay bricks and they can't help me to design the house." "I don't believe in government housing. I don't want to hear anything about its noble purposes. I don’t think they're noble." "The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way." "When you suspend your faculty of independent judgement, you suspend consciousness." "Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing." On Dominique Francon and her first relations with Roark: "the sensation of a defiling pleasure." "the exaggerated fragility of her body against the sky." "He stood looking up at her; it was not a glance, but an act of ownership." "She thought of being broken- not by a man she admired, but by a man she loathed. She let her head fall down on her arm; the thought left her weak with pleasure." "He did it not as love, but as defilement. And this made her lie still and submit." "The act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of her was the kind of rapture she had wanted." "She had found joy in her revulsion, in her terror and his strength. That was the degradation she had wanted." "Through the fierce sense of humiliation, the words gave her the same kind of pleasure she had felt in his arms." "when they were in bed together it was - as it had to be, as the nature of the act demanded - an act of violence. It was surrender mad the more complete by the force of their resistance." She even wrote: "Howard Roark is the Marquis de Sade of Architecture." "He defeated her by admitting her power." "She felt no thrill of conquest; she felt herself owned more than ever." Roark's apartment: "His new home was one large room in a small, modern apartment house on a quiet street. His room contained a few pieces of simple furniture; it looked clean, vast and empty; one expected to hear echoes from its corners." Roark's office: "His staff loved him. They did not realize it and would have been shocked to apply such a term as love to their cold, unapproachable, inhuman boss. But working with him, they knew that he was none of these things, but they could not explain, neither what he was nor what they felt for him." "He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer's benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office." "They knew only, in a dim way, that it was not loyalty to him, but to the best within themselves." Ellsworth Toohey: "Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight with the unreasonable?" "To write a good play and to have it praised is nothing. Anybody with talent can do that- and talent is a glandular accident. But to write a piece of crap and have it praised - will, you can't match that." Gail Wynand: "The man humbled his own wealth." "When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man." "I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline." "The sky over New York and the will of man, made visible. What other religion do we need? Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel." "I never meet the men whose work I love. The work means too much to me. I don’t want the men to spoil it. They usually do. They're an anticlimax to their own talent." "Anger made me work harder." "The walls of Wynand's office were made of cork and copper paneling and had never borne any pictures."

On its surface, this book is about two different architects who simultaneously embark upon their careers in New York City. At its core, it’s about the difference in philosophy between individualism and collectivism. If you know Ayn Rand, then you know she is a champion of individualism, and thus her protagonist is a man named Howard Roark, an architect who expresses his individualism with every project he designs. He is innovative and fiercely independent and simply doesn’t give a damn what other people think. Sometimes, his indifference to the opinions of others gets him in trouble, and yet there are also times when other characters express their admiration of his strong will, lamenting the fact that they themselves care what other people think. Roark represents Rand’s ideal of the creative individual who lives for himself and not for others. Rand is the mother of a school of philosophy called Objectivism, which she once described as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” With this definition in mind, it is evident that Roark embodies her philosophy as he is a man who only cares about his own happiness, to varying degrees of success and failure. Roark’s classmate and counterpart is Peter Keating, a man who represents collectivism in all its forms. Keating is a natural conformist whose architectural designs are all reproductions of past styles—like Renaissance, Gothic, or Beaux-Arts—and are based on whatever he thinks will win him more clients or public approval. He is constantly seeking validation from others and is dependent on them for his success. While Roark’s designs come from his own creative soul, Keating’s designs are simply a mirror of popular taste and client demands, but never anything original. While he initially finds success, by the end of the book Keating has become a shell of a man. The main antagonist of the book is a journalist, architecture critic, and political activist named Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey is a power-seeking intellectual and collectivist who uses his talents to shape public opinion. He organizes numerous groups and committees and uses people’s desire to help others (their altruism) as a means of control and mass manipulation. He wants to crush individuality (often in the form of Howard Roark) and promote collectivism, and what he ultimately gets for this endeavor is mediocrity. One of the other major themes in this book is the relationship between power and the media. This is first expressed in the character of Toohey as he uses his circulated writing in order to mold public opinion, and is then later encountered again when the character of Gail Wynand is introduced as one of the most powerful newspaper magnates in the city. At one point, Wynand tries to use his newspaper to uplift Roark and is nearly run out of business for it and must relent his efforts. The take-away from this is twofold: both the power of those in charge to manipulate public opinion, and the power of a collectivist mindset once an idea takes hold. All in all, this book is a philosophical novel that expertly expresses the struggle between creative independence and societal conformity. While Rand lands firmly on the side of the individual, I was very aware of points throughout the book when I did not. I won’t share specifics so as not to spoil the plot, but my take-away was not that we should all champion the creative rights and rationality of the individual and condemn those of the collective, but that a balance between the two is necessary. There are certainly times when individual creativity and ingenuity should be put on the front page of the newspaper and celebrated by the world, and also, there are times when we should all come together and adopt a hive mind. Take architecture: If I’m designing a new train station, perhaps I should be allowed to express my individual talents and make a one-of-a-kind train station that is beautiful and functional and unlike any other. Alternatively, if I’m designing a community of one hundred houses, perhaps I should model them after a community that has already been constructed elsewhere so as to keep costs down and make them affordable to families. I believe that whether we should adopt an individualist mindset or a collectivist one should depend on the context. With that as my own personal take-away, I must praise the prose of Rand’s writing: her book, while long, is exquisite. Her characters are well defined and not afraid to speak their minds and often said and did things that I did not expect. Her vivid descriptions of people, places, and things brought them to life in my mind. Her writing is engaging and full of ideas, and while I speculated that individualism would win out in the end (knowing the author’s philosophy ahead of time), at no point did I know what was going to happen next. I enjoyed this book wholeheartedly, both for the surface story and for the underlying philosophy.

I’ve read The Fountainhead myself but really enjoyed this audiobook version. The reader voices each character perfectly, slipping into and between different accents and tones of voice for dialogue and conversations. I found it easy to get absorbed in each scene and even laughed out loud a few times. He definitely puts you “in” the book in a very calm and easy way. Before I knew it, the city was dropping away beneath Dominique’s feet, the sun on her face, and I wanted to start all over again. Loved it.

Eye-opening and entertaining at the same time. When you start reading, you don't want to stop. Read it

Uma obra prima.

El libro no es de fácil lectura, algunos personajes son complicados, pero este antagonismos lo que le da esencia al libro y la profundidad de los diálogos y monólogos de y entre los personajes llevan al lector a comprender la filosofía del Individualismo y su valor Vs su antagónico Colectivismo

「面白かった」「勉強になった」「この本と出会えて良かった」「また読み直したい」という本は、そこそこあります。「こんな本ともっと早くに出会えていたら自分の人生は変わっていたかもしれない」とまで思わせる本は少ないです。この小説はそんな小説です。日本語訳が出ているかも知れないけれど、確か、原書が出版されてからずいぶん遅れてのことだったような記憶があります。主人公の男（女）の生き方が、日本ではなかなか受け入れられないのだろうと思います。

This book is really long, very provoking. Highly recommended