I have never considered myself particularly well read, especially next to people such as my wife who devour book after book by nearly any author and have since childhood. Next to those people I’m little more than a knave who’s been taught the amusing trick of reading, really. However, I have my moments of listening when people spout about about a title that’s particularly affected their lives. One such title was The Fountainhead by a heavily lauded writer named Ayn Rand.
Now, I still won’t claim to know exactly how to pronounce her first name, but I’d been noticing that Rand seemed to get mentioned a lot by various authors, musicians and business people I’d read about. One particular article I’d seen in a magazine had a business mogul who said that The Fountainhead had influenced him more than any other work. I’d actually expected this book to be something of a political diatribe because that’s what I thought Rand was about. Imagine my rather pleasant surprise to find out that it was a novel. Imagine, again, my less than thrilled reaction to discovering through a summary of the book that it was something of a romance novel.
Well, whatever, I was still intrigued by the book and particularly desperate for any form of inspiration or strategy that could help me fix up my rather awful existence at the time I read this book. Honestly, I approached the book with something near the fervor that a religious scholar might tear into a recently unearthed scroll. At first, I worried I’d ended up diving a bit too far off the deep end and felt as if I were trying to read a dead language. I’m not particularly delighted by historical novels and that’s not because I don’t like history–it fascinates me to no end as the ultimate fiction–but I wasn’t terribly familiar with the early 1900’s so I was a little out of water.
The nice thing is, Rand really isn’t talking about an era in history any more than she’s talking about architecture, a main topic explored in the book. Architect Howard Roark, no matter how much he may remind you of Frank Lloyd Wright, is a man possessed by his own sense of vision. He wants to design the buildings he wants to design and nothing can dissuade him from his mission, even though things make it tragically difficult for him to follow what he believes to be his life’s work. In the process he falls in love with a woman named Dominique and their love is played out in grand and thoroughly surprising style that really isn’t like any other tale of romance I’ve ever read.
Unlike most books I tend to favor, Rand’s characters are not gritty and realistic. They are human beings, sure, but first and foremost they are characters along the lines of epic Greek or Roman heroes. They act the way heroes would act, they are larger than life and they live out life the way stars of the silver screen would. This romantic view of human potential is incredibly refreshing because so many books of our modern era tend to approach things from a nihilistic or at least pessimistic view unless they are promoting a specific spiritual path. In Rand’s work, the only thing held supreme is the human spirit and its capacity to triumph over every disaster or tragedy thrown its way. That makes this novel more of a mirror in which you can gauge your own values than anything else.
Yes, the story is excellent and the setting is unique compared to what I tend to read. The characters will keep you reading and the story really does have more twists than sack of Twizzlers, but the main component of the book that makes it worth advocating is that it’s a tool for philosophical self examination.
If you’re about at the end of your own rope or if you simply want to read a book that can still challenge the notions of society that seem to prevail in the world, even today, then The Fountainhead is certainly a title you should set your mind to work on.
Visit Ayn Rand’s website to learn more about her books: http://www.aynrand.org/
Click here to get your hands on “The Fountainhead”
Related posts:
No Comments on "THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand"
Trackback URL