The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is one of the best books I have ever read. I've read it over and over and yet, I still can't tell you why it made such an impression on me.
The characters are so fully developed, so acute and influential that you want to BE them. It's glamorous and elegant, the world of Ayn Rand, graced with descriptions of stunning architecture and juxtapositions of good versus evil. I don't find myself driven by Rand's "objectivism" philosophy of the selfish man, the individual above all, but I still found the way she portrayed this theme through her characters obsessively fascinating.
From the moment we are introduced to Roark standing on the edge of the cliff...the first sentence, "Howard Roark laughed", we are pulled into Ayn Rand's world of the ideal. She makes us aware of the existence of both opulence and poverty within our own souls.
The book is beautiful. She makes the stark lines of city dwelling and the coldness of power-driven men seem not so bleak. There is a love story there, don't be mistaken. But its between the reader and the characters.
I'll reread this book a million times and never get tired of it.
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June 2018
5 years ago
4 comments:
I have several friends who've loved this book, but I've never read it. Maybe I will have to give it a whirl.
I've walked out halfway through a date simply because the chick said she'd read 'The Fountainhead' or 'Atlas Shrugged'.
There’s just something so unsettling about being with an Objectivist. Sure you can try and tempt fate if you wish. Just make sure they go down on you first. Seriously, how can you prescribe to an ethical theory entitled The Virtue of Selfishness...
Fingers: If you read the review carefully, you will see that I don't subscribe to that theory at all.
I just love the writing and the roundness of her characters.
I did see that, baby.
I was referring more to Rand and her legion of adoring, fawning followers.
You know, I thought the first half of 'The Fountainhead' was some of the most magnificent writing I'd ever seen but then it all sort of fell in a soapy heap and fizzled out for me...never even finished it...did Roark and Dominique ever put that nasty rape aside and get hitched...
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