The Fountainhead

Hovering between two and three stars, and ended up going with two because I can't really endorse this book, and I can't fail to rate it by going middle of the road. I actually enjoyed parts of this book, especially the first couple hundred pages, but the last half of the book dragged on terribly. So much of the Gail Wynand and Ellsworth Toohey portions were far too drawn out, and could have been greatly condensed without sacrificing the point.

If I had read this book in college, maybe I would have really liked it. Which says how dangerous it might be to give this book to college students. Ayn Rand is a child, espousing an infantile philosophy that is incredibly detached from the world we live in. She is at her best when she is praising the “selfish creator.” I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘Roark' sections of the novel, the instigation to be confident in yourself and desires, and invent. But she totally misses the mark with the “selfless altruists”. The enemies she creates are totally unbelievable as characters, preaching a radical philosophy that no truly altruistic human could embrace. And so her philosophy falls apart.

There is no place in Ayn Rand's world for humanity as a diverse range of people who find happiness in diverse ways. She does not allow that some may not have a life's work, may have to make sacrifices to support others, may be doing one of many jobs that makes the world go around but does not involve any creative output whatsoever. She looks at the world in such a basic, childish way.

And if you were hoping that the bad philosophy could be excused by good writing, you would be sorely disappointed. This is less a novel than a barely masked allegorical philosophical treatise. It is very forward. None of the characters seems remotely real - rather they are one-dimensional stand-ins for abstract philosophical concepts.

I'm glad I read it, as it prompted me to really think about my beliefs, the world, and the way I live my life. But although it has good nuggets here and there, and parts of it I enjoyed reading, as a whole it was a bad novel about bad philosophy.