Well if you can cry many times reading a book ....you can think and rethink about your life ..your ideals....your principles reading a book then this is the one ....truly mind blowing and absorbing .....
The Fountainhead
I read this book every year (generally I start reading it in the end of November just to finish it before Christmas and new year and believe me every time I have a resolution to make) because it has inspired me in N number of ways ?its ideas ...its philosophy?its characters specially Howard Roark are incredible and beyond perfection. Such novels are written once in 100 years and live forever. Its truly a masterpiece by Ayn R@nd ?she has left indelible footprints on the sands of time by writing this novel.
About the author
Ayn R@nd was arguably the single most important novelist and philosopher of the 20th century. Her fans range from Hillary Clinton to Alan Greenspan to me ...
She was born in Russia as Alyssa Rosenbaum, left the USSR in 1926, rejecting collectivist Bolshevik Russia as the antithesis of freedom. She fled to the United States, where the individual freedom and capitalism that she found became her life’s passion. Like many writer-cum-philosopher she was an atheist from her childhood, she coupled a critique of religious altruism with her critique of social ’’collectivism.’’
She published her first novel, We, the Living, followed in 1938 by Anthem and in 1938, The Fountain-head. The latter became a best-seller and was turned into a King Vidor film starting Gary Cooper. Atlas Shrugged, 1957, also became a best-seller. Atlas Shrugged and The Fountain-head continue to inspire and motivate philosophical exploration of ’’objectivism’’ - Rand’s philosophy sometimes called egotism. ’’Rational self-interest’’ is the core of the philosophy
The Story
Well it is difficult to tell the whole story of such a big novel but the Jist of it I will put here before you people.
The most striking thing about this novel is the affair between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon ?.god knows what was it or maybe Ayn knows ?.it was a feeling ?an obsession?a relationship beyond imagination?but the greater feature of the novel is the individualism described through strong characters. The romantic individualism of The Fountainhead is like DNA; it’s present in every cell, and it controls every cell. The major psychological conflict of the novel, the conflict between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon, is not permitted to remain what almost any other novelist would make it, a conflict simply between two strong people. It is not even permitted to remain a conflict between two strong individualists.
It becomes instead a conflict between two strong individualists who have individual ways of showing their respect for individualism, and in particular for Howard Roark’s own individualism. Howard values it so much that he makes it the consistent basis of an ultimately successful career; Dominique values it so much that she tries to destroy that career before it can be destroyed by others. This is strange, but it is strange in a completely Randian way, a way that could never be mistaken for anyone else’s.
In spite of being in love with Howard Roark, Dominique Francon marries first B. Peter Keating (Roark?s friend, colleague and competitor) and then C. Gail Wynand. Dominique is motivated by her love for Howard Roark. She marries Keating and Wynand in an attempt to understand Roark. By various experiences with men, she strives to humiliate herself in order to experience some of the pain she believes Roark is feeling. Sex for her is a degrading experience, a subduing one because carried on with inferior men. . . .
Among other things the book has a lot to offer to architecture enthusiasts or professionals ??Howard Roark may be made of cardboard, but he defies those stuffed shirts and spineless wimps who think they want buildings that resemble masterworks from the past. What do they know? ’’I don’t intend to build in order to have clients, ’’ Roark tells the dean who expels him from architecture school. ’’I intend to have clients in order to build.’’ Such were the thoughts of this great character created by the author ?.he was an iconoclast from the soul. He has been described as an uncompromising architect
Who would stand by his principles even in the face of adversity.
Fountainhead is basically the story of a radical architect and his struggle to remain true to his vision of his work in the face of the public’s preference for tradition and mediocrity and unscrupulous opinion-makers who wish to enforce these traits for their own ends. But what the book is actually about is the conflict between individuality and collectivism.
I have to admit, my favourite characters were Peter Keating and Gail Wynand because they were the only humans in the story. Roark, Dominique and Toohey were little more than 2-dimensional posters for their respective ideals.
For once in your life time go and read this book and do drop in a comment if you find the book useful?for all those who have already read the book this review will definitely give them a nostalgic feeling.