I finally, finally, finished "The Fountainhead" this week. It's a monster of a book! It was very intimidating, staring at the four inch thick spine, wondering if I had the wherewithal to actually finish it, and would I even understand it. Surprisingly, I did enjoy it.
"The Fountainhead" is not nearly as difficult a read as I'd imagined. What struck me from the beginning was the whole idea of passion. Passion for money, passion for architecture, passion for position, passion for women, passion for acclaim, passion for passion's sake. I felt like I was looking down two different paths of the same subject. One man, Howard Roarke, kept his passion close to his chest. He had an honesty that scared people, and a single mindedness that drove others mad. He didn't care that he didn't fit in. He only had one great, driving need: to build structures the way he wanted. And the way he wanted was very different from the way it had "always been done". The other man, Peter Keating, had a passion for recognition, and the fame and money that came with it. He enjoyed creating buildings, yes, but it seemed to be nothing compared to his driving desire to have everything. It was a passion of self: he believed he was the best, and so he deserved to have the best. These two creatures, two sides of the same coin, had a strange love/hate relationship. It was interesting to watch the mirror images of their desires smack into each other, grapple, then pull apart, each time one wearing away just a bit of the other, all the time knowing that one couldn't survive without the other.
The book also had a heavy theme of "new vs. old". The Old Guard who still believed architecture could only be acceptable if it used all the old school thoughts. Roman and Greek, lots of frou-frou, plenty of heavy accents. The New Guy, who believed that the building should honor the world surrounding it, should be a reflection of its purpose, and of possibilities. The old, of course, does its best to smother the new, to break it down, to force it into a mold. They praised their own boy wonder, Keating, who clung to the old ways because he understood that was how to get ahead. When they couldn't break Roarke, they simply tried to destroy him in a systematic fashion. However, there were enough "new guys" to keep the modernisitic Howard Roarke working, even if it wasn't consistent work. It was fascinating to go through these trials with Roarke, to see him struggle, succeed, struggle, fail. Then to see Keating succeed, succeed, succeed, and still be unsatisfied and somehow empty.
I'll only touch on the love affairs, as they are hard to describe, but definitely twined into the story. Volatile, distraught, smothering, the sort of love that can either kill you or save you. You get to see passion reveresed, watching as each man deals with his heart in much the same way as he deals with his architecture. It's fascinating, and very disturbing.
The secondary characters were beautifully created. Even the ones who were only present for a few pages had a life of their own. The ones who were more deeply involved were cannily eased into the stories, and their part in the lives of Roarke and Keating seemed to be predestined, even if the main characters didn't realize it. Personally, I always think that if the secondary characters aren't well drawn, the story won't support itself. In this case, I think Rand could have written entire books about the supporting cast.
The only negative thing I can say is that Rand does seem to prose on and on. Maybe it's because in this day and time our culture is used to news bites, snippets of information, words tied in tight bows with minimal explanations. But I'll admit that there were times when I said, "Okay, I know that Roarke makes people uncomfortable; I don't need to be reminded every other paragraph." I also felt that it didn't take three sentences to describe a man's hair.
However, with that said, I'll tell you that it was definitely worth the read. It's a classic for a reason, and I can see why it was so sensational when first published. It's still sensational today. It's the sort of story that makes you take a long, hard look at yourself, and makes you wonder which person you are: Roarke or Keating. Or if you're maybe a little of both.
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2 comments:
I became skeptical when I read the part about Keating being "passionate" like Roark. And I quit reading when I got to the part about them Roark and Keating being two sides of the same coin.
The supreme individualist is essentially the same as a pathetic second hander?
Keating had his own kind of passion, in my opinion. But maybe passion wasn't the right word. Driven might have been a better descriptive. I did see them as two sides of the same coin, but that's just my personal opinion. Sort of like Yin and Yang, love and hate. I hate to say it, but there are times when I do feel sympathy for the devil, even if I don't like him very much.
The supreme individualist, Roarke, is not the same as the second hander, Keating, in many ways. However, the drive they both had (for very different things), felt to me to have the same sort of passion.
Hopefully my first ever review of a book (I've never done anything like this before) isn't so heavy on my personal opinion that it will turn others away from reading the book. Frankly, I think this story creates different feelings and different opinions in the individual reader. And isn't that the ultimate "individualist"?
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