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A review by ptankha
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
3.0
"The goal of Ayn Rand's novel(s) is not didactic but artistic"
I read this in the About section of The Fountainhead and I can't say I agree. Here's a book that starts out strong, Part 1 being, by far, the most compelling for me. I raced through those first 200 pages, and it was momentum that carried me through the next 300. But the last 200 pages of The Fountainhead are a real slog. It feels like Rand realised her novel was running out of plot to plug her ideology into, and boy does she stretch it. I'm rarely this unkind towards a work of creativity as ambitious as The Fountainhead, but the book could have been at least a hundred pages shorter.
The plot itself drags to an end that feels contrived. Rand can't bear to give her hero the ending that seems like the logical choice for both writer and reader, and no number of impassioned speeches or long lectures were enough to convince me otherwise.
Rand plays with a delightfully eclectic cast of characters, and she deserves praise for her intriguing descriptions of their internal dynamic. But the proportions feel wrong - more Peter Keating would have been welcome, at the expense of Toohey. He's undoubtedly brilliant as the philosophical antithesis to her Objectivism, but Rand uses him a little too often to flaunt her impressive grasp of history, philosophy, language and her own set of bright ideas.
I expected more of Wynand too - the explosion we're promised builds up to nothing more than a fizzle. Besides, as a poster boy for everything that unchecked capitalism can mutate into, he undermines Rand's pro-Laissez Faire cause in a big way.
But in Peter Keating, Rand does her best work. Keating and Roark are lines with straight paths; one coming down from a great height, and the other ascending from the earth to the heavens. Through Keating, Rand makes her point most subtly, most relatably, and most impactfully.
How I wish The Fountainhead didn't devolve into the lecture on ethics as quickly and completely as it did. I suppose there would be no novel without the backing philosophy, but did it really need to sacrifice story for the sake of exposition? It's going to be a long time before I can muster the energy to take on her alleged masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged.
I read this in the About section of The Fountainhead and I can't say I agree. Here's a book that starts out strong, Part 1 being, by far, the most compelling for me. I raced through those first 200 pages, and it was momentum that carried me through the next 300. But the last 200 pages of The Fountainhead are a real slog. It feels like Rand realised her novel was running out of plot to plug her ideology into, and boy does she stretch it. I'm rarely this unkind towards a work of creativity as ambitious as The Fountainhead, but the book could have been at least a hundred pages shorter.
The plot itself drags to an end that feels contrived. Rand can't bear to give her hero the ending that seems like the logical choice for both writer and reader, and no number of impassioned speeches or long lectures were enough to convince me otherwise.
Rand plays with a delightfully eclectic cast of characters, and she deserves praise for her intriguing descriptions of their internal dynamic. But the proportions feel wrong - more Peter Keating would have been welcome, at the expense of Toohey. He's undoubtedly brilliant as the philosophical antithesis to her Objectivism, but Rand uses him a little too often to flaunt her impressive grasp of history, philosophy, language and her own set of bright ideas.
I expected more of Wynand too - the explosion we're promised builds up to nothing more than a fizzle. Besides, as a poster boy for everything that unchecked capitalism can mutate into, he undermines Rand's pro-Laissez Faire cause in a big way.
But in Peter Keating, Rand does her best work. Keating and Roark are lines with straight paths; one coming down from a great height, and the other ascending from the earth to the heavens. Through Keating, Rand makes her point most subtly, most relatably, and most impactfully.
How I wish The Fountainhead didn't devolve into the lecture on ethics as quickly and completely as it did. I suppose there would be no novel without the backing philosophy, but did it really need to sacrifice story for the sake of exposition? It's going to be a long time before I can muster the energy to take on her alleged masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged.