The Fountainhead

[GoldenHillGuy]

In a world of handouts and bailouts, welfare and 'free health care', I find this book refreshing. Personal responsibility and being true to yourself at any cost are virtues this book teaches. Above all selfishness is praised as being the highest honor you can give yourself. Interesting concepts.

 

Discuss.

[waveseer]

Being true to yourself isn't selfish if your natural instinct is to give.

[GoldenHillGuy]

Being true to yourself isn't selfish if your natural instinct is to give.

 

Agree, but the way she portrays 'selfishness', a person would still be selfish even if their nature is to give.

 

Being selfish is not whether or not you give, but give because YOU want to, and it makes YOU feel good, not because society tells you to give.

[waveseer]

Agree, but the way she portrays 'selfishness', a person would still be selfish even if their nature is to give.

 

Being selfish is not whether or not you give, but give because YOU want to, and it makes YOU feel good, not because society tells you to give.

 

I remember, just clearing it up for the casual reader.

[Moz]

An awful book from a woman who had no talent as a write or a philosopher. All her characters in this novel are two-dimensional at best, the 'rape' scene is disgusting, she was raped, but she like wanted it, the court room scene bears no reality to any courtroom I've ever been in. I wonder, is it satire? Is one supposed to take it seriously? Yet it goes on and on for over 600+ pages. L. Ron Hubbard had a cult grow up around him, but at least his early fiction (pre-50's) is quite enjoyable.

[Moz]

The problem with Ayn Rand lies in the fact that a good novelist has to consider many other elements besides philosophical exposition: drama, pace, excitement, suspense, and so forth. There is no time for the kind of qualifications—amendments, exceptions, special cases—that slow down the pace. So what we get in the Fountainhead are broad slashes, sharp-cutting strokes, which make superb reading when you’re sixteen years old, at that age many people reading this novel feel more excited than they ever have felt in your life. I’ve meet a few and they talk about their mind and soul on fire, and taking it all in as if it were to be read like a philosophical treatise. But, and it’s a big but that’s not how novels are to be read.

 

That was Ayn Rand’s problem, the story, characters, drama pace etc all that was jettisoned for her philosophy, heck the ‘story’ was just a side show to bring you into her circus tent where she would beat you over the head for 100 and 100 of pages, where you would find everything is magically black and white, a bit like the fairy stories you used to read as a child. All the bad people were useless and ugly and all the good people were so talented and beautiful and yet and yet she never explains why the bad people end op in power, giving their shortcomings!

 

Yet in reality I’ve never meet people like you find in her novels and the central character, Howard Roark is a bit of a bore, if he’s not working he’s…well just sitting in his apartment, staring into space, smoking (natch) and waiting for the phone to ring. Doesn’t read a book, magazine or a newspaper, doesn’t even go see a movie or crack open a beer!

 

Though I love the film version of this film, comes accross as very camp today and you can laugh at it, but as for the book forget it, unless you suffer from insomnia give it a miss. Try the Ragged trousered philantrophists instead.

[Anthropic]

We can argue the merits of the novel itself but I think it's her ideas that are important. To me she was more philosopher than novelist anyway. Whether you agree with them or not she brings up some thought provoking ideas.

 

I liked her book "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". It's been a while since I've read any of her work, but I still recall some of her ideas of property and value. (I might not get this right, it has been a while)

 

One idea that stuck out to me was the idea that we all have a limited amount of time in this world, and that we use this time, as a finite resource, in which to gain property and supply value so that we can sustain our right to life. Gaining property doesn't mean going to the mall and buying things, but spending our time to produce something (not just objects but actions as well) with which we then have the rights to. But time, in the form of labor, isn't enough to give it value, we also have to apply rational thought as well. I take a hunk of wood and turn it into a chair, it's now my property because I've invested my time into it, and I've given it value because I applied labor (time) and rational thought (chair, good for sitting).

 

Err, I don't really have a point here ....

[Moz]

But a novel needs to be more than just about ideas though. Her fiction fails to impress as another other than sterile writing. The characters and prose are lifeless. Even her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged runs out of stroy after the first 100 pages. It's very annoying when the 'story' is just a veneer for her ideas. Novels are more than that. You are buying a book, you want a story not a political pamphlet.

[Anthropic]

But a novel needs to be more than just about ideas though. Her fiction fails to impress as another other than sterile writing. The characters and prose are lifeless. Even her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged runs out of stroy after the first 100 pages. It's very annoying when the 'story' is just a veneer for her ideas. Novels are more than that. You are buying a book, you want a story not a political pamphlet.

 

I'm comfortable calling it a philosophical work with hints of novel if that's better. I guess we just have different expectations for the book, you say it shouldn't be read like a philosophical treatise but like a novel. I think it should be read more as philosophy than novel, or maybe read it more as philosophical propaganda for her ideas.

[GoldenHillGuy]

I'll agree with Moz, and say that this book started out very SLOWLY. It wasn't until page 450 or so that I found it harder to put down. But, I knew that going in. I wasn't looking for a thriller novel, or a cheap romance. With that all said, I wanted to discuss the ideas put forward in this novel, er book, and not debate her writing style. Anyways, DISCUSS!

[Anthropic]

Since I got sidetracked up there, the very least I can do is post something on topic.

 

On the surface, selfishness as a virtue sounds pretty good to me. The idea that your happiness and life should be first and foremost makes a lot of sense, sounds kind of empowering. The problem is, I think it takes a very rational mind to be able to follow such a path. I just don't believe there are many people rational enough to pull it off.

 

Humans are inherently irrational beings, at least from my observations. We form emotional bonds that fly in the face of selfishness as a virtue, we pretty much rely on those bonds for perpetuation of the species. So I see it as a struggle between biology and the (rational) mind.

 

Ayn Rand would probably think any altruistic behavior that didn't benefit the individual as laughable. The funny thing is, if you've ever read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, he argues that our altruistic behavior (especially behavior involving mates and kin) can actually be explained by selfish genes that basically just want to perpetuate themselves.

 

So if selfish genes result in human beings, then what do selfish humans result in? I don't know, but if it's an end result like humans, society would be one heck of an emotional wreck.