The Fountainhead

With election season in full swing and third party candidate Gary Johnson earning a fair share of attention as a viable protest vote candidate, I figured it was high time for me to reconsider the Libertarian Party - a region of the political spectrum I was scared away from years ago by none other than Ayn Rand herself, via her novella Anthem and its central moral of self-worship. Libertarians love Rand, in general, so this was as good a time as any for me to break into The Fountainhead and see if she couldn't win me over with some compelling arguments for valuing oneself above everyone else.

Nope!

To be fair, The Fountainhead was far more philosophical than political in nature, and while the two theaters certainly have their fair share of overlap, there really wasn't much in this sprawling story about the state itself oppressing a free-thinking hero. Instead the central theme here is individualism vs. collectivism. (Can you guess which philosophy Rand championed?)

The two main characters here, at least initially, are architects Howard Roark, who embodies individualism, independence, and Peter Keating, his foil in every way. Roark has been described by Rand herself as the ideal or perfect man. He holds firmly to his own beliefs and opinions no matter how unpopular they may be with the "establishment" and as such he ends up butting heads with a lot of people and getting fired from a lot of jobs for insubordination. Keating on the other hand is what today we'd call a yes man. He's a total kiss-ass. Affable and agreeable to everything, and a very capable flatterer, and as such, he gets "ahead" in life despite his mediocrity as an architect. To use today's parlance, he's "playing the game," whereas Roark is uncompromising and thus struggles despite having more natural talent.

We're about a quarter to a third of the way into this book here, and the parallels and contrasts between the characters has been established. Is there really enough to sustain another 500 pages of story? Buckle up. You won't BELIEVE where this is heading!

Put Keating aside for now. Roark has burned too many bridges to continue on as an architect in New York, so he takes a job on a quarry in Connecticut. There he meets a beautiful, jaded, cynical woman named Dominique. They flirt a little, and she plays hard to get. So what does Roark - Rand's "ideal man," who lives for himself first and doesn't concern himself with the greater good of society or any of that hodgepodge - what does Roark do?

Roark rapes Dominique.

Rape!

Everything a man should be, in Rand's eyes.

A rapist!

Look, at this point, I'll admit - I'm fully not on board anymore. I went into this 700-page classic with caution and skepticism, but in those first 200 pages or so I could at least see what Rand was going for with Roark, and how sometimes it's important to let transcendent talents break the mold and ignore the rules for the sake of humanity. (This sort of feels like a strawman argument - talented people are very often successful! - but then again, Rand grew up in early 20th century Russia. I'm sure the prevailing mindset was a lot different then and there. Fine.) But, yeah, no. Apparently when you live for yourself and refuse to cater to what others think of you, the natural conclusion is that you become a rapist.

"Like a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of a slave." Rand's words. Ideal man.

It gets worse, but probably not unexpectedly so.  Dominique, after being raped and humiliated, realizes that a good raping was exactly what she needed, and falls madly in love with Roark. Had he remained thoughtful and polite, she reasons, she'd never have given him the time of day. But a man who just storms in and takes what he wants? Swoon.

Look, I'm not judging Dominique - and by extension Rand - for having a rape fetish. Kinks are kinks. There are people who willingly engage in far nastier forms of sexual activity. There are women who want to be strangled to the point of passing out during sex. There are men who, rather than engaging in intercourse, might request to be kicked right in the nuts repeatedly instead. But the key words here are "willingly" and "want" and "request." Consent. It's not just a buzzword! And since Dominique never fantasized about being raped or even having sex with Roark before she was, hey, raped by Roark, her being madly turned on after the fact kind of reads more like PTSD.

But all of this is beside the point. Whether or not Dominique is okay with being raped, whether or not "consent in hindsight" is a thing, one thing is clear and indisputable. Howard Roark is a rapist!

Just one more time, for emphasis. The undisputed hero of The Fountainhead, a fictional man Rand upholds as ideal and morally superior, is a fucking rapist. And an unapologetic one at that! It'd be one thing to have your hero commit such a heinous act early on in your story, and then to redeem him through trials and sacrifices and such in the ensuing 500 pages. But no! Roark never changes - the "ideal man" needs no growth, after all - and his rapey tendencies are just part of what makes him an exceptional person with flawless ideals.

Seriously, what the fuck?

So yeah, there's really no coming back from that one. Not helping matters, the story only gets less believable and more didactic from here on out. Roark leaves the quarry and gets back into architecture. Enter Ellsworth Toohey, the novel's ultimate antagonist, a purely evil man. He's an architectural critic with no talents of his own, so he just seeks to bring everyone else down with him. He is a master manipulator, preaching humility and shaming egos. And for whatever reason, he's hellbent on destroying Roark. "Why?" you may ask. (I did.) "What does he stand to gain?" Who cares? Roark, the ultimate hero, needs an oppressive villain to contend with in order to reach Christ status. That's why. So Toohey starts getting businessmen who have hired Roark to sue him once Roark's buildings are complete. And Toohey conspires to have all kinds of other architects testify against Roark and suggest that his buildings were poorly made or terribly designed. This isn't that hard to do - after all, the entire architecture industry hates Roark for being such a stubborn as, remember? Anyway, Roark loses, and he's ruined - again! - and Dominique goes back to being a hardened, angry cynic, and because of her masochistic tendencies, she decides to leave Roark and marry - yep! - Keating! Remember him? The talentless yes man who achieved success by refusing to make waves or question orders?

You might think the book should end here. It's a nice downer of an ending, and we've come full circle, and there's really nothing more to add to this allegory, right? Wrong! We've got another 300 pages to go! (I'm getting tired of rehashing this thing. It's such a long book!)

The next portion of the book introduces us to Gail Wynand, a newspaper magnate who has made his fortune by printing only what the public wants to hear. (Again, the theme here is that pandering is how to get ahead in life in a reprehensible manner.) Never mind that conventional wisdom suggests that the media gets readers and viewers by telling audiences things they don't want to hear. Acknowledging that would ruin this sprawling fable Rand is painting without any shades of gray, or nuance, or internal conflict. Wynand is a lapsed idealist, though. He used to be like Roark, but he sold out his morals of sticking to his guns in order to make a buck. What an unbelievable asshole, right?

So Wynard meets Dominique and falls in love with her. So he offers Keating a boatload of money in order to, you know, sell him his wife. Holy cow! And Keating - come on, you know Keating - accepts. And so does Dominique, because she's kind of into being treated like a brothel whore, and also she finds Wynard even more detestable than Keating, and she's still all about punishing herself. All three get exactly what they want! Hooray?

Anyway, Keating's own complete lack of ability finally starts to catch up with him - he's terrible and utterly talentless, remember? - so he goes and asks Roark to design his next project in secret. It's a housing project, for the poor. Roark is like, "hey, listen, fine, I can do that for you. But let me make one thing clear. You can take full credit for this thing, and I won't tell a soul about it, but you cannot make even ONE alteration to my plans, you hear me?" (If you haven't caught on yet, Roark is an uncompromising man!) Why he cares so much about his vision being 100% realized when it's 0% attached to his name, I can't say.

You surely know where this is going - Keating's gonna change the plans, that cowardly snake! - but I promise, you do not know where this is ultimately going. We're in the homestretch now!

Roark goes on summer vacation and when he gets back, sure enough - YUP! - Keating's housing project isn't being built entirely to Roark's specifications. (Actually Keating didn't do it. It was TOOHEY! Yes, Toohey could tell this wasn't Keating's work at all, but Roark's. It's far too good to have come from Keating. Oh, Toohey is Keating's boss at this point. I didn't mention that yet. So Toohey, whose sole goal seems to be to make everyone and everything around him mediocre, sabotages his own employee's stolen plan because it's too good. Wait, if all Toohey wants is mediocrity, then why is Keating on thin ice at work? NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY FUCKING SENSE!) Yikes, sorry - tangent.

So anyway, what does Roark do? Ayn Rand's ideal man, the ultimate hero - what does he do when he realizes his vision has been tweaked?

He grabs a bunch of dynamite and BLOWS THE WHOLE HOUSING PROJECT SKY HIGH! Because fuck everyone else - if Roark can't have things his way, no one can have anything at all.

Ayn Rand's hero, y'all. He's a proto-Project Mayhem pioneer!

(Dominique helps Roark blow the project to hell because that's just who she is. Her role is to run distraction. When the deed is done, even though she is unharmed she climbs into her mangled car and slashes and stabs at her body with broken glass - gotta sell this! - and is nearly dead when the cops arrive. Wynard is furious with her - but also kind of in awe that she and Roark would do such a thing. His young idealist side is coming back, folks!)

Roark is arrested, and confesses to his crime. The nation fucking despises him, as they should. Timothy McVeigh and such, you know? Meanwhile, Toohey's "cult of selflessness" has taken over Wynard's newspaper, so even as Wynard publishes articles and pieces in Roark's defense, they're having the opposite effect on the masses. Toohey is undermining him! (This is what happens when socialists take over the media, folks! [Fart noise.])

God, this is interminable. I'll cut to the chase. Roark's on trial, and he represents himself and intentionally chooses the least sympathetic jury he can find (because he's needlessly a martyr, this fucking asshole). And in order to defend his actions, Roark unloads just the preachiest and most horrible "angry white man" speech I've ever heard. Liquid Reddit just pours out of him as he talks about the virtues of living for yourself, and fuck everyone else, and even though none of that has anything to do with the fact that he blew up a goddamn building, Rand is running out of steam here, so of course it's time for a neat little summary of her morals IN CASE THEY'D BEEN TOO SUBTLE FOR YOU ACROSS THE PRECEDING 650 PAGES. And it totally works (for Roark I mean) and the jury finds him not guilty (...what?) and he's free to go. Good God, what a speech! (Remember how one of Rand's defining evil characteristics of Toohey was how he was able to manipulate people with his words? Yeah, I'm not sure Rand does, at this point.)

The novel ends with Wynard commissioning a gigantic skyscraper - a monument to man's greatness - and hiring Roark to design it. The final image is from Dominique's point of view, as she reaches the very top of the tower and finds nothing but her husband - Roark now, try to keep up - staring out at the sky and the sea.

Jesus. Fuck everything about this. Fuck anyone who reads this shit and says "hey yeah you know what she's got some really good points." Fuck Howard Roark, the rapist-turned-domestic terrorist. Fuck Ayn Rand for considering him a hero. Fuck objectivists around the world for buying into this shit. Fuck Ron Paul for naming his kid Rand.

This right here is just a never-ending angry white man fantasy bullshit. The moral here is that rape is just a way to take what you want and live for yourself. The moral here is that blowing up buildings is justifiable when people disagree with you. You know that kid who, hanging out after school, wants to play a certain game a certain way, but everyone else wants to play it another way, so the kid crosses his arms and stomps on home? That is Ayn Rand's ideal man.

Ayn Rand despises compromise. It's literally the very thing her hero stands against. The whole is never greater than the sum of its parts to Rand; the parts are the only things that matter. No, that's not right - each part is the only thing (singular) that matters, from each part's point of view.

Ayn Rand is a shameless frontrunner. Her philosophical concern here is allowing the best and the brightest to be the best and the brightest without the rest of us dragging them down. To the mediocre masses, she says little more than "stay out of the way of the best and the brightest." But isn't that asking all of us not to live for ourselves and our own pursuits and goals and dreams?

And holy shit - she's not a good writer. Or at least The Fountainhead is not a well written book. So slow and clunky. So dense with nothing and so light on depth. Every character, flat as a pancake. Every conflict external in nature. Shifting third-person perspectives, but no introspection. Loaded with inconsistencies. Actions and characteristics are either admirable or detestable based solely on characters' individually held philosophies.

Ayn Rand thinks collectivism is parasitism. She thinks there are maybe a handful of worthwhile people in every community, and that the rest are just leeches. But even those leeches shouldn't have to live in housing projects that are anything less than superior to every other building in the city, apparently?

Ugh. The biggest shame of all of this is that there are ways to explore and express Ayn Rand's philosophies that aren't laughably bad. Ayn Rand apparently wasn't up for the task. Maybe she was by the time Atlas Shrugged came around? Oh God, why am I considering reading Atlas Shrugged one day?

And no, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with Gary Johnson, the modern United States Libertarian Party, or the 2016 general election. Still undecided, I guess. THANKS, Ayn Rand. And THANKS, OBAMA!