A HPANWO book review.
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand can be purchased here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Fountainhead-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141188626
The book was also
made in to a film in 1949 staring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. It's available
free online (at the time of writing): http://vimeo.com/14002238
In the United States of
America , her naturalized homeland, Ayn Rand
is one of the 20th Century's most controversial characters. She's less well
known in the rest of the world, but nevertheless still influential. I've read
and reviewed her third and most famous novel before on HPANWO, Atlas Shrugged, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/atlas-shrugged-by-ayn-rand.html.
As I said at the end of that article, I bought a copy of The Fountainhead and promised to review it if I thought it was
relevant; I've now read it and I think it is.
The book was published in 1943 and to understand the story it is essential to take into account
the author's background. She was born in Russia
and was originally called Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum until she moved to the USA
in 1926 at the age of twenty and changed her name, as expatriate Russians often
did in those days. Her family was Jewish and very well-to-do; her father ran a
chemists shop. Like a lot of Russians at that time, rich and poor, she was very
much opposed to the decrepit and corrupt regime of Tsar Nicholas II. She was
therefore very pleased when Alexander Kerensky's revolution of February 1917
removed the Tsar from power. However in October the same year there followed
the Bolshevik Revolution which instituted communist rule, eventually resulting
in the Soviet Union . For "bourgeois" people
like Rand and her family this meant serious trouble. Her family's business and
assets were seized by the state and she found it difficult to enrol at
university. These experiences had a profound effect on her and this is very
manifest in her fictional literary work. The
Fountainhead is as much a polemic, philosophical and satirical novel as Atlas Shrugged; it promotes her
philosophical school of Objectivism
The Fountainhead
is somewhat shorter than Atlas, as
nearly all books are, and its setting is far more naturalistic. The surreal
otherworld of Atlas is replaced by
dates and places that are real and the story is backdropped by a real
historical context. In fact it's a very different novel in many ways; perhaps
indicating a change in the author's personality during the fifteen years
between the writing of the two. The central character is a man called Howard
Roark. The opening scene describes him physically in detail, as a healthy,
muscular red-haired superman of the classical heroic style that was popular at
the time. Many modern critics look back and accuse Rand
of creating a "Nazi Aryan" protagonist; this is unfair, but there is
a distinct resemblance between Roark and John Galt from Atlas. Roark is a student at a school of architecture and a
mysterious character of whose background we learn little, except that his
father was a steelworker and that Roark funded his education by working long
hours in the building trades. At the start of the book he is thrown out of his
college because he refuses to complete the assignments he is set. His course
insists that he designs buildings using traditional styles: neoclassical and
renaissance. However Roark wants to build structures in his own unique style so
badly that he refuses to do anything else. This action is typical of his
philosophy; he is so individualistic that the word could have been invented for
him! Following his expulsion from the college Roark moves to New York City to
work for Henry Cameron, a very unsuccessful architect who cannot further
Roark's career, but one whom Roark deeply admires for his aesthetic style. The
first part of the book concentrates on his relationship with a fellow student,
Peter Keating. Keating's professional philosophy is the mirror opposite of
Roark's; he is primarily motivated by a desire for conventional success which
means he does everything he can to fit in with the standard and the orthodox
wherever he sees it. He is conventionally handsome, dresses in a way that
impresses others and models every aspect of his life in as conformist a way as
he can to avoid rocking the boat. He eagerly tells his tutors and examiners
everything they want to hear in the hope that they'll simply give him good
grades. He finished university top of his class and is given a job working in
the elite and respected firm of Francon and Heyer. He immediately engages in a
dedicated campaign of... I can't think of a non-vulgar term for it... arse-kissing! He flatters and panders to
every whim of his immediate boss, Guy Francon, and at the same time manipulates
situations behind the scenes with Francon's clients to make himself look good.
At the same time he covertly undermines any of colleagues in the drafting room who
run the risk of overtaking him on the promotion ladder, to get them dismissed
or disfavoured by Francon. He is a ruthless deceiver, pretending to be their
friends and gaining their trust before dropping them in trouble; but it
furthers his career so he never questions the morality of his behaviour.
Francon becomes more and more fond of Keating, and indeed there's a scene in
which the two men are sitting semi-naked in a hotel room one morning after a
party, shaving and brushing their teeth. The author doesn't say it openly, and
of course you couldn't in 1943 when the book was published, but I think there's
an implication that they've just had gay sex. Keating's machinations come to a
head over Francon's sleeping partner, Lucius Hayer. Heyer is a very elderly and
somewhat senile old man who lives a solitary and benign life at home. However
Keating is at a crucial position in his career in which he can inherit Heyer's
share in the business, but only if Heyer agrees to formally retire within a
week. Keating visits Heyer at home and threatens him viciously, so viciously
that he drops dead of a stroke. Keating then picks up his share and becomes
Francon's partner. And for the first time ever Keating feels shame. It was
quite a relief that Rand included this element in
Keating's life because it shows she is not as much of a social Darwinist as
many people accuse her of being.
In the meantime Howard Roark has been grafting away as a
draughtsman in the tiny run-down offices of Henry Cameron, living on a
pittance. Eventually he starts his own business, one as inconspicuous and
fruitless as Cameron's, but he doesn't mind because at least he gets to build
the kind of structures he loves. They're modest compared to those of Keating,
but they're in Roark's own style and that's all that matters to him. For Roark
architecture is everything, a consuming passion that almost supersedes the need
for food and air. He has no social life and seems to have no interest at all in
women (although that changes dramatically later in the story). Rand
has clearly researched her subject matter well, as she did for Atlas, and she and her husband lived in
a house that was built by an architect inspired by The Fountainhead. The relationship between Roark and Keating in
this period of the book is fascinating and is one I can identify with very much
in my own life. It's best described as a kind of "unrequited
rivalry". Keating is constantly calling on Roark and telling him about his
own conventional success, hoping to make Roark feel envious and awed, but Roark
is indifferent and virtually uncomprehending of Keating's conventional
superiority over him and this frustrates Keating enormously. It just goes to
show that when it comes to petty rivalry it takes two to tango and one thing a
person trying to engage another in this kind of social competition can't stand
more than being defeated is being confronted with a person who doesn't want to
play; somebody who feels no need to prove himself by vanquishing another,
somebody who sets his own internal standards to achieve self-esteem. Rand
has come up with a term for people who model their lives according to their
perception by others: "second handers". The reason I identify with
that is because I've encountered so much hostility of this kind myself, for
example see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/dont-tell-em-were-porters.html.
Keating differs from Roark also in that he has a healthy interest in the
opposite sex and had girls queuing up at collage, however now he has fallen
head over heels in love with Dominique Francon, the daughter of his boss and
business partner. His pursuit of her is initially motivated for career
purposes, just another part of his typical bootlicking activities; however he
becomes infatuated for real after a while. Dominique is an elegant and
intelligent young woman who enters the story with a lot of mystery behind her.
She's a journalist and writes for the newspapers of Gail Wynand (male), another
enigmatic character. She has a column called Our House in which she criticizes architecture and interior design;
and she is most scathing about the buildings of Howard Roark. It appears that
she despises the man, but relationships between the characters in Rand 's
novels are complex and sometimes slightly bewildering; their behaviour towards
each other often fails to match, and even directly contradicts, their true
feelings. Enemies can act as allies, they'll profess warmth and support to those
they hate and claim to abhor those they love. Keating is captivated by
Dominique's beauty and her aloofness to him makes him desire her even more.
This is another area of the book I can identify with because I believe you can
tell a lot about a person's mental wellbeing by the kind of partner they crave,
including my own. Keating is courting a woman with whom he has no chance whatsoever
and who treats him with coldness and indifference. This is because deep down
Keating is profoundly unhappy. He hits the bottle and his health and appearance
deteriorate. The source of his malaise is a kind of message of the type Neil
Kramer talks about; it is nature's way of saying "you're on the wrong
track, mate", see: http://neilkramer.com/.
Basically it's not a spoiler to say that Peter Keating is unsatisfied with life
as a second-hander and he longs to channel his inner Howard Roark and escape. He
is also close friends with a very sincere and sweet girl he's known since
college called Katie and the reader is left in no doubt that under the right
circumstances he would be in love with her, but he can't bring himself to fall
for her. He hates Roark for not feeling envious of him because, in his heart,
Keating is envious of Roark. He knows that he cannot beat Roark because as the
great Ursula le Guin said in The
Dispossessed, "...because he refused to take part in games of domination
he was indomitable." Eventually Roark's business collapses, not because he
can't find any clients but because many clients reject him when he refuses to
build their buildings in the conventional classical and renaissance style, the
style they insist on but Roark can't stand. Roark's refusal to compromise his
artistic integrity leads to his downfall. He ends up working as a labourer in a
quarry. Peter Keating never has to worry about ending up in a quarry because he
has no artistic integrity to compromise. But he also knows he can never gloat
at Roark's disgrace because Roark feels no shame over it. For Roark, caving in
to conformity and becoming like Peter Keating would be the thing that would really destroy his sense of self.
It might seem like it's all over for Howard Roark, but in
fact the story is just about to take a new and very energetic turn. When he is
working at the quarry he meets Dominique Francon, who is taking a holiday in
her country seat nearby. It has recently before been revealed that Dominique is
frigid and has no interest in men yet as soon as she meets Roark she is
intensely attracted to him. Then, in one of the most notorious scenes in modern
literature, she falls hopelessly in love with Roark after he breaks into her
house and brutally rapes her. It's a very shocking few paragraphs, even though
it is somewhat toned down in graphic detail for the 1940's reader. It was
parodied in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's brilliant novel The Illuminatus! Trilogy as a part of the
imaginary book Telemachus Sneezed by
Atlanta Hope, see the link above to my review of Atlas Shrugged. What makes it all the more disturbing is that Rand
describes the rape in very romantic terms, almost as simply a new more intense
form of normal sex. It completely cures Dominique of her frigidity and her love
for Roark is explicitly tinged with lust. Such a storyline would today probably
be unacceptable, especially from a female novelist; it's politically incorrect
beyond belief. It's not the only reason I question Rand 's
own psychological integrity, but it's the most blatant one.
To begin with there is no major antagonist in the story,
although he is slowly revealed to us later; he is one of the most interesting
villains I've ever come across and his name is Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. He is
first mentioned on page 41 as a colleague of Dominique's at the newspaper, and
he is also an architectural pundit, but his column One Small Voice, branches off into other areas too. Initially his
entry is almost inconsequential, as if he is simply a minor character, but as
time goes on the author skilfully builds up his profile until his true role is
revealed. He is the uncle of Katie, Peter Keating's friend in New
York , and after a while Keating meets him and becomes
his close friend. He is described as being physically puny and almost malformed
with a thin neck and limbs (Rand 's attitude to
physically and mentally handicapped people worries me and I'll come back to
that later). When he sits down in one scene he crossed his legs and the author
describes the bottom of his skinny leg: "He sat down comfortably resting
an ankle on his knee, one thin leg stretched horizontally across the other, the
full length of a tight gun-metal sock exposed under the trouser cuff, and a patch
of skin showing above the sock, bluish white with a few black hairs."
Ellsworth Toohey is extraordinarily effete, slimy and creepy. In my imagination
as I read the book I pictured him as looking and sounding like a cross between
Mr Bean and George Monbiot, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEjMK9DB4no
and: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1SWtbO9VUg.
He folds his napkin very carefully in one scene, using his fingernails to press
the creases. He also drinks Cointreau, which for a male character in those days
is a very obvious hint that he is homosexual. As I said above with Francon and
Keating in the hotel room, this is not a storyline that could be discussed
openly in American literature in 1943, but along with the Cointreau Toohey is
never shown to have any interest in sex. In just one part he states that sex is
"unimportant" and that he is not interested in "intellectual
women". Despite his unimpressive figure Toohey has a strange kind of
hypnotic power about him that has made him into a kind of guru. Peter Keating's
friendship with him eventually becomes adoring hero-worship. He has a huge army
of fans who read his every word and attend all his conferences where he gives
speeches. There's a scene in which Katie and Peter Keating attend a public
meeting where Toohey gives a live speech. The venue is packed out and they
can't get inside and so listen to him on loudspeakers set up in the crowded
foyer. As Katie listens to her uncle's words she undergoes a transformation.
She becomes transfixed in mesmerized adulation. I've seen old films of ordinary
people in the audience listening to speeches by Lenin or Stalin and the
expressions on their faces remind me of Rand 's
description of Katie in that scene; Rand of course went
through the Russian Revolution personally, as I said at the start. Shortly
after she went to that conference Katie experiences a terrifying nightmare
about her Uncle Ellsworth, seeing him as a demonic shadow being; very
interesting indeed. Toohey has a strange style of speech; he talks in riddles
and makes contradictory statements. This is interesting considering the
document Brian Gerrish has often referred to, one written in Stalin's Russia
and distributed to Western communist parties, eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8mhuOJHw_4.
It describes the methods a covert Marxist infiltration organization can
undermine a society in order to take it over by creating confusion and
disorientation. I consider Marxism a tool that is used by our enemies, not the
actual enemy itself, because this tactic can also be found in Silent Weapons for a Quiet War also,
see: http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/silentweaponsforquietwars.htm.
The nature of Ellsworth Toohey, all the way down the years from 1943, echoes in
these documents very well and I'll come back to this point again because it
makes me wonder how much Ayn Rand actually knows. For Rand ,
Ellsworth Toohey is the most embodied cipher of evil she has ever created,
ingenious in his depth and complexity. He is the antithesis of Objectivism; an
eloquent and captivating preacher of collectivism, socialism and altruism.
There is a chapter of the book that consists of a biography of Toohey that
makes me wonder about what message Ayn Rand is trying to relate. It begins with
Toohey at the age of seven punishing a bully at his school by soaking him with
a hosepipe as he walks past his garden. It's odd that the first act he did in
his life described in the book should be one I consider perfectly fair payback.
Does Rand object when smaller and non-aggressive
children strike back at bullies? Little Ellsworth also has a sister called
Helen, who goes on to become Katie's mother. Helen was fit and healthy; she is
also described as very pretty. Then the author says something very bizarre indeed:
Their mother adores and lavishly spoils Ellsworth because he is born sickly and
weak whereas she dislikes her daughter for her beauty and health. "The
girl was so obviously more deserving of love that it seemed just to deny it
her." Ayn Rand never had any children of her own, but despite this it
astonishes me that she should be so divorced from the emotions of motherhood. This
is another very revealing illustration of the peculiar mental landscape of this
most unusual woman. Young Ellsworth becomes a socialist at university and
quickly applies his sharp mind to the art of persuasion. He founds various
quasi-communist organizations like the Council of American Builders in which
architects and other people within the building trades get together and drink tea
in an atmosphere of extreme equality. There's also the Council of American
Writers and Council of American Artists; and the members of all these groups
are caricatures of everything Rand finds distasteful in
humanity... so there are an awful lot of them and they are all described in
lurid detail. The premier individual in this motley crew of leftists, mystics,
eccentrics and blaggers is an author called Lois Cook who employs Peter Keating
to design a house for her without electricity, and she wrote a nonsensical
novel called The Gallant Gallstone.
Amazingly she seems to represent postmodernism in an age before I thought it
existed. Either postmodernism was present in early 1940's America
or, again, I have to ask how much information Rand
really was initiated into. Ellsworth Toohey immediately focuses his treacly and
underhand animosity on Roark and joins forces with Dominique to destroy him...
you heard me right! As soon as Dominique falls in love with Roark, who has
reopened his business in New York ,
she tries to bring him down. With the help of Ellsworth Toohey she does her
very best to ruin all his deals to arrange all his business to be sent to Peter
Keating, a man she despises. Her action is one of the most perplexing
storylines in the book; as I said before, the way characters interact doesn't always
follow logical patterns and can be contradictory and even arbitrary. She'll
spend the day blackmouthing him to everybody she can and then spend the night
in his bed shagging him! As far as I can gather her motive is to test her new
lover and see how strong his integrity really is, to see how much abuse he can
take before he caves in. But maybe that's wrong and I've misunderstood; maybe
Ayn Rand is an even more mixed up person than I originally thought.
The story goes from the off-beat to the grotesque in the
next part of the book. Ellsworth Toohey tries to bring down Roark by persuading
one of Roark's clients to sue him over a misunderstanding in the construction
plans that Toohey himself engineered. Then Dominique does something
unbelievable. She turns up at Peter Keating's home and, without any explanation
at all, asks him, a man she loathes, to marry her. Keating, the fool, agrees.
It turns out that this escapade by Dominique is an act of self-flagellation in
the face of a world in which Howard Roark is unworthy to live because he's too
good for it... or at least that's the closest I could gather; she says: "I
will live in the world as it is, in the manner of life it demands. Not halfway,
but completely. Not pleading and running from it, but walking out to meet it,
beating it to the pain and the ugliness, being the first to choose the worst it
can do to me. Not as the wife of some half-decent human being, but as the wife
of Peter Keating." However she soon decides she's had enough Objectivist false-martyrdom
when she meets Gail Wynand, the owner of her and Toohey's newspaper. Wynand up
till that point has only been referred to off-scene, but now the story switches
abruptly to focus on him. He is by far the most contradictory and schizophrenic
character in the book, even more so than Dominique. He grew up in a slum
district as a gangster and went on to be a journalist and worked his way up to
run the nation's biggest media corporation, Wynand Enterprises; a classic
rags-to-riches story. He's a kind of fictional Rupert Murdoch. He is enormously
rich and powerful and brings down his rivals ruthlessly, often by semi-legal
means. However he is mind-bendingly capricious; one minute he'll tolerate the
most appalling challenger with barely a murmur; the next he'll drive a man to
poverty, alcoholism and suicide for just one crossed word. It turns out in the
end that he is surprisingly similar to Roark and Dominique; in fact he ends up
marrying Dominique, it's just that he's decided to make his entire life a
satire. In this way he's similar to Francisco d'Anconia from Atlas Shrugged. He also likes to buy
people out. He finds somebody with very high principles and integrity and he
attempts to corrupt them by paying them. And he always succeeds; he can pay a
vicar to become an atheist, an atheist to become religious, a trade unionist to
write about the glories of capitalism, and a businessman to be a communist. It
turns out that he is doing this to prove to himself that unimpeachable honour
simply doesn't exist; it's an illusion, and that even the best men in the world
have their price. This seems unrealistic and cynical on the author's part, but
that's not really a surprise. Wynand says: "The man I couldn't break would
destroy me. But I've spent years finding out how safe I am. They say I have no
sense of honour... (but) it doesn't exist... I've had a lot of fun proving
it." This makes me see Gail Wynand as a bit of a "Charles", see:
http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/charles-doing-washing-up.html.
He needs desperately to believe that humanity is amoral and selfish by nature;
it's the foundation of his philosophy, his worldview, even his self-esteem. There's
definitely a facet of that in Ayn Rand, but is it for the same reasons? Basking
in his new friendship with Gail Wynand, Roark makes a serious mistake of doing
a secret deal with Peter Keating to build a government housing estate called
the Cortlandt Homes Project. All Roark wants is for the construction to be
built by him alone, his way. However he goes away on holiday with Wynand and
when he gets back he finds the half-finished buildings ruined by additional
designs and extensions he never authorized. He suspects that Keating has
betrayed him, but it turns out that Toohey managed to crowbar the Council of
American Builders into the project. Roark is so furious that he sneaks onto the
building site one night with some dynamite and demolishes the constructions,
after Dominique has distracted the security guard. Dominique is caught in the
explosion and badly injured. When Roark is arrested Wynand mobilizes his
newspapers to defend him, but then Toohey organizes a strike; it turns out that
he's planted people he influences in all the crucial administrative positions.
After a long struggle over many months, with Wynand keeping the paper running
almost single-handed, Wynand caves in and reverses the paper's policy. Roark
then stands trial. The outcome? Well, this review has been enough of a spoiler
synopsis already; hope you still think it's worth buying the book. But suffice
to say, during the trial, Roark defends himself and makes a long, impassioned
speech that resembles John Galt's radio address in Atlas.
I have mixed feelings about The Fountainhead. Let me begin by saying that it is a far better
book than Atlas Shrugged. It has an
element that I can identify with; the way Howard Roark was treated by others is
similar to how I was treated when I expressed my professional philosophy as a
Hospital Porter. This I think was for similar reasons to the ones of Roark's
antagonists, as I describe in the link above to my "Don't Tell 'em We're Porters!" article. Despite our
differences I think Rand would approve of my stand and
support me against the retribution of "John" and "Derek"
and other people who keep "popping the question" etc. But I still
feel very ambivalent to Rand's Objectivism, on which the novel is based. It has
elements that I really like, but others that disturb me deeply. Rand 's
views on disabled people worry me the most. To go into more detail about the
part of the story where Roark gets sued: What happens is that a rather dotty
old man called Hopton Stoddard asks him to build a "temple", but
unknown to Roark, Stoddard is one of Ellsworth Toohey's flock and this is how
Toohey manipulates the situation. Roark builds the temple in his own way and he
calls it a "Temple to the
Human Spirit". When Stoddard sees it he hates it and when he sues Roark,
Stoddard uses the damages to turn the place into a home for mentally
handicapped children; and the author describes the children in a way that is
quite ugly. It seriously echoes elitist views on "useless eaters".
According to Objectivist ethics it is wrong for public money to be spent on the
disabled; it's a "self-sacrifice", "living for another
man". As I detail in my review of Atlas,
Rand even objects to easy-access buses! Are these
opinions a licence for eugenics? Rand herself has made
it very clear that she does not believe in this. She has no objection to
"imbeciles", as she calls them, being cared for by voluntary
charities. However some of her modern followers have put very different words
into her mouth. In my review of Atlas
I explain how I first heard about Ayn Rand from a website that spoke openly of
how they plan to terminate all pregnancies of defective babies by force, or
even euthanize such newborns. I read the book with trepidation because before I
read it I heard a rumour that Roark didn't demolish Cortlandt at all, but the
Stoddard Temple, and I had an awful feeling that he was going to do it with the
handicapped children inside! If this had been the case I'd be writing a very
different review. I'm also bothered by Rand 's support
for Zionism; she advocates Israel
because she believes that it's "technologically civilized" as opposed
to Palestine , which is a nation of
"savages", see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uHSv1asFvU;
she seems oblivious to the fact that this "civilized" nation has one
of the most murderous human rights record on Earth. Rand
is generally a very judgemental individual indeed who responds to those who
differ from her with cold hostility. As I read the book I felt I was under her
scrutiny, even though she died in 1982 and her book was written seventy years
ago. She seems to have some very naive and narrow-minded ideas about the
feelings she does not share. She says of one of the characters, Alvah Scarret,
the editor of one of Wynand's papers, that "he never hated anybody or
anything; therefore he was incapable of love." She expands on this concept
a little later in the book when Wynand thinks that the pig is a good symbol of
humanity: "The creature that accepts everything... loves everybody and
feels at home everywhere... a true hater of mankind". Rand
also pours scorn on those who feel overawed at the natural world, the Grand
Canyon , Niagara Falls ,
a mountain, or a beautiful sunset. She believes this is "making man
small". Her heroic characters feel nothing for the natural world, in fact
both Roark and Wynand are depicted looking at a beautiful scene of a rocky
landscape and thinking only of drills, tunnel boring machines and dynamite!
They wish to blast every work of natural art to pieces in the world and put up
a skyscraper in its place. Wynand says he only gets excited when he sees
skyscrapers, words echoed verbatim by Rand herself in an
interview. Perhaps at the time the people were not aware of the finite world we
live on and how badly we have damaged it, but I still don't think this excuses
her. Wynand and Dominique also rile against people who take
"pilgrimages" to a "dank pesthole in the jungle to pay homage to
some crumbling temple... a leering stone monster created by some leprous
savage". I don't think Rand would be very good
company for Graham Hancock on an Ayahuasca workshop! She also views anybody who
cares for a stranger at any kind of institution for the homeless, disabled,
fallen women etc etc etc, as a self-indulgent do-gooder, a social bloodsucker
who does it because they need that person's destitution to fulfil some kind of
perverted self-esteem; "beggars need compassion, but the compassionate
need beggars even more". She totally fails to comprehend the very
down-to-Earth, sensible and varied kinds of people who get drawn into the
caring professions; this includes myself. Yet she puts herself in their shoes
and claims them for her own little rogues gallery with quite stunning arrogance.
I can't condemn her for what she says for the simple reason that she is so
ignorant of the situations and emotions she doesn't share. She places her
cocoon on a very public pedestal, sits in it and lets her mouth run wild about
things and people she knows nothing about and totally misjudges. She's almost
childlike. In fact in a way she's very similar to Richard Dawkins, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/god-delusion-by-richard-dawkins.html.
As I said in my review of Atlas, Rand 's
emotions are primitive and polarized. They consist mostly of hate and
contempt; in fact the book is almost an exploration of those feelings. Eskimoes
have a large number of words for "snow"; Rand
should invent a large number of words for "hate", because one is not
enough for her mind. There's the blind rage Keating feels for Roark for not
playing his game, the cold contempt Dominique feels for Keating when he agrees
to marry her, the universal and sweeping misanthropy of Ellsworth Toohey for
the people whom he fools every time he writes his column, the superior, haughty
glory of humiliation Wynand feels for those he bullies at his newspaper; the
list goes on. What a mind Ayn Rand must have!
Almost paradoxically mixed in with all this, The Fountainhead contains some
breathtaking insights into politics and sociology that have me constantly
flicking back to the title page verso to verify when the book was written.
Firstly she seems to have identified what is known today as postmodernism; Lois
Cook, Lancelot Clokey, Jules Fougler (what great names she chooses!) are all
people who create works of art which are meaningless and gain a status from
their asinine nature. I've already mentioned Lois Cook's book The Gallant Gallstone, but there is also
a play without any plot called No Skin
off my Ass and other creations that the characters adore and think are
highly sophisticated and profound because they can't understand them. Rand 's
depictions of these characters are very amusing and witty, if somewhat unfair,
caricatures. Not all post-modern art is pointless and irrelevant; many
post-modern artists do know what they're doing, but try explaining that to Ayn
Rand. Another way in which the novel is way ahead of its time is that it seems
to anticipate or predict Cultural Marxism. Are these ideas really that old?
When Keating bumps into Katie again after many years it is clear that she has
changed completely. She has become a figure of Objectivist contempt, working as
a nurse at a home for the mentally disabled; and also it is clear that she has
become a feminist. This aspect of the book is mostly personified through the
figure of Ellsworth Toohey. At one point Dominique begs Wynand to sack Toohey
and "bring him down" like he has so many others. Wynand laughs and
considers Toohey to worthless a victim to expend the effort, "like using a
tank to crush a bug!" he says. Dominique then eloquently warns Wynand not
to underestimate Toohey. She uses the analogy of a tank, an overt battlefield
weapon that attacks in the open and takes its blows openly. Toohey is far more
dangerous, a "corrosive gas" that infects and kills its enemy without
them even knowing its happening. This is very similar to the kinds of things Dr
John Coleman and, more recently, Brian Gerrish talk about. In fact here we see
Brian talking about exactly the kind of sculptures that might come out of the
Council of American Artists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV-sQbir63A.
On page 666, very appropriately, there is an incredible monologue by Ellsworth
Toohey. He has come to visit a destitute Peter Keating at his home and when
Keating finally summons up the courage to confront him, Toohey comes clean in a
speech that is as perceptive and significant as that of O'Brien in George
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I
don't think it's entirely accurate because it's laced with Rand 's
Objectivism, and I have edited it as a result for this review, but it's
extraordinary nonetheless:
"What do you want Ellsworth?"
"I want to rule. I shall rule."
"Whom?"
"You. The world.
It’s only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how to rule one
single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It’s the soul, Peter, the
soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That’s why the Caesars, the Attila's,
the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that
which can’t be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on
it and the man is yours. You won’t need a whip; he’ll bring it to you and ask
to be whipped. Use him against himself. Make man feel small. Make him feel
guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. Kill integrity by internal
corruption. Direct it towards a goal destructive of all integrity. To preserve
one’s integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to be
corrupt already? His soul gives up its self respect. You’ve got him. He’ll
obey. He’ll be glad to obey, because he can’t trust himself, he feels
uncertain, he feels unclean. Kill man’s sense of values. We don’t want any
great men. Don’t deny conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. Laugh at
Roark and hold Peter Keating as a great architect: You’ve destroyed architecture.
Build up Lois Cook and you’ve destroyed literature. Hail Fougler and you’ve
destroyed the theatre. Don’t set out to raze all shrines; you’ll frighten men.
Enshrine mediocrity and the shrines are razed by themselves. Kill by laughter.
Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of
destruction. Turn it into a sneer. Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in
man. One doesn’t revere with a giggle. He’ll obey and he’ll set no limits to
obedience; anything goes, nothing is too serious. Don't allow men to be happy.
Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no
use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living. Take away
from them what they want. Make them think that the mere thought of a personal
desire is evil. Unhappy men will come to you. They’ll need you. They’ll come
for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man’s
soul, and the space is yours to fill. Of course, you must dress them up. You
must tell people they’ll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up
everything that makes them happy. You don't have to be too clear about it. Use
big vague words. ‘Universal Harmony’, ‘Eternal Spirit’, ‘Divine Purpose’,
‘Nirvana’, ‘Paradise’, ‘Racial Supremacy’, ‘the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat.’ Internal corruption, Peter. That’s the oldest one of all. Suspend
reason and you play it deuces wild. Anything goes in any manner you wish
whenever you need it. You’ve got him. Can you rule a thinking man? We don’t
want any thinking men... Peter, you’ve heard all this. You’ve seen me
practising it for ten years. You see it being practised all over the world. Why
are you disgusted ? You have no right to sit there and stare at me with the
virtuous superiority of being shocked. You’re in on it. You’ve taken your share
and you’ve got to go along. See if I ever lied to
you. See if you haven’t listened to all this for years, but didn’t want to
hear, and the fault is yours, not mine. The
world I want: A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of
each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of the next
neighbour who’ll have no thought, and so on, Peter, around the globe. All must
agree with all. All must serve all. An average drawn upon zeroes, since no
individuality will be permitted. A world with its motor cut off and a single heart,
pumped by hand. My hand; and the hands of a few, a very few other men like me.
Those who know what makes you tick, you great and wonderful average. You who
have not risen in fury when we called you the average; the little, the common.
You who’ve liked and accepted these names. We’ll enjoy unlimited submission
from men who’ve learned nothing except to submit. We’ll call it ‘to serve’.
You’ll fall over one another in a scramble to see who can submit better and
more. There will be no other distinction to seek. No other form of personal
achievement. Can you see Howard Roark in this picture? No? Then don’t waste
time. Everything that can’t be ruled must go. And if freaks persist in being
born occasionally, they will not survive beyond their twelfth year. When their
brain begins to function, it will feel the pressure and it will explode. The
pressure gauged to a vacuum. Do you know the fate of deep-sea creatures brought
out to sunlight? So much for future Roarks. The rest of you will smile and
obey. Man’s first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of
thought. But we’ll have neither God nor thought. Only voting by smiles.
Automatic levers, all saying yes... Now if you were a little more intelligent,
you’d ask: What of us, the rulers ? What of me, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey ? And
I’d say, Yes, you’re right. I’ll achieve no more than you will. I’ll have no
purpose save to keep you contended. To lie, to flatter you, to praise you, to
inflate your vanity. To make speeches about the people and the common good.
Peter, my poor old friend, I’m the most selfless man you’ve ever known. I have
less independence than you, whom I just forced to sell your soul. You’ve used
people at least for the sake of what you could get from them for yourself. I
want nothing for myself. I use people for the sake of what I can do to them.
It’s my only function and satisfaction. I have no private purpose. I want
power. I want my world of the future. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let
all suffer and none enjoy. Let progress stop. Let all stagnate. There’s
equality in stagnation. All subjugated to the will of all. Universal slavery,
without even the dignity of a master. Slavery to slavery. A great circle, and a
total equality. The world of the future."
"Ellsworth... you’re..."
"Insane? Afraid to say it? There you sit and the
world’s written all over you, your last hope. Insane? Look around you. Pick up
any newspaper and read the headlines. Isn’t it coming? Isn’t it here? Every
single thing I told you? Divide and conquer... first. But then, unite and rule.
We’ve discovered that one last. Remember the Roman Emperor who said he wished
humanity had a single neck so he could cut it? People have laughed at him for
centuries. But we’ll have the last laugh. We’ve accomplished what he couldn’t
accomplish. We’ve taught men to unite. This makes one neck ready for one leash.
Look at Europe , you fool. Can’t you see past the guff and
recognise the essence? Am I raving or is this the harsh reality of two
continents already? If you’re sick of one version, we push you in the other.
We’ve fixed the coin. Give up your soul to a council, or give it up to a
leader. But give it up, give it up, give it up. Offer poison as food and poison
as antidote. Go fancy on the trimmings, but hang on to the main objective. Give
the fools a chance, let them have their fun, but don’t forget the only purpose
you have to accomplish. Kill the individual. Kill man’s soul. The rest will
follow automatically."
All in all, The Fountainhead is a mixed bag and I like some parts and hate
others. Read it yourself and see what you think. Let me know when you have.
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