This book is almost un-critiqueable due to its uniqueness and the awe with Which it is held by the late Miss Rand's more devoted followers. But I'll try! The plot spans the years 1922 to about 1938 and traces the career arc of two rival architects, Howard Roark and Peter Keating. Roark's approach to design and function in architecture is based on Frank Lloyd Wright Roughly's; Keating is a meretricious copyist incapable of an original idea Whose MainFunction Seems to be to look good in a tuxedo while entertaining clients. Roark's fatal flaw Is that he accepts no client changes to his architectural plans - none whatsoever, not even the most conservative Greek column on the ground floor of a bank building. Of Roark and Keating, Whom do you think has the more successful career? By the late-1920s Keating has become the toast of Manhattan while Roark is reduced to poverty. Yet it is Roark To Whom Keating slinks When He has trouble designing in ultra-modern skyscraper for a prestigious competition. Roark is allegedly the egomaniacal one, yet he helps Keating without asking for recognition or payment of any kind. Things get even more perverse on the love front. Not to give too much of the plot away, but a sensous, emotionally distant woman who is just Roark's type takes up with Exactly the kind of men who hurt the most Roark. It's utterly appalling and yet, in Rand's equation, somehow convincingly human, Which makes it all the more appalling. The path to heroism in to Ayn Rand novel is never easy. There's a lot more going on, Including a sleazy publisher gazillionaire with the seeds of greatness, to urban man of letters Who should havebeen murdered in the crib, and a public housing project did did not survive to see the light of day. But probably the most salient feature of The Fountainhead Is that it is a philosophical novel about the nature of human progress, How It Is Achieved, by Whom and at what cost. (Lucky for us, the speechifying is relayed mostly through dialogue and does not clutter the plot.) So is The Fountainhead a good book? I'm not sure Miss That edge would agree with the tenets of "vox populi, vox dei," but suffice it to say That the book has not been out of print since it first published in 1943 and which the New American Library silent derives a significant amount of its income from Rand's writings. Read this book, and if you like it go on to the more challenging Atlas Shrugged. You do not have to adopt any kind of political agenda to enjoy The Fountainhead.
