Excellently written. Pity about the characters and philosophy.
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There is no doubt this book is excellently written and Rand's use of language is first rate, but this not enough. The books flaws, of which there are numerous, simply cannot be overlooked or ignored.
The characters are on the wholly unbelievable. Their primary purpose is to serve as mouthpieces to illustrate the so-called philosophy of Objectivism.
This philosophy of Objectivism is one which is at best inconsequential (it is no coincidence that it carries little weight in philosophical circles) and at worst repellant.
If you are interested in philosophical fiction I would much sooner recommend Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.
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...it makes you think
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I really enjoyed this book both just as a book to read but also because it makes me think about the world. It is especially relevant today with the global "credit crunch".
Rand writes about the changing decadance time when people wanted to show their wealth in a way that you can almost smellthe cigarette smoke and see the architectural designs.
Roark is not really a likeable person but then again the other characters are not showed in the best light either. The struggle between the individual and the collective is beautifully portrayed...but which side do you empathise with most?
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Amazing Read
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I won't go into too much detail as there are plenty of reviews on here already. I have to say I love this book. It just makes you think. I don't think enough people think these days not for themselves anyway which is what this book is all about. The book is long and I agree with another one of the reviewers that it could have been shorter, but it was the style back then to write lengthy novels.
A must read. This should be in the 1001 books to read before you die but it's not!!
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Atlas yawned - dreary and juvenile
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I picked this book after I hearing it was based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. Big mistake. The robotic central character Howard Roark plods around the book in a permanent sulk, with an enormous chip on his shoulder. The whole cast of characters are cardboard cut outs and plot is painfully dull and lifeless.
Its clearly the work of somebody with a stunted personality. Rand was in such a hurry to sledge hammer us with her dreary politics, that she forgot to write a book in the process.
As a work of political thought this book is utter tripe. Its self indulgent nonsense that hasn't stood the test of time. It also the type of book a moody, immature teenager would seize upon as they struggled to assert their identity. Years later , when they grew up they might come across this book again, laugh and toss it in the bin. It a dated piece of navel gazing rubbish and should be left to gather dust.
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Bloated
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Some books are clearly works of literature, and others are clearly intended to appeal to lovers of philosophy or politics, and there are also clearly works which are intended to operate as a means to philosophical or political inquiry whilst being framed as a literary work (a venerable tradition). There are, however, relatively few novels which can immediately and effectively communicate the myriad of positions within a dialectic framework (you might immediately think of Orwell's '1984' or Tressel's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist), and 'The Fountainhead' is an attempt by Ayn Rand to produce a work that falls within this latter tradition.
As a work of literature, with the primary aim of communicating the human within the structures and framework provided by Rand, this novel establishes and provides the template to the pattern replicated in her other major novel 'Atlas Shrugged'. Each character is necessarily intended to be representative of a particular position within the dialiectic that Rand is seeking to explore, each is presented as an embodiment of a position, and this leads to largely superficial characters that are stylised and which lack the vagaries and complexities which are essential to maintaining interest in the narrative. The most obvious effect of this approach is the rendering of Rand's ideas in to large tracts of text which are apparently meant to be thought of as being representative of human speech - but the effect merely highlights the superficiality of Rand's commitment to the novel as an artistic literary form. This can be further seen by the predictable parallels which can be seen as existing between 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'The Fountainhead' - the apparently independent and wealthy female, perceived as emotionally detached yet sexually alluring, the iconoclastic male, prepared to suffer for the values which remain ignored or understood by his fellows. There is also the notable fact that the apparent freedoms enjoyed by the lead female in both 'The Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged' are predicated on a position of inherited wealth and security, founded on the unquestionable and inherently moral excercise of capitalism.
As other reviewers have noted, this artificiality, this attempt to provide amplified ideals by way of character, largely fails to engage a genuine interest in the reader. These are not characters that you would want to meet, even if you were sympathetic to 'objectivism'. More importantly and significantly, these are not characters that you are you ever likely to meet in the real world, such is their dysfuntionality.
Perhaps, of course, this is entirely the effect that Rand intended. These are hyper-characters, some are the representation and embodiment of Rand's ideals whilst others represent all that she loathed and despised. Perhaps Rand never intended to produce a naturalistic novel or text, but given the apparent effort to place the events described within a recognisably 'real' and 'familiar' world and time frame, this is not likely to have been the case.
A further criticism might be extended to the fact this is a large book which owes more to the verbose than the necessities of philosophical exploration. Points are repeated, with the effect that the reader is likely to feel harangued as the subject of an extended lecture. The basic substance of Rand's position could be articulated in less than five hundred words, here the reader has to negotiate through page after page of often repeated stock descriptive phrasing and language which does little to conceal the paucity of Rand's vocabulary or imagination. For a novel to succeed there has to be more than this!
And ultimately, in my view, this is why the book does not function as a work of literature. The vacuity of character, the inability to engage beyond the superficial, the purely functional language, these are critical failings in what might be described as the base framework of a book. With such a poor base structure the superstructure of 'Objectivism' (despite its relative ideological simplicity) can not be functionally supported, and for this reason the book fails as a work functioning as fiction, as a contribution to the art of literature.
This remains the most telling failure of the book. It is difficult to imagine a writer producing such a self-destructive and damaging literary introduction to their philosophical and political ideology.
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