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| The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand |
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
| Author(s) | Ayn Rand |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Philosophical novel |
| Publisher | Bobbs Merrill |
| Publication date | 15 April 1943 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 752 |
| ISBN | 9780451191151 |
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The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand.
It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and
financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been
sold worldwide.The Fountainhead's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an individualistic young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision. The book follows his battle to practice what the public sees as modern architecture, which he believes to be superior, despite an establishment centered on tradition-worship. How others in the novel relate to Roark demonstrates Rand's various archetypes of human character, all of which are variants between Roark, the author's ideal man of independent-mindedness and integrity, and what she described as the "second-handers." The complex relationships between Roark and the various kinds of individuals who assist or hinder his progress, or both, allow the novel to be at once a romantic drama and a philosophical work. Roark is Rand's embodiment of the human spirit, and his struggle represents the triumph of individualism over collectivism.
The manuscript was rejected by twelve publishers before a young editor, Archibald Ogden, at the Bobbs-Merrill Company risked his job to get it published. Despite mixed reviews from the contemporary media, the book gained a following by word of mouth and became a bestseller. The novel was made into a Hollywood film in 1949. Rand wrote the screenplay, and Gary Cooper played Roark.
Plot Summary :
In the spring of 1922, architecture student Howard Roark is expelled from the fictional Stanton Institute of Technology for refusing to adhere to the school's conventionalism in architecture. Despite an effort by some professors to defend Roark and a subsequent offer to continue at Stanton from the dean, Roark chooses to leave the school. He believes buildings should be sculpted only to fit their location, material, and purpose elegantly and efficiently, while his critics insist that adherence to and reverence for historical convention is essential. He goes to New York City to work for Henry Cameron, a disgraced architect whom Roark admires. Cameron, who once was architecture's modernist hero, has fallen from fame due to the fickle demands of society and his own caustic personality. His work serves as an inspiration for Roark. Peter Keating, a popular but vacuous fellow student, has graduated with high honors; he too moves to New York, where he takes a job at the prestigious architectural firm of Francon & Heyer and quickly ingratiates himself with senior partner Guy Francon. Roark and Cameron create inspired work, but their projects rarely receive recognition, whereas Keating's ability to flatter and please brings him quick success (despite his lack of originality) and earns him a partnership in the firm.
After Cameron retires from practice, Keating hires Roark to work at his firm, but he is quickly fired for insubordination by Guy Francon. Roark looks for work at other firms before finding one that will let him design as he pleases, but the firm will just take the best aspects of his design and merge his ideas with the ideas and plans of the other draftsmen in the office. After one of Roark's original plans impresses a client, he briefly opens his own office. However, he has trouble finding clients and eventually closes it down rather than compromise his ideals to win business from clients who want more conventional buildings. He takes a job at a Connecticut granite quarry owned by Francon. Meanwhile, Keating has developed an interest in Francon's beautiful, temperamental and idealistic daughter Dominique, who works as a columnist for The New York Banner, a yellow press-style newspaper. While Roark is working in the quarry, he encounters Dominique, who has retreated to her family's estate in the same town as the quarry. There is an immediate attraction between them. Rather than indulge in traditional flirtation, the two engage in a battle of wills that culminates in a rough sexual encounter that Dominique later describes as a rape. Shortly after their encounter, Roark is notified that a client is ready for him to start on a new building, and he returns to New York before Dominique can learn his name.
Ellsworth M. Toohey, author of a popular architecture column in the Banner, is an outspoken socialist who is covertly rising to power by shaping public opinion through his column and his circle of influential associates. Toohey sets out to destroy Roark through a smear campaign he spearheads. As the first step, Toohey convinces a weak-minded businessman named Hopton Stoddard to hire Roark as the designer for a temple dedicated to the human spirit. Given full freedom to design it as he sees fit, Roark incorporates into it a statue of Dominique, nude, which creates a public outcry. Toohey manipulates Stoddard into suing Roark for general incompetence and fraud. At the trial, prominent architects (including Keating) testify that Roark's style is unorthodox and illegitimate. Dominique defends Roark, but Stoddard wins the case and Roark loses his business again.
Dominique decides that since she cannot have the world she wants (in which men like Roark are recognized for their greatness), she will live completely and entirely in the world she has, which shuns Roark and praises Keating. She offers Keating her hand in marriage. Keating accepts, breaking his previously long-held engagement with Toohey's niece Catherine, and they are married that evening. Dominique turns her entire spirit over to Keating, hosting the dinners he wants, agreeing with him, and saying whatever he wants her to say. She fights Roark and persuades his potential clients to hire Keating instead. Despite this, Roark continues to attract a small but steady stream of clients who see the value in his work.
To win Keating a prestigious architecture commission offered by Gail Wynand, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Banner, Dominique agrees to sleep with Wynand. Wynand then buys Keating's silence and his divorce from Dominique, after which Wynand and Dominique are married. Wynand subsequently discovers that every building he likes was designed by Roark, so he enlists Roark to build a home for himself and Dominique. The home is built, and Roark and Wynand become close friends, although Wynand does not know about Roark's past relationship with Dominique.
Now washed up and out of the public eye, Keating realizes he is a failure. Rather than accept retirement, he pleads with Toohey for his influence to get the commission for the much-sought-after Cortlandt housing project. Keating knows that his most successful projects were aided by Roark, so he asks for Roark's help in designing Cortlandt. Roark agrees to design it in exchange for complete anonymity and Keating's promise that it will be built exactly as designed.
When Roark returns from a long yacht trip with Wynand, he finds that the Cortlandt design has been changed despite his agreement with Keating. Roark asks Dominique to distract the night watchman and dynamites the building to prevent the subversion of his vision. The entire country condemns Roark, but Wynand finally finds the courage to follow his convictions and orders his newspapers to defend him. The Banner's circulation drops and the workers go on strike, but Wynand keeps printing with Dominique's help. Wynand is eventually faced with the choice of closing the paper or reversing his stance and agreeing to the union demands. He gives in; the newspaper publishes a denunciation of Roark over Wynand's signature.
At the trial, Roark seems doomed, but he rouses the courtroom with a speech about the value of ego and the need to remain true to oneself. The jury finds him not guilty and Roark wins Dominique. Wynand, who has finally grasped the nature of the "power" he thought he held, shuts down the Banner and asks Roark to design one last building for him, a skyscraper that will testify to the supremacy of man: "Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours...and could have been mine." Eighteen months later, in the spring of 1940, the Wynand Building is well on its way to completion and Dominique, now Roark's wife, enters the site to meet him atop its steel framework.
Main Characters :
Howard Roark
Peter Keating
Dominique Francon
Gail Wynand
Ellsworth Toohey
Film version :
In 1949, Warner Brothers released a film based on the book, starring Gary Cooper as Howard Roark, Patricia Neal as Dominique Francon, Raymond Massey as Gail Wynand, and Kent Smith as Peter Keating. The film was directed by King Vidor. Although Rand wrote the screenplay, which was used with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end," complaining about its editing, acting and other elements.Source : http://www.wikipedia.com
