The Fountainhead
Feb. 4th, 2005 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeI'm reading one of Mike's copies of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead right now. I will agree, it is better and more readable than Atlas Shrugged (which I wrote about last July) but that's not saying a great deal, as AS is a much better manifesto than a novel. There are still the same problems with the painfully obvious characterization (hero = handsome and of course has really HOTTT sex), although there is more ambiguity--greater variety in the villains and some are actually interesting. I must say, what I said before about her embarrassingly pre-feminist sex scenes applies here as well--Dominique* (the Gorgeous, Thin, Devastatingly Intelligent heroine) shows up in Howard Roark's apartment and says she wants to sleep with him. Only she doesn't say it that concisely of course--God forbid she say it like that when she could make a speech as well! She says "I want you to sleep with me. Now, tonight and at any time you may care to call me...not hysterical with desire--but coldly and consciously...I have no self-respect to bargain with me and divide me--I want you--I want you like an animal, or a cat on a fence, or a whore." There's more to her speech--much more, believe me--but that's the essence of it.
So Wednesday I was at my phone role-playing job in Brooklyn. I was talking to the other guy there about the book, and we were giggling about Dominique's woodenly sexy dialogue and adapting it to the situation. I could NOT stop laughing about this--I kept imagining Dominique as a prospective financial advisor for UBS, saying "I want to meet with you so we can talk about 529s and Roth IRAs. Not hysterically but coldly, like a whore." After lunch Mike (the other guy) told me there was an article in the New York Times about Ayn Rand which pretty much mirrored much of what we'd been discussing. The article said that Roark was based on Frank Lloyd Wright--I knew it! I could tell from the way she wrote about his design style. [I LOVE FLW's stuff--Fallingwater has got to be the coolest design EVER for a vacation house. One of my great aunts lived in a FLW-designed house and my mom said they were always finding architecture students in the bushes, peering through the windows.] Apparently Rand denied that Roark was based on FLW but I don't believe that--Roark even designs a filling station for God's sake!
The book is getting better though--I'm in the part when Studdard has just filed suit against Roark, who's been showing signs of--gasp--humanity. One weakness of Rand's characterization is how seriously her heroes and heroines take themselves, and how unapproachable they are. John Galt was the WORST. Who is John Galt? A bloody bore who makes 100+ page speeches, that's who! At least Hank Reardon was tormented, and Francisco D'Anconia had some bad-boy charisma. Roark and Dominique, wooden (and endless) declarations of lust notwithstanding, are getting a little more interesting. But I still liked Dagny Taggart better.
*One of my favorite writers, Florence King, wrote about reading The Fountainhead when she was 13-14, and wanted to recreate Dominique's story about tossing the statue down the trash shaft because she couldn't bear that people who couldn't appreciate it, might see it. The 13-year old Florence looked around her room and saw only an old yarn doll with no eyes, called The Shmoo. She intoned "I do this as an act of scorn" and tossed it out her window.
Addendum: When searching for the correct spelling of D'Anconia's name, I found this hilarious page. I love some of these comments, like "Why must the lead female character in each book, when she has sex with a man for the first time, be raped? Does it advance the philosophy or the story or our attachment to the characters that the female lead always submits to coercive sex with men she respects, and enjoys it? Why can't she ever just choose to f*ck a guy?"
And (cruel but on-target):
This is not ordinarily the sort of thing I would say, much less generally think, but Ayn Rand was one ugly-ass beeotch. Why is that important? It's not, to me. But Rand espoused an objective aesthetic. When determining if something was beautiful (a statue, a person, a building) she believed that there was no room for disagreement. That is, beauty is not subjective. A statue is "beautiful" in the same way it is "marble" or "six feet high." But her sense of objective beauty is a distinctly conventional, Madison Avenue sense of beauty. Dagney Taggart has it. The female lead in Fountainhead has it. Ayn Rand did not. What's stranger is that she associates her objective physical beauty with other types of merit. Pretty people are smart and right and just. Ugly people are narrow minded, dim and evil. By her own aesthetic expressions, I suppose we should believe Rand was a Commie dolt.
And:
Finally, is there some special reason why every noun must be modified by exactly three adjectives? And they're not even particularly helpful adjectives. Buildings are tall and dark and windowless. Heroes are ... well ... tall and dark and windowless. Trains are powerful, black and steaming. What's wrong with two adjectives? Or four? If Rand was going to use Mad Libs to write novels, the least she could have done is tossed the adjectives out blindly, as we did when we were kids, so I could have had the pleasure of reading, "Reardon grabbed Dagney by the POOP, and kissed her on her PURPLE, SLIMY, GROSS FRISBEE, before throwing her onto the GREEN BOOBIES."
So Wednesday I was at my phone role-playing job in Brooklyn. I was talking to the other guy there about the book, and we were giggling about Dominique's woodenly sexy dialogue and adapting it to the situation. I could NOT stop laughing about this--I kept imagining Dominique as a prospective financial advisor for UBS, saying "I want to meet with you so we can talk about 529s and Roth IRAs. Not hysterically but coldly, like a whore." After lunch Mike (the other guy) told me there was an article in the New York Times about Ayn Rand which pretty much mirrored much of what we'd been discussing. The article said that Roark was based on Frank Lloyd Wright--I knew it! I could tell from the way she wrote about his design style. [I LOVE FLW's stuff--Fallingwater has got to be the coolest design EVER for a vacation house. One of my great aunts lived in a FLW-designed house and my mom said they were always finding architecture students in the bushes, peering through the windows.] Apparently Rand denied that Roark was based on FLW but I don't believe that--Roark even designs a filling station for God's sake!
The book is getting better though--I'm in the part when Studdard has just filed suit against Roark, who's been showing signs of--gasp--humanity. One weakness of Rand's characterization is how seriously her heroes and heroines take themselves, and how unapproachable they are. John Galt was the WORST. Who is John Galt? A bloody bore who makes 100+ page speeches, that's who! At least Hank Reardon was tormented, and Francisco D'Anconia had some bad-boy charisma. Roark and Dominique, wooden (and endless) declarations of lust notwithstanding, are getting a little more interesting. But I still liked Dagny Taggart better.
*One of my favorite writers, Florence King, wrote about reading The Fountainhead when she was 13-14, and wanted to recreate Dominique's story about tossing the statue down the trash shaft because she couldn't bear that people who couldn't appreciate it, might see it. The 13-year old Florence looked around her room and saw only an old yarn doll with no eyes, called The Shmoo. She intoned "I do this as an act of scorn" and tossed it out her window.
Addendum: When searching for the correct spelling of D'Anconia's name, I found this hilarious page. I love some of these comments, like "Why must the lead female character in each book, when she has sex with a man for the first time, be raped? Does it advance the philosophy or the story or our attachment to the characters that the female lead always submits to coercive sex with men she respects, and enjoys it? Why can't she ever just choose to f*ck a guy?"
And (cruel but on-target):
This is not ordinarily the sort of thing I would say, much less generally think, but Ayn Rand was one ugly-ass beeotch. Why is that important? It's not, to me. But Rand espoused an objective aesthetic. When determining if something was beautiful (a statue, a person, a building) she believed that there was no room for disagreement. That is, beauty is not subjective. A statue is "beautiful" in the same way it is "marble" or "six feet high." But her sense of objective beauty is a distinctly conventional, Madison Avenue sense of beauty. Dagney Taggart has it. The female lead in Fountainhead has it. Ayn Rand did not. What's stranger is that she associates her objective physical beauty with other types of merit. Pretty people are smart and right and just. Ugly people are narrow minded, dim and evil. By her own aesthetic expressions, I suppose we should believe Rand was a Commie dolt.
And:
Finally, is there some special reason why every noun must be modified by exactly three adjectives? And they're not even particularly helpful adjectives. Buildings are tall and dark and windowless. Heroes are ... well ... tall and dark and windowless. Trains are powerful, black and steaming. What's wrong with two adjectives? Or four? If Rand was going to use Mad Libs to write novels, the least she could have done is tossed the adjectives out blindly, as we did when we were kids, so I could have had the pleasure of reading, "Reardon grabbed Dagney by the POOP, and kissed her on her PURPLE, SLIMY, GROSS FRISBEE, before throwing her onto the GREEN BOOBIES."
