First of all let me say, just because I've read The Fountainhead doesn't mean I agree with Ayn Rand's views. But it's an important work of fiction because it has influenced so many people around the world and still continues to do so. Having said that, the novel does showcase her political and social views which focus on the power of the individual and their abilities to achieve their goals, which is the only way to improve society, at least in Ayn Rand's mind. On the other hand, she despises socialistic views and the thought of society acting as a group or collective. Unions for example are evil. Does any of this sound familiar? It should, you can see it everyday in our government representatives all over the world.

The Fountainhead does have interesting characters and a decent plot that makes it readable, and that's what I focus on. But the characters and the world she creates are unreal, it's a fantasy world that is hardly recognizable to us as reality. But still, readers are going to hate and to love this novel based on whether their views agree or disagree with Rand's. All you have to do is look at the reviews here on Goodreads to see that.

Even though my political views stand directly opposite of Rand's, I'm glad I've read her work to try and understand how and why such a large group of people could idolize her and her views. I don't get it, but I do believe Pogo when he said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us".

За тази книга не може да се говори. Трябва да се прочете, изживее, осмисли, изстрада ... това не става за минути, часове, дни. Става с години. Години на мисловна дейност, затвърдени убеждения, отстоени позиции.
Промени ме. Или ме допълни. Нямам отговор, ще трябва още да поживея, да помисля и да отстоявам. Но ще цитирам неизвестен автор, който е казал :

“Егоизмът е добродетел – за тези, които го разбират”.

Прочетете книгата и помислете - за себе си, за живота си, за света около нас и за нас вътре в него, като отделни личности !

I recall that most people read Ayn Rand in high school, which is the ideal time to embrace protagonists who refuse to compromise their originality and are assaulted on all sides for their greatness. Having skipped several grades in public school I missed some of these formative books so I'm reading them as an adult. More than 50 years have passed in architecture, capitalism, and the glorification of the mediocre, since Rand wrote The Fountainhead, which is why its philosophies are more suited for the high school mind than the adult reader. Her characters aren't human, they are symbols to illustrate her early philosophy. Howard Roarke, her hero and übermensch, is a man who cannot exist in real life. He is perfect, and his enemies try and destroy him because he is perfect. What we know of 50 years of capitalism and architecture is that style means nothing, whether modern, classic, brutalist, original, or stolen. Buildings are erected by faceless corporations, or by eccentric wealthy. There is enough room and real estate for both the Keatings and the Roarkes, and the Ellsworth Twoheys of the world don't mean a thing. Sad, really, because Twohey is a villain truly worth hating - the blowhard intellectual ass who seeks to destroy originality by elevating the mediocre and placing the good of others above the good of self so he may rule the plebes. Rand's notion that altruism is basically evil communism (embodied in Twohey) is amusing, because her model of success relies on everyone being rich (or having rich benefactors). My goodness - if only everyone were rich we'd all be happy! It's no wonder than Alan Greenspan was all crushed out on the woman. I'll admit at times I wished that Twohey would meet a horrible end - to have his hands cut off, his tongue cut out, so he would be forced to witness Roarke's triumphs and be powerless to do anything but watch without comment. But Rand's novel isn't plotted that way - nothing really happens other than ideas battling one another. There are no consequences to anyone's actions. And it is for that reason that The Fountainhead reads more like a television show; characters that do not change, who occupy the same sets, encircling one another and talking about themselves. That's what makes it a mediocre novel - Rand's place in history is now better suited to television - and I'm talking Oxygen, Lifetime, or Hallmark channel.

- Ти какво искаш? Съвършенство, или какво?
- Или нищо. Както виждаш, избирам нищото.
- Това е нелепо.
- Избирам единственото, което човек наистина може да си позволи. Свобода, Алва, свобода.
- Това ли е за теб свободата?
- Да не искам нищо. Да не очаквам нищо. Да не завися от нищо.

Из „Изворът“ – Айн Ранд
Превод: Божидар Маринов

It is so difficult to review Ayn Rand books, and in general, it is hard to review books that you excessively admire. I don't possess enough words to explain how much I love this book and what feelings it makes me have. The Fountainhead is a masterpiece. Ayn Rand is again presenting her ideology and philosophy coated in a novel. While the ideology is the same as in Atlas Shrugged (well of course, how many ideologies can a person have?), it is a different and amplifying book because the approach is different.

Will need to get back and elaborate more, but until then let's put this here:

"I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one."

"Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me'. Then he wonders why he's unhappy."

"Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you- except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them; nothing, not even a sound they can recognize."

★★★★★★★★★☆[9/10]

My mind is blank. The Fountainhead is a saga. It had been a part of my day for six months, until today. All these days, I had so badly wanted it to be over, but today, now that it's over, I don't know why I should feel a great sense of loss. It is such a ginormous vacuum which is going to take a while to be filled with an equally good, if not better, mind-numbing piece of literature.

I had always wondered, while writing reviews, who the review should be addressed to- one who has already read the book or the one who hasn't. Since my brain is not conscientious enough to cater to a particular demographic, I always throw in a lot of spoilers. That's why I have come up with an ingenious(lol) plan to divide my review into two sections here after, where I shall jot down my thoughts and views appropriately and accordingly.

⏩n  For Neophytes:n

Brace yourselves for the Ayn Rand downpour. You will be thoroughly drenched. You will be carried away gently like a paper boat. You will be shoved against a rock, when you are least expecting it. All through the book you will have this wonderful feeling of getting a handle on the not-so-obvious. You will be proud of yourself for deciphering the literature that was intended to talk to you in codes. For a fleeting moment, you will be impressed that you can be such a dilettante who can actually probe into the mind of an eminent writer like Rand. And then everything that made sense starts to fade into obscurity. You will be mired in self-doubt and perhaps self-pity too for even daring to think you can conquer Ms. Rand's wordplay and coerce the words into making themselves that much discernible for the audience.

In Leornard Peikoff's afterword, you'll have the complete profiling of the characters done, thus sparing you from some embarrassing ponderings later on. The lead character, Howard Roark, one of the most lauded characters in the world of literature, is also one of the most cryptic, incomprehensible, frustratingly inscrutable, complexly simple characters you'll ever read about. Ms. Rand has conceived the lead character in such a way that you'll be very often tempted to move over to the tenebrous side to fall in step with Howard Roark. The character defies all human logic and defying all human logic is what Rand calls the paragon of what a man ought to be. Dominique Francon, the only female character with gravitas, is only second next to Howard Roark in discombobulating anyone she comes across. Within the story, Dominique is the perfect epitome of social elegance; out of it, she is the greatest enigma. If you don't have the slightest clue what you are getting into, this masterpiece has the cunning to throw you off balance and laugh at your face. For someone who is so used to the 700-page Harry Potter books, this will be a paradigm shift. You keep slogging at it long enough and you'll be off your rocker soon. But, know this- craziness is totally worth it.

⏩n  For Virtuosos:n

I never attend calls for help without bringing a book along with me. My dad thinks that it's a stratagem I have invented to evade work and this has made him averse to books in general. So, one day, when my book-hating dad talked about his young days as a reader, I had to pay close attention. That's where I picked up words that sounded like "Ayn Rand" and "The Fountainhead", which I was hitherto oblivious to. I had to see for myself what could have possibly enticed my dad into reading. And I regretted my impulsive action for many days afterwards. There were days when I couldn't go any further, but abandoning a book midway is simply not me.

The primary difference between a 700 page children's book that I am used to and this 700 page long mind-boggler is that while the former is made of sequential order of events, where not even minute details like that of the flight of an inconsequential fly in the background is not spared, the latter is devoid of any detailed elucidation of the ways of the world, other than the bare necessities of who did what- instead of how it was done. Not knowing the mechanism of human interactions and knowing only the manifestations of the actions is what makes this story a skillful dilemma thrown at inexperienced readers like me.

n  

Keating leaned back with a sense of warmth and well-being. He liked this book. It had made the routine of his Sunday morning breakfast a profound spiritual experience; he was certain that it was profound, because he didn’t understand it.

n

Roark felt like the most empyreal, ethereal, intangible, other worldly book character among all the fictional characters I have encountered so far. Something about his stolid, aloof, unflappable persona makes him utterly unbelievable than even the impossibly ridiculous super heroes with superpowers.

n  

It was very peculiar, thought Keating. Toohey was asking him a great many questions about Howard Roark. But the questions did not make sense. They were not about buildings, they were not about architecture at all. They were pointless personal questions—strange to ask about a man of whom he had never heard before.

“Does he laugh often?”
“Very rarely.”
“Does he seem unhappy?”
“Never.”
“Did he have many friends at Stanton?”
“He’s never had any friends anywhere.”
“The boys didn’t like him?”
“Nobody can like him.”
“Why?”
“He makes you feel it would be an impertinence to like him.”
“Did he go out, drink, have a good time?”
“Never.”
“Does he like money?”
“No.”
“Does he like to be admired?”
“No.”
“Does he believe in God?”
“No.”
“Does he talk much?”
“Very little.”
“Does he listen if others discuss any ... idea with him?”
“He listens. It would be better if he didn’t.”
“Why?”
“It would be less insulting—if you know what I mean, when a man listens like that and you know it hasn’t made the slightest bit of difference to him.”

“Did he always want to be an architect?”
“He..,”
“What’s the matter, Peter?”

“Nothing. It just occurred to me how strange it is that I’ve never asked myself that about him before. Here’s what’s strange: you can’t ask that about him. He’s a maniac on the subject of architecture. It seems to mean so damn much to him that he’s lost all human perspective. He just has no sense of humor about himself at all—now there’s a man without a sense of humor, Ellsworth. You don’t ask what he’d do if he didn’t want to be an architect.”

“No,” said Toohey. “You ask what he’d do if he couldn’t be an architect.”

“He’d walk over corpses. Any and all of them. All of us.

n

All the n  n    Objectivism, Individualism vs Collectivismn  n stuff was too high-brow, finespun for me to comprehend. There were many glad moments when I found out that things were indeed what I thought they were; followed by my whoops of triumph, but The Fountainhead was way more intense and profound for an average reader to grasp.

n  

The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.

n

To sum up,
❗ The Fountainhead explains four types of men-✅ the man who was;
✅ the man who could have been;
✅ man who couldn't be(doesn't know);
✅ the man who couldn't be(knows)
and contends that the first one is the ideal for all of us to swear by. And somehow this averment sounds like the most preposterous one as much as it is to accept Roark as someone to be put on a pedestal and worshipped as a trend setter.

❗ The Fountainhead extols egotism as the superior most virtue, which highlights the cause of the story- n  one man against the world as we know it.n

n  

The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner.

n

Rand's outright proclamations in this novel invited the ire of the society of "people for the greater good." In my honest opinion, Rand's audacious undertaking is what added to the greatness of an individual and romanticized the concept of "ego", thus making it one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century.

If I had read this before Atlas Shrugged, I would have given this 5 stars. Because I have read already Rand's Magnum opus (Atlas Shrugged) and also the novella Anthem, I am familiar enough to her philosophy.
.
One thing that I observed while reading her fiction, everyone is selfish- some admit it confidently and some are just plain hypocrites. It's a bit strong statement, but I think this is the gist. Ayn Rand has fans and haters as well, but there's one thing- you can adore her or you can abhor her but you can't ignore her. I may not agree wholeheatedly to her philosophy of Objectivism, Selfishness and Individualism but I like the way how she weave it in her fiction.
.
Atlas Shrugged is certainly far better than The Fountainhead. I missed here the philosophical operas that are prevalent in AS. There's only in the last part, the speech of Elsworth Toohey to Peter Keating and the trial of Howard Roark in which he speaks in his defense, those are certainly praiseworthy. Like AS, it too, has only one dominant female character named Dominique Francon but less elegant than Dagny Taggart of AS. Still, I enjoyed it and I would say that I read it quite fast.

When I meet people and want to assess their personality, I often ask them what they think of Ayn Rand. There are only two responses I ever get. One is a statement of Ayn Rand's lacking writing skills and reprehensible moral philosophy. The other is a statement that Rand was "brilliant", "ground-breaking", and "life-altering."

When I get the latter, I always know that I have found a new enemy.

Whether you agree with Rand's capitalism on crack and meth philosophy, there's one thing intelligent people cannot disagree about: her writing is terrible. Her metaphors are juvenile; her stories are poorly crafted, and the only people who think she is brilliant are children (literal or otherwise).

the one star:

i didn't get around to reading this book until the blizzard a couple years ago in new york. i was in a particular mood, woke up at 3am and decided i had to get out of the apartment, so i grabbed the copy i'd bought a couple days before and suited up to go down to yaffa. it was nice, the snow fell gently at that point, the waiter and i had a great conversation when he saw i was reading the book, i got pulled in, read until past sunrise there, started looking up at the buildings while i walked around the city, totally identified with the ideal version of myself in roark, identified my own adult-long questionable-relationship-girl with dominique, got into objectivism because i was totally blissed out on the idea of egoism instead of egotism... and then i finished the book and grew up a few years. no one i know is going to say i'm some wise adult, but i have to say, seeing the first half of the movie on tv a few weeks ago made me pull the novel off the shelf of a friend, and after a quick scan and deeper reading of certain sections, the book's really a comedy.

come on. read it again. not in that "i loved it when i was 18 so it must have stood the test of time." read it as a bit wiser adult. see what you have to say about it now.

#THUYẾT XUYÊN SUỐT:

Có vẻ xã hội trong sách được chia thành hai thái cực rõ ràng: vị nhân sinh và vị kỷ.
+ Vị nhân sinh là học thuyết đòi hỏi con người phải sống vì người khác và đặt người khác lên trên bản thân mình.
+ Vị kỷ theo nghĩa tuyệt đối không bao giờ bắt người khác hy sinh cho mình. Anh ta sống vượt ra ngoài nhu cầu sử dụng những người khác, dù dưới bất kì hình thức nào. Anh ta không hoạt động thông qua họ. Anh ta không sống vì bất cứ ai, vì anh ta không yêu cầu ai phải sống vì anh ta.

#TÉM Ý

+ Vị nhân sinh là hy sinh cho người khác còn bản thân mình thì dẹp đi
+ Vị kỷ là sống cho mình, kệ người khác nhưng không lợi dụng họ hay bắt họ hy sinh/sống vì mình.
(cảm thấy mình VỊ KỶ nhé)

+ Vị kỷ: vì bản thân mình mới làm.
+ Ích kỷ: những cái nào có lợi cho bản thân thì mới làm.

+ Vị kỷ: là sống vì mình, theo quan điểm của mình, nhưng ko bắt người khác phải theo mình hay hy sinh vì mình
+ ích kỷ: là vì mình, là bắt người khác theo mình

#TAKE OUT MESSAGE:

Cuốn tiểu thuyết lan truyền một tư tưởng sống “vị kỷ” tôn thờ bản thân (khác với ích kỷ) mà sẽ dần hiểu ra xuyên suốt trong nội dung của tác giả.

#REFERENCE
+ Sách Dám bị ghét
+ Phim 3 idiots
+ Quảng cáo think difference của Apple.
Có thể đoạn chốt của Suối nguồn là niềm cảm hứng để copywriter viết nên những thoại này trong clip quảng cáo bước ngoặc của Apple:

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

5 stars for being a ludicrously entertaining soap opera. The most lurid, overdone philosophical text I've ever read (probably because I haven't gotten to Atlas Shrugged yet).

Whether you agree with Rand's ideas or not (please say you don't!), it's pretty damn entertaining to watch them played out via a cast of steely heroes and sniveling villains. The S&M sex scenes are probably the best part - objectivism in the bedroom.

Worth reading for sure, if you can keep your head on your shoulders and not succumb to a 600-page argument full of pedantic speeches and flimsy straw men.

Cuốn sách này làm mình suy nghĩ nhiều quá, hôm nay trên đường về nhà mình đã suýt bị xe tông, mình chẳng còn ý niệm gì về giao thông cả. Suy nghĩ ám ảnh mình. Đây là một trong những cuốn sách tuyệt vời mình từng, sẽ đọc trong đời. Nhiều lúc mình thấy phấn khích, vui sướng nhưng cũng có lúc mình thấy sợ, cuốn sách trao cho mình khả năng và phản xạ nhận thức, mình không biết điều này là may mắn hay bất hạnh nhưng mình biết mình sẽ không bao giờ phản bội lại linh hồn của mình.

Cuốn sách này có quá nhiều điều, mình chưa hiểu hết được nên mình chỉ cho nó 4 sao. Lần sau sẽ là 5 sao.