roman_mir's Journal: Rand: The Fountainhead

I liked this novel more than the rest of Rand's books, while it wasn't as down with the reality and history as 'We the Living', this one wasn't an attempt at science fiction and a gospel at the same time, it was more honest, it wasn't trying to provide a reason for why a person should want his own individual freedoms as much as Atlas was. The people in it were not portrayed being as super-human as they were in Atlas and the story line and the ending were much more plausible.

Atlas of-course, is what is currently happening, not because there is a massive conscious attempt at putting capital on strike, but because Asia provides a good alternative for engaging in relatively free enterprise and gold is not illegal to hold (yet), so putting capital on strike and moving savings and investment out of the failing currencies and economies is done organically without really too much of an ideology, just based on competition alone.

On the other hand the Fountainhead is sending a similar message in less contrived terms and it is actually more interesting to read for anybody concerned not only with the message in the book, but also from point of view of learning something new from the writing, in this case something that most people probably never think of too much - architecture and construction, and it shows that Rand spent plenty of time researching in this area, and she did, apparently she worked for free for over half a year as a typist in architecture bureau just to understand the trade.

I think this is her best book, it provides more than just a message, it provides a good setting for it as well, and also I think it is more honest in many ways, including views on sexuality. Definitely Atlas had to be written after the Fountainhead, compare Dominique and Dagny, even their names are telling something different, never mind their roles and behaviour. What's interesting though is that in a sense Dominique and Lillian Rearden have something in common, but only in their methods, their goals are quite different.

The theme of the corruption of the courts is raised in We the Living, the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but only in the Fountainhead the jury appear not be corrupted enough by the system yet, while in We the Living, the new provisional government of the USSR was completely corrupt and so was the court in Atlas.

It almost seems that this is a trilogy, where the first book shows the history of going towards socialism in one country, the Fountainhead shows a transitional period in a relatively free society towards socialism and Atlas Shrugged finishes the journey for the entire planet causing massive inevitable collapse and a glimmer of a possible salvation through restoration of freedom at the end.

I think these books should be viewed as a trilogy, they do have many in common elements, they go over the same concepts from different perspectives and what's most important, they are stylized versions of what has actually happened, what is still happening and what is about to happen, so it's a strong recommendation.