Say what you will about Ms. Rand. I feel peoples revulsion to her philosophy of Objectivism is at times unwarranted; primarily because people are attributing a level of menace to it which simply does not exist... dumbing it down to an overly simplified argument of good versus evil, with good being the Altruist, and bad being the... I'm not exactly sure... the Capitalist? The responsibility of this misconception could potentially lie with ol' Aynie herself who is over inflating a pretty basic argument for Humanism. And then there's the whole political nonsense people get all up in arms over which is ridiculous because Rand potentially wouldn't even recognize the small-government proponents of today.
So, my library was donated this very cool looking paperback edition of The Fountainhead. The cover photography is by H. Landshoff and I think it's glorious. I believe it is a long exposure image of a city scape or skyscrapers, and potentially is an homage to Howard Roark's temple to the human spirit, which I respect quite a bit because it encourages the reader to still create their own mental image of the space. My ex was obsessed with this book and so I can confidently say I have seen many editions of this book and yet I have never seen this one, and actually, I can only find 8 libraries that own this particular edition. My boss was going to put this in the discard pile before I lovingly encouraged her to keep it. Unfortunately, I am too old and need health insurance too much to risk stealing it.
I have added some more images below which close in and show more detail of the cover. The images are unfortunately blurry because all I have on me at work is my super-expensive-smart-phone-which-is-basically-a-small-computer-yet-for-some-reason-takes-shit-pictures.
The Fountainhead. Charter books, Bobbs-Merrill. 1962. Second paperback edition. 754pp. Front cover price $2.95. 50,000 copies issued.
OK, so it's Friday and I can't concentrate without a hard deadline at work, so I wrote a review of this book, which I read about 8 years ago. Here:
ReplyDeleteWhile I hate strict ideology ~85% of the time, she makes a good point that people need to stop being pussies and take control of their own lives. And I paraphrase here, b/c I’m not going to scour a thousand page book to find the quote, but Mr. Roark says something about “the purpose of life is being able to take a stick and make something out of it.” Well put and succinct; I love succinctness (unlike the book itself). It’s inspirational and empowering for people on the fence about what to do with their lives, to get them to create and improve the world. Unfortunately, there are a shit-ton of people who aren't "on the fence," they're just fucked. In fact, there's too many of them. And while we can get into arguments about what to do / how we feel about this, let's not.
But even if you are on the fence, the ideology falters if you get sick. In her idealized world: you get sick, and you die. If I get sick, somebody better make me some chicken soup! So there is a lack of basic human nature and goodness in her argument.
Also, she makes a big fuss about not compromising your artistic vision, as if she didn’t have an editor…pah-lease.
Also, the rape-fantasy-sex-scene between the two main protagonists was pretty awesome. Ms. Rand’s a li’l freak.
Well put. I agree with you that Rand's message of self empowerment is inspiring. Within the text of Atlas Shrugged probably even more so. In terms of her message's pitfalls though... Rand's philosophy is just that... a philosophy. It's a framework and a guideline, which completely overlooks every exception to the rule. Ayn Rand herself saw things as very black and white and so it makes sense that her detractor's arguments against her are very simplistic.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing is heaping with contradictions once you really analyze it... which is exactly why her works appeal to teens (I myself was a huge fan as a teen). Because teens love drama and passion and hate thinking about real life applications of their ideas.