Thoughts on the Fountainhead

One of my favorite 3 books over the past 1+ year that I have read. I couldn’t stop listening to it, to the point where at work when I would get up to go pee, I’d grab my headphones and get two minutes in.

The plot

The first thing to note is that it’s an engaging plot. Despite the length of the book, it didn’t feel like it dragged on. There was constantly new surprises and events that elicited a desire to continue reading. There was great character development and intriguing interactions between the characters.

Differing views

Before I get into what the book was about and what I took out of it, I find it interesting that it has some pretty mixed reviews. I couldn’t put it down, learned a ton and thought that Rand’s perspective on society was super interesting. I have read reviews, though, that counter each of those statements. Took four months to read, totally disagree with her philosophies, and totally offended by her views.

I wouldn’t say that my experience or anyone else’s is better or worse. Instead, I’d say this is one of those books that impacts different people in a different way. Doing a bit of reading about the book to prepare for it can be helpful, but don’t let other’s opinions create a bias in your mind before you start it or you might be in trouble.

The one piece of info I had before, and I found it valuable, was that each character in the book is an extreme example of a certain type of person. That thought helped me better empathize and understand the characters.

Content

The Fountainhead brings up a huge discussion on individualism vs. collectivism. Rand pokes at this idea that there are so few people in society that do things for themselves as opposed to for others and that it has an incredibly negative impact on society.

I won’t dive too much deeper into her ideas or the plot, but I do want to talk a bit about what I took away from the book.

Be an individual

Art is an incredibly special thing. The best painters, musicians, authors, poets, architects, etc. do the work that they do, often not for others, but for themselves. What they write about or the compositions they put together are deeply internal.

It made me realize that such a high percentage of our society makes decisions based on what other people think. They pursue career paths, decide what to do for social activities, etc. based on what they think is accepted.

Then there is a small percentage of people that understand themselves and don’t care about what society thinks and they make 100% of their decisions based on what they want.

I actually think there’s a decent amount of people that lie somewhere in the middle — depending on context. Like maybe someone doesn’t care what other’s think in the work setting, but they are incredibly intimidated by the opposite sex so they act in a way that they think is right.

Either way, though, it gave me a much deeper appreciation for those that do their own thing.

The art that exists in the world

The book also made me think about all of the art that currently exists. From buildings to songs to statues to scientific ideas. The best ones are often the ones that came directly from the creativity of the person that made them.

Rand describes in that before anything else can happen in the world, there needs to be creation, and for the creation to take place, it has to come from the minds of those that create for themselves, not for others.

Pretty abstract, and I’m not describing it super well, but quite interesting.

A lot of creative artists were hated during their life

One thing that fucks with me a lot is the paradigm that exists for creative artists.

There are two big lenses here.

One is the people that faced rejection again and again on their work before persevering and changing the world. I think about these people as the ones like J.K. Rowling, who was rejected by countless publishers before someone took on Harry Potter. Even Albert Einstein took years and years before he was offered a job as a professor, but he continued to fight through because he believed in what he was doing.

Some of these people weren’t even celebrated during their life. Famous authors, artists and scientists that received no credit at all during their lives until their work was discovered or appreciate after their death. Could you imagine? Committing your whole life to something and getting zero external validation for it? I think it’s so amazing that a lot of these people persevered and continued the work that they did. The reason? Because they believed so much in what they were doing that it didn’t matter what anyone else thought.

Now what about the people that didn’t persevere?

All of the Harry Potters and Star Wars, the paintings, the songs, the buildings, the ideas that never came to fruition because of rejection.

It’s such a fickle, and often random system, that it makes you wonder how many of these cases exist. Especially when there are studies that show the arbitrariness of it. Famous authors have re-submitted books under fake names and been rejected. There are some crazy examples, that I wish I could name better, but the idea of that makes me sad.

Respect individualism

Either way, this book makes me respect art a lot more and respect people for being totally themselves.

It was long and dense but it was awesome.

Thoughts on this review/the book in general? Comment or send me a note :)

Full reading list here