The Fountainhead (96 page)

Stress the second-handedness whenever possible, particularly in Keating, but a different facet of it each time. Cut out episodes that do not bear on that theme. The book is not about architecture, it’s about Roark against the world and about the workings of that thing in the world which opposes him. Give only enough pure architecture to make the background real. But only as a background. Eliminate bromides or convenient colloquial expressions ready-made, even in places that are mere transitions, such as “and it made film history,” “round of nightclubs,” etc.

One of the most interesting and philosophical parts of these journals is the pages devoted to research. Miss Rand learned about architecture both from books and from life (including a year spent working in an architect’s office). Here are some research notes of hers from 1937, dealing with architecture and other subjects. I have picked these excerpts at random, but offer them in chronological order.

Feb. 27, 1937

Incidental question: a librarian writing about library building, insists that libraries must be made to look as accessible to the public as possibte—to “bring the library nearer to the people.” “Spacious and inviting entrances are places at grade level, close to the public thoroughfare, with as few steps as possible between the pedestrian and the building.” This may be quite sound in relation to library architecture, but the question it raises, in a more general sense, is this: is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?

March 27, 1937

A typical instance of the rising power of the masses—The open arrogance of the inferior who no longer try to imitate their superiors, but boldly flaunt their inferiority, their averageness, their “popular appeal.” A state of affairs where quality is no longer of any importance, and where it is coming to be shunned, avoided, even despised. The paradox of the dregs of humanity actually feeling contempt for their betters, because they are better. Quantity alone considered important—quality no longer even considered. The masses triumphant. [Real-life] example of this: the head of a “charm school,” a contemptible racket, having been attacked by a “high brow” magazine, states haughtily: “Why should I worry? Who are they? In all the years they’ve been in existence, they have only a hundred thousand circulation.
I
have a million customers in one year!”

June 4, 1937

Typical and valuable instance of mob-spirit:

Raymond Hook, architect of the “Daily News Building” in New York (ugliest building in the city! AR) is “an architect of the modern type who preaches and practices cooperation. He has no use for the architect who ‘shuts himself up in his office to make a design and then sends it out to a contractor to build or to an engineer to fit up the plumbing, heating and steel as best as he can.’ Nor has he any use for the architect who ‘goes up to a Communion on Mount Sinai and hands the results to the owner, the engineers and the public: In his view, as in my own, the best designs, at any rate for the building of skyscrapers, come from ‘a group of minds in which the architect is one link in the chain.’ ”

So speaks the mob. And the results—the “Daily News Building” and the author’s buildings—speak for themselves. Being the ugliest, flattest, most conventional, meaningless, unimaginative and uninspiring buildings in the book.

This type of architect works “by conference” in which all parties concerned take part, discuss his drawings, make suggestions, etc. (A Hollywood story conference) The result is what the result of collective creation always is—“an average on an average.”

June 10, 1937

Note: The peculiar preoccupation of architects such as the author and the previous one with “proportions,” “mouldings,” “scholarly faithfulness to Classic examples,” etc. Worrying about every little thing, except the main one—the composition and its meaning as a whole. Isn’t it like the people who worry greatly about fine points of “style” and grammar in literature, without caring what the writing is about? Again, the “how” against the “what.” (Yet, the “what” determines everything else, just as the end determines the means, not vice versa. I do not intend that the “end” should justify lousy “means,” either. The “how” should always be worthy of the “what,” but determined by it.)

Dec. 5, 1937

Let us decide once and for all what is a unit and what is to be only a part of the unit, subordinated to it. A building is a unit—all else in it, such as sculpture, murals, ornaments, are parts of the unit and to be subordinated to the will of the architect, as creator of the unit. No talk of “the freedom of craftsmen” for sculptors and the like here.

Also—man is a unit, not Society. So that man cannot be considered as only a subordinate part to be ruled by and to fit into the ensemble of society.

(I really believe that a building is a unit, not a city, so that city planning should not control all buildings. Because a house can be the product of one man, but a city cannot. And nothing collective can have the unity and integrity of a “unit.”)

Much of the confusion in “collectivism” and “individualism” could be cleared up if men were clear on what constitutes a unit, what is to be regarded as such.

As to the rules about this—my job of the future.

Those who know Ayn Rand’s
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,
know how startlingly she completed this highly technical “job of the future.”

In the thirties, however, Ayn Rand was concerned primarily with ethics; she wanted to define and present a proper view of man’s life. Here, in a note dated January 15, 1936, is her reason for writing
The Fountainhead:

This may sound naive. But—is our life ever to have any reality? Are we ever going to live on the level or is life always to be something else, something different from what it should be? A real life, simple and sincere, and even naive, is the only life where all the potential grandeur and beauty of human existence can really be found. Are there real reasons for accepting the alternative, that which we have today? No one has really shown [today’s] life, as it really is, with its real meaning and its reasons. I’m going to show it. If it’s not a pretty picture—what is the substitute:

I have read
The Fountainhead
many times since 1949, when I first found it. I read it mostly for the sheer pleasure of living in the “substitute” world Ayn Rand creates. I hope the story has given you the same pleasure.

-Leonard Peikoff, Irvine, California, March 1992