Christopher’s Reviews > The Fountainhead > Status Update

Almost over the finish line. I'm going to want a stiff drink after this one. Already thinking about books for the next read. Maybe a great author Rand hated.

An interesting passage a little while before on attaching value to the things one buys and possesses. Of course, it was Gail Wynand saying this, so the words take on greater malice. But it's true that we tend to seek to see the things we own as special because we endow them with our ownership. Looking forward to being free of this oppressive book, haha.

Finally, the Howard Roark part. Home stretch. Two hundred pages to go. Maybe I can enjoy the denouement? Just think of how much trouble I could have saved if I had started skimming a lot sooner.

Skimming.

Just got to the part in which Dominique offers to marry Peter, and oh yeah, it just so happens to be right after he and Catherine make their plan to run away and marry. Good grief what a disappointing book. Had no clue I was in for such a salacious soap opera.

Just a few of the book's many nonsensical aphorisms:
'I'd rather be kind than right.'
'Mercy is superior to justice.'
'The brain is a superstition.'
'The worst folk song is superior to the best symphony.'

I think I've read no other book in which so much has been pulled spontaneously out of one ass. Broad pronouncements on the meanings of things, human behavior, outrageous and antithetical conclusions. If there's any diamond in this philosophy, it's buried in tons of shit.

It's a funny thing when you give up on a book. You relax, and the book, the writing, and the characters don't mean as much anymore. Now I just want to finish it and call it done. This could have been a much better story as a novella, like Anthem, and without the trashy plotting.

Finally dawning on me how trashy this is, and how in denial I've been about it. I can be maddeningly slow on the uptake sometimes.

"He whispered involuntarily:
"Dominique, who was he?"

No, Ms. Rand. You're giving him too much credit. Men are much dumber than that.