{"id":2240,"date":"2005-05-11T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-11T21:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=2240"},"modified":"2018-06-09T08:39:06","modified_gmt":"2018-06-09T13:39:06","slug":"book-review-the-fountainhead-by-ayn-rand-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/11\/book-review-the-fountainhead-by-ayn-rand-1943\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted a good reading copy of The Fountainhead<\/i><\/a>, so I cruised eBay for one. I mean, I have the first edition, but I don’t want to spill beer and danish toppings on it. I also have my first paperback copy from college, but I’m a hardback snob. So I cruised eBay and found a nice International Collector’s Library edition ca 1968, complete with heavy paper, leatheresque binding, and attached ribbon for book marking. Oh, yeah. And for such a low price (shipping and handling extra)!<\/p>\n

So once I bought it, I put it on my to read shelf. And now I have read it for the fifth time.<\/p>\n

What can I say? I like the book. I read it first, a library copy, before my freshman year of college. I’d been challenged by the startlingly-literate machinist next door to elevate my reading habits if I wanted to be an English major. So I remembered flyers for the ARI’s The Fountainhead<\/i> essay contest scholarship and figured it was Literature. So I consumed it at the most formative time, that summer when a young man leaves his boyhood home and tries to become a man.<\/p>\n

The book seemed very long back then when I was used to 175 page crime thrillers, but now that I have graduated to 1000 page Stephen King books, it seems almost like a quick read. I’m surprised every time how approachable the book is; the book avoids the speechifying that sank Atlas Shrugged<\/i>. Rand also had a better hero in this book, Howard Roark, with whom the reader struggles throughout the years that pass in their epic sweep.<\/p>\n

Howard Roark, architect. He’s thrown out of architecture school for being a nonconformist and has to strive through a series of setbacks to be the man he is and to be an active architect without compromising his ideals. He won’t, of course, because he’s a Randian hero, but it continues to inspire me each time I read the book. So I’ve read it again for the first time in five years, and I’ll read it again in another five years, when I need a reminder of the freshness and vitality I felt and feel about my ideals when I read this book.<\/p>\n

It’s not much of a book review, but let the fact that I paid eBay shipping and handling for a copy of this book so I could read it a fifth time speak for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wanted a good reading copy of The Fountainhead, so I cruised eBay for one. I mean, I have the first edition, but I don’t want to spill beer and danish toppings on it. I also have my first paperback copy from college, but I’m a hardback snob. So I cruised eBay and found a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20132,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions\/20132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}