So I spent a large part of today reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. I really liked it but it left a somewhat odd aftertaste. Roark was the first character I admired in a long time. I guess what I respected most was how he knew what he wanted to be when he was only ten and had never deviated since. I just cannot imagine myself ever being to committed to a dream or a need. It was then I realized something about myself, which I didn't like. Roark chose to avoid the painless path and his stubborn refusal to compromise or to be judged by anything but his own standards, got me thinking about what I had lost. Its a strange epiphany, that feeling, or that realization rather, that you have actually left so much behind, in pursuit of a perceived happiness but can only be described as the painless path. I'm lucky to be where I am, and I appreciate it nonetheless, but not as much as the desire to have been something more.
To be honest, The Fountainhead lost me soon after the first volume. Its not that I didn't understand it, but its like a conversation with someone you haven't seen in a long while - things you could relate to just aren't there anymore. Roark was an anti-hero to me, and he represented all that was wrong with society. But like life, Roark became more human, more flawed as it progressed and I found my frustration growing.
Rand commented how she developed Roark to be a reason unto himself and the joy of living personified. On some level I guess I do understand, although living a life by my own reason somehow just seems inadequate. Anyway, I still love how books can change your set perspective on life. Maybe its because I'm egotistical, but not many books can do that. Even if its toward the smallest thing, like modernistic architecture. I have never been a fan of modernism, but this book has changed that.
"A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it. "
