His hostility only increases the difficulty that a public fearful of progress has in recognizing his genius. Compounding the problem is Cameron's contemptuous rejection of those not open to change. When American society falls under the sway of the Classical styles highlighted in the Columbian Exposition of 1892, Cameron's modernist ideas are rejected. Where other architects use every device they can to make their tall buildings appear shorter, Cameron openly flaunts his skyscrapers' height.
He is one of the first to design buildings that tower over others, and the first to insist that a tall building should look tall. Though a successful architect in the 1880s, Cameron's ideas became increasingly revolutionary, resulting finally in the birth of the skyscraper. Cameron is a commercial failure, but an uncompromising man of integrity. On the other hand, Peter Keating, a classmate of Roark's and the son of the woman whose boardinghouse Roark lives in, though lacking Roark's brilliance and love of architecture, gives the professors exactly what they want and graduates as valedictorian with high honors.Īfter leaving Stanton, Roark goes to work for Henry Cameron, an elderly and cantankerous genius, whose ideas are far ahead of their time. It chronicles the struggles of the innovative architect Howard Roark in his effort to achieve success on his own terms.Īs the story opens, twenty-one-year-old Roark is expelled from the Stanton Institute of Technology for "insubordination." Most faculty and administration members want him to design in traditional styles, but Roark has his own ideas. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly.This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.The Fountainhead takes place in the United States, mostly in New York City, during the 1920s and 1930s.
As fresh today as it was then, Rand's provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction-that man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress. This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite.of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy.and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. The revolutionary literary vision that sowed the seeds of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's groundbreaking philosophy, and brought her immediate worldwide acclaim.
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