The Fountainhead

I’ve read a number of Ayn Rand’s essays, but never bothered with her fiction until now. I expected overt advocacy for her self-centered Objectivist philosophy, but I also expected it to be packaged in something approximating a compelling story. After all, The Fountainhead has been devoured by legions of basement dwellers who couldn’t make it through two pages of Kant or Foucault. But apart from Gary Cooper’s and Patricia Neal’s radical egoists settling for fucking each other because they can’t fuck themselves, there is little pretense of storytelling here; just a parade of talking heads spouting ludicrous manifestos valorizing the “me” and demonizing the “we.” It is ridiculous from start to finish, but it sure is nice to look at.