post 7

This week I started and read through the first 150 pages of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Previous to this novel, I read Anthem, a 60 page novella by Ayn Rand which i loved. Although it was anthem that interested me on to Rand's writing, it is fountainhead that has really made me love it. Given the length of an entire novel, Rand is given time to fully flush out some of the most interesting characters I have encountered in a book. The main character, or rather one of the two main characters, is Howard Roark. Roark is, as is often the case with Randian protagonists, an individualist oppressed by the collectivist world he lives in. That is to say, Howard Roark exists only to serve Howard Roark, and no other. I will not go in great depth into the plot, as the medium of a blog post is in no way capable of doing this pinnacle of written achievement any justice, sufficed to say Roark is the very picture of individualism in human form. Rand's libertarian ideology happens to align very well with mine on many points which has made for an excellent read so far. Not only is the philosophy of individual liberty fleshed out to such an extreme that even the most liberal democrat could come away from this book preaching the free market, but it happened to provide me with some of the most useful quotes for busting out in the middle of an argument, for instance “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” It's just pure gold.