Life, as it should be. Review on FountainHead, The - Ayn Rand

''This may sound naive. But - is our life ever to have any reality? Are we ever going to live on the level or is life always to be something else, something different from what it should be?'' -- AynRand, from the Afterword to The Fountainhead.

Before I had read The Fountainhead, had I had her genius for capturing emotions into words, I'd have expressed exactly these same emotions about life. When we look around us, at this hopelessly practical world, we are torn between the world as it is, and the world, as it should be. We are looking for a, however brief, glimpse at the world -- where something is right. The Fountainhead, is one such world - where Howard Roark, for all his alleged shortcomings, is not lacking in one vital human element -- Integrity. Where Dominique Frankon for all her eccentricities, has a soul that is untouched by the mediocrity. A world in which every stint is revitalizing. A world, where you want to take a refuge, every now and then, when the real world around you disappoints on every single count.

I won't talk about the plot of The Fountainhead.. It's been discussed in countless reviews, here, and on every other site where books are reviewed. What I'll do, however, is to discuss what it means to me.

As I see it, there is a life before The Fountainhead, and the life after it. What has changed? Surely I'm the same old person, with the same old fears, and the same old shortcomings. The difference is, before reading it, I just accepted the reality around me, as it is. As if, there can be nothing better. After reading it, however, I know, what is possible. Improbable maybe, but possible. The Fountainhead has given me a dream, a dream that makes life worth living, when idols fall all around you, with almost a predictable regularity. And it has given me the strength to dream that dream.

I've read many critiques of The Fountainhead. And invariably, I chuckle. It's like people have read something else. And that's okay. After all, everyone will find something different in a book. But I wish every single youth reads this book, so that before they decide that the life has to be hopeless, they at least have glimpsed at the sheer beauty of life. Even if fictional. And such a glimpse can do wonders. Just like the scene in The Fountainhead, where a dejected young man comes across Monadnock Valley (a project by Howard Roark), and walks back with the fountain of life.

It's been more than ten years since I first read this book. I have heard people telling me, that I'll grow over it. I'm still waiting for that to happen. Meanwhile, I have read it at least five times back to back, and innumerably, in parts. If ever I have to choose one book that I am allowed to posses, without a second thought, I'd pick up The Fountainhead. For nothing else has ever managed to do to me, what it has.

I'll end this review with the rest of the AynRand quote. Words, rarely convey emotions like this!

''A real life, simple and sincere, and even naive, is the only life where all the potential grandeur and beauty of human existence can really be found. Are there real reasons for accepting the alternative, that which we have today? ''