(Book Review)In 2000, The Banner published this letter by me (in response to their hatchet job on Emma Goldman):
“Goldman’s quotation was taken completely out of context. It should be noted that her article was written in 1934. During that same year Goldman gave a series of talks about conditions in Nazi Germany. She was also active in rasing money to get anarchists out of Germany. In Quebec, Goldman was told she could not sell or distribute literature at her meetings unless the police first approved it. Goldman was also told her chance of obtaining a visa back to the United States were unlikely because of the hostility against all radicals in the government. And all this happened after Goldman left Stalinist Russia because she was disgusted at what that oppressive government was doing.
Therefore to take Goldman’s quote about government oppression in a period when government oppression was a horrific reality worldwide and compare it to a parent-child relationship is some of the worst writing I have ever seen.”
...Perhaps you can guess where I’m going with this.
I wanted to read “The Fountainhead” because its one of those books that keeps popping up in discussion. But I had heard enough bad things about it to know beforehand that I probably wasn’t going to like it. And with good reason. This is in many respects an awful book. But before I start ripping into it, I want to try and be fair. I’m sure the 30s and 40s, when all of Europe was squeezed between Fascism on one hand and Stalinism on the other, were a frightening time to be alive.
George Orwell was at his most prolific during this period as well, and “1984" was written only a few years after “The Fountainhead”. In fact there are a lot of similarities between the two books. The villain of “The Fountainhead”, Ellsworth Toohey, is a dead ringer for O’Brien from “1984". Not only their characteristics, but the didactic speeches they give are so similar you could practically switch the characters and not notice any difference. Were it not for the fact that “The Fountainhead” was published first, I’d be tempted to accuse Rand of ripping off Orwell.
There’s a lot of important stuff in this book about the rights of individuals, and the importance of keeping your own identity in the face of the pressure to conform. Arguable the same material has been handled better by other authors, but like all great themes it can never be emphasized enough.
Where Rand goes off the rails is when she asserts that any philosophy that seeks to help others, whether socialism or Christianity, is really just an attempt to enslave humanity. And that the people who preach such philosophies are at best a bunch of dumb old cows (like the society ladies in “The Fountainhead”) or at worst actively plotting the downfall of humanity (like Ellsworth Toohey). This is why people say they wouldn’t want to live next door to someone who takes Rand’s work too seriously.
Also, if one were to take seriously Rand’s belief about throwing off societies conventions and establishing your own morality, than you would assume Rand would be in sympathy with the 60s counter-culture and the New Left. But she wasn’t at all. If you read Rand’s book on the New Left (Calvin’s library has a copy), you can see the bitterness dripping from her pen. Like many ideologues, Rand only idolizes the rebel when he throws off societies conventions to conform to her expectations. If the rebel goes in another direction, then the printed page can’t hold enough epithets.
As to the literary content of the book itself...
Someone in my blogging circle (I think it was Phil, but I can’t find the link) recently said of this book something to the effect of, “My God, it was even worse than I thought it would be. The characters aren’t real people, they’re just cardboard cut outs representing ideals.”
And this is really true. The book resembles a medieval morality play. The only thing lacking is if the characters had introduced themselves as ideals instead of people. “Hello, I will be representing the common man.” “And I will be playing the ideal man.” “And I will be playing the evil altruist who is trying to actively destroy humanity.”
There are a lot of people who believe that morality plays have rightly ended up on the dustbin of literary genres. And there might be something to this. But if morality plays can still meet any human needs at all, I think they at least need to at least conform to some criteria.
1). They need to be short. I could have forgiven a lot if this book was 500 pages shorter. There is absolutely no excuse for this book to be so long. Orwell was able to make his point in a lot less pages. And 800 pages is way too long to spend with cardboard cut-out characters.
2). A morality play must affirm what we already feel to be true. Its not a genre suited to making new arguments. If you already believe in what Ayn Rand is saying, you’ll find yourself nodding along to the book. If you disagree, there’s not a lot of character development or transformation that will help you along the path to see the light.
This is why you never ever hear people say, “I disagree with Ayn Rand’s politics, but I admire her talent as a writer.” People might say that about Orwell, Updike, or Ezra Pound, but unless you’re already onboard with her philosophy, Rand’s novel offers very little in terms of literary value.
The glowing description’s of Howard Roark as the ideal capitalist man remind me somewhat of the description of Ernest Everhard as the ideal socialist man in Jack London’s “The Iron Heel”. But more than anything this book reminds me of “What is to be Done”, the 19th century socialist novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky. From a literary perspective both novels suffer from many of the same flaws in terms of characterization and plot. But from an ideological perspective as well both deal with characters who have discovered the perfect system which enables them to live perfect lives removed from the foolishness of normal people.
Dostoevsky spent much of his literary energy writing in response to “What is to be Done”, and I believe his work stands as an effective rebuttle to “The Fountainhead” as well. Dostoevsky’s books aren’t filled with supermen who rise above the struggles of ordinary people, but with broken human beings. Take Raskolnikov the student from “Crime and Punishment” who believes he has discovered a new system of morality which justifies killing the old woman. Or the drunk Marmeladov who, despite his best intentions, always ends up repeating his mistakes.
I don’t agree with Dostoevsky entirely on everything. (He believed that the best form of government was the dictatorship of the Czar.) But I don’t want to get into all that right now. All I’m saying for the moment is that I find his portrayal of humanity a lot more convincing than Rand’s. There’s not a lot of point in debating it since Rand never really offers any sort of proof for her systems. She just says, “This is the way the world is. This is what humans are really like if they can only rise to their potential.”
My own experience in life makes me more inclined to agree with the words of the Apostle Paul: “I do not understand what I do. The good I wish to do I don’t do, and the evil I do not wish to do, I do.” But I can’t prove this any more than Rand can prove her thesis. Its just where my gut tells me humanity is at.
In closing: I can’t really say I recommend this book. But if you haven’t read it already, I imagine you’ll probably be tempted to read it for the same reasons I did. It's one of those books that pops up in discussion every now and then, and you want to be able to discuss it intelligently. And that’s as good a reason as any to read a book I suppose. But at the very least, if you haven’t read “1984" or “Crime and Punishment” yet, put those at the top of your list instead. “The Fountainhead” can wait.
Useless Wikipedia Fact
Richard Nixon on Jews: "You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana are Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists." 26th May 1971
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The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand: Book Review (Scripted)
16 comments:
I reread this review now with some embarrassment. As with a lot of my writing during this period, I was trying to pass myself off as more educated than I was. I had not read Ezra Pound. I had started Nikolai Chernyshevsky, but not finished him.
Moreover, there's a tone here (which again is typical of my writing during this period), where I'm trying to assume the status of an expert literary critic, which I am not. I regret a lot of the arrogance of my writing during this period.
[I was testing some stuff, previous comment was deleted for no good reason but kiddy tinkering].
Oh God why did I forget to leave some comments on this book? This book was translated into Vietnamese and published in 2011 (IIRC). I read it when I was still young and impressionable enough. I have to say it's a very important book to my life, since it pretty much changed the way I think. The amount of American influence imported into the country has never been in huge supply, so it was the only and the first book with radical, exotic thoughts I have never come across before.
I have a lot to criticize, since of course you can't be a libertarian without having at least two of the following triangle qualities: young, stupid, and rich. Given that I have never been any rich, it's easy to outgrow my phase with this book. This doesn't mean my thoughts have matured out, I shall touch on this later, but let me just say that the issue with some of the most destructive ideologies has never been so much what they explicitly say, but it lays more on the implicit assumptions they make.
I love this book very much. And it used to be the best masterpiece of novel for me, until I read Tolstoy. Maybe this is a sad thing to say? Anyway as inspiring as the book had been to me, in retrospect perhaps it hasn't changed my life for the better. It's good to have some guts and stop doing things a whole collective mindlessly do out of fear and coercion. Sadly I live in an Asian country, one that loves to hell-bent on making people all obedient, those that refuse to conform are either punished heavily or excluded - whatever influence I got from Rand doesn't seem to amount to much. That's stretching the topic to individualism vs blah blah, so let me get narrower. I once refused to contribute some pocket change money to the fund of the class to buy a bunch of pens made by some disabled people, needless to spell out what I thought then under Rand's influence - which ended me up in an ironic situation one day, my own pens were out of ink and I had to resort to borrow one of those pens that the class bought. I no longer felt shame (which I shall touch on more), but it was just hard to quell my own sense of guilt. I guess that's what I got for trying to insisting to myself that I had some independent thoughts.
Now individuality vs collectivism (a dictohomy I find false to an extent when people try to extrapolate it to Asian societies or actually any society at all) - this is a much broader thing to touch on, but perhaps it's just relevant to talk about it given what the book is about. Anyway, it's just way too easy to have a Rand-like vision when you never have to do a single collaborative job, jobs that are absolutely essential to civilization since otherwise life wouldn't have been any hard. I suspect she herself has never had to do anything involving resources management at all. It's way too easy to tout creativity as if that alone is the driving force of progress. I heavily suspect the very vision she has got the influence from Soviet Communism itself, just that she inverted the importance of the state and private sector. Other than that, I find it weird how nobody has ever mentioned the staggering similarities between Objectivism and Communism in their own visions.
Whittaker Chamberlain, on an infamous review of her book 'Atlas Shrugged' once mentioned the very lack of children in her book. I have to say that is really telling for this sort of novels that claims to know how societies should function on a grand scale. Even when you are an anti-natalist (like I am), you still have to admit or recognize that life isn't all about yourself, and there's no way it could keep functioning without inheritors.
Also her idea of people who changed the world with creativity seems to be weird. After all inventions weren't just made all because some dudes with intelligence happened to pick up some toys and decided to push some fingers in to see if they can make an innovation out of it. Ideas are always easy to come up with, the essence is execution. She makes it like creativity always have to be produced by one and one singular person alone. Science is the very prime example of what is built upon giant shoulders. You don't use Maxwell equation to discover the fire. You don't need linguistics to invent a new language. You don't make an iPhone out of thin air without some dudes laboring to try all possibles way to crank out something that could possibily fit on your own hand.
She really just conflated uniqueness with creativity, one doesn't have to go hand in hand with the other. You want to see Japanese with unique beautiful illustrations on manga and novels. But when it comes to anime making there's no escape from collaborative working.
The chapter with Gail Wynand flipping off the readership is just self-defeating (I should have known better, but then again I used to be way too young and stupid). She seems to be adamant here that perhaps Gail Wynand should have try to prevail up until his own bankruptcy so he would have to do something else if not starve to death. Say if the situation is no longer about defending Roark for a right cause, but just any situation at all, how does Rand even resolve the eternal issue of gauging something's value? If the common people shall not be those that determine the value of the newspapers, then who shall determine the value of them, the elites? And how will the elites make the broader readership read the newspaper when they have no such demand?
But perhaps the most destructive implicit assumption Rand makes which is not peculiar or exclusive to her, is the assumption that people would just fawn over whenever they see an individual with sheer brilliance, and let them do whatever they want.
In reality: people have different needs, and make use of people for their own benefits. They could care less if your brilliance doesn't translate directly to benefits for themselves.
Kinda ridiculous how she doesn't seem to apply the logic of selfishness (using her own concept) thoroughly enough to even see that it's the very thing that makes "talentless people obstruct those with talents", in the first place.
I wonder what does she think would happen to people's perception of those heroes she loves to heap praises upon. Once Roark lost all of his values, say he can no longer draw and design architecture, are people supposed to treat him any nicely?
Blaming other people for how stupid they are is just a dead horse already. But when you want your individuals to be treated well, people have to be convinced they are brilliant and are gonna contribute something to their own benefits in the first place to begin with. Otherwise, why would people not just obstruct them? Nobody is gonna let you do stuff to their own capitals and resources when you are not bringing over any benefit.
Now, let me begin my praises by saying I have read this book cover to cover at least 5 times, and skim-read it several times (maybe 7 or more than that) as well.
It also receives very favorable reviews in Vietnam, even by the most prolific IT programming blogger - to say of how this book definitely makes a presence here, although meaningfully or not is a whole another matter.
One of the things that I (and so should most countrymen of mine) didn't expect is that turned out Ayn Rand is supposed to be controversial in the U.S.
Well, perception (based on the blurb mostly) is that this is just a classic literature novel - and "a classic" should already mean a huge deal as Vietnamese culture sees it, the idea of something being acclaimed receiving criticisms is just alien to Vietnamese/East Asian culture.
...hard to resist the temptation of mentioning how funny of a culture that proclaims itself to be studious but cares less about reading books more than reading fiction; one that loves to touts it as something healthy students might well do in free time, while giving people no book of actual substance to read at all; and apparently reading high level stuff is for specialists and who else, none of your business if you don't study those stuff.
No matter how Ayn Rand would love to deny it, her novels' spirit is very Soviet Communistic in how brilliantly they portray industries, workers, and labour in its glory. No other Soviet author I have ever read has ever written those stuff as well as her. So exalted the fantastical vision that labour is supposed to be something people love doing. How human lofty and transcendental the acts of building, and crafting are. Such stuff.
Given that I hate my own culture to a certain extent, it shouldn't be hard to see why I was inspired and loved this novel a lot. I don't think I need to go on and on about those stuff. Still, I have to say the book does serve as a good antidote to goody-99-shoe cultures that loves to wield the morality card as an excuse to treat people like animals. Although not that it matters anyway since the more you try to stand up in Asian society the harder would they try to beat you down, not that they would fawn over you once they saw how shining your individuality and freedom are.
(...using those 2 buzzwords doesn't mean I like them.)
Rand's moral message does make a lot of sense if you live in communist countries (and perhaps confucian countries too, but maybe that's a seperate category). Although it's hard to remind myself all the experience I have had going through the school system, but I just felt like it could have been better if people would have just cut through all the craps and focus more on the actual process of learning. The country feels like could have gotten much better if the culture just cuts all the craps and focus more on the know-how and actual expertise. If only things were that simple... But well, at least the novel felt empowering to me when I read it, even though, as somebody has said, it's truly a childish fantasy.
> I no longer felt shame (which I shall touch on more)
These days I no longer believe East Asian cultures (with Japanese as the prime example) are shame-based cultures anymore. They are guilt-based cultures just like any other culture. They just happen to employ shame a lot as a weapon, anything that could serve their repressing purposes.
Even if you are immune to shaming and no longer care about what people have to say, it doesn't mean you can just easily get through life in Asia and live as individualistic as possible - it's not that easy, what make it impossible to live individualistic in the first place has never been the abstract culture itself, but the people around you and how they shall always make sure that culture is imposed, and make it hard for you if you don't conform to the cultural system. Like I already said, trying to defy would just result in more repression and negative feedbacks - nobody is gonna see how hot you are for being individualistic, they are just gonna find you insufferable and a burden to society. The number of outcasts who has an issue with such a cultural system shall always be outweighed by those Asians who think they figured out the way to life and there's no way other than their own current.
...these are the sort of things I have always wanted to tell those Westerners who think they are spreading individualism around the globe, or something like that. There's more that can be said, but well...
Also there's a lot to be said about the individualist vs collectivist dichotomy. But let me just say Asian cultures are much more selfish, insular than the label of "collectivist" seems to suggest. Plot twist: most people wouldn't care about anything you have to say if they don't please or bring benefits to them.
Urgh why did I link it to a badly paraphrased version of his blog post.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/366635-there-are-two-novels-that-can-change-a-bookish-fourteen-year
Although the quote should be popular enough already.
>One of the things that I (and so should most countrymen of mine) didn't expect is that turned out Ayn Rand is supposed to be controversial in the U.S.
>Well, perception (based on the blurb mostly) is that this is just a classic literature novel - and "a classic" should already mean a huge deal as Vietnamese culture sees it, the idea of something being acclaimed receiving criticisms is just alien to Vietnamese/East Asian culture.
Reasons can be attributed to: the lack of contexts; how people are not used to the American/Western style of book writing; how Vietnamese people never read books (I mean it literally - I'm sure Japan or America or China or any country shall love to bemoan some supposed "decline" of literacy or interest in books, but despite all that none shall have a culture that deep down considers reading books that are not textbooks or manga an abnormality, and a mindset so insular to any outside knowledge); absolute absence of understanding literacy skills due to failed education system; what make sense in English get lost in translation in Vietnamese; etc.
But anyway this is pretty funny since due to those reasons: Vietnamese people tend to be oblivious to the meanings of the Western imported books they read. As a very interesting (or so I think) case in point: Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends & Influence People has always been considered "hard to understand", since most people can't even make out what it's trying to say to even know what message is it sending - as if they are reading philosophical treatises or something!
...although to be fair, Dale's style of writing is way too meandering, the sort I would immediately use ChatGPT to summarize the entire of any article I came across with it online.
I don't really have much intelligent to say about Atlas Shrugged. I haven't revisited the book since when I wrote this review in 2006. And even then, I have to confess I did it as an audiobook, and so probably didn't absorb it all that well to begin with.
I did read with interest, however, your thoughts on how this book was received in Vietnam. I thought it was interesting how you said that Vietnamese people had a hard time understanding how a classic book could be contraversial, and still be a classic. I found that bit of cultural difference interesting.
I was 28 in 2006, when I first read this book (or listened to it on audiobook), and so while I was still young enough to do a lot of stupid things, I was old enough to have already formed opinions about the world.
One of the things about Ayn Rand's place in the United States (that I suspect you already know) is that the book is so political that people usually come to it with preconceived opinions based on their political alignments. People on the right love this book because they're told they're supposed to love this book, people on the left are told to hate this book before they even start reading it. My conceptions of this book were no doubt colored by my pre-existing political biases.
That being said, it is interesting to hear how you (and other Vietnamese people) were attracted to this book because of its arguments against collectivism. I hadn't thought of that before, but I suppose people who are looking to find relief from a collectivist society would find the opinions in this book to be a breath of fresh air.
America is, on the other hand, is already a very individualistic society, and often suffers from the associated excesses of an individualistic society. So perhaps that's why the book often doesn't have the same appeal to Americans--at least not to those on the left.
...but really, I should reread this book before I talk anymore about it. I'm due for a reread.
In one of the above comments, I said "Atlas Shrugged" when I meant "Fountainhead".
I wouldn't say Vietnamese people "were attracted to this book because of its arguments against collectivism". The individuality vs collectivism stuff is something I bring up myself on the comments, it's sort of a broader stretch when I talk about the book. I have yet to see a single Vietnamese who ever mentioned the dichotomy anywhere - so maybe only Vietnamese who are under Western influence would care for the dichotomy. Most people just think of "collectivism" as a normal word, "individualism" an abstract word that makes no sense or means nothing special, and their way of life just common sense - just that they are burdened with obligations. I personally find the dichotomy to be false, at least when they are applied easily on any society, as already said.
...well, and if anything, a lot of Vietnamese would be ready to kill people who dare to spout stuff like "I don't want to respect the elders and the higher-ups unconditionally".
People were attracted to it simply because it's a compelling book. Maybe the best way to say of how Vietnamese people see "The Fountainhead" would be... it's like a 1000-page version of a Socialist Realism classic book "How the Steel was Tempered" - even though I have never read the latter book yet [1]! I think John Rogers is more spot-on than he intended when he likened Rand's novels to fantasy novels. The takeaway from the book (as I saw from the aforementioned IT blog) is that you are supposed to stand up for yourself regardless collective pressures, just that.
...mostly because Vietnamese (actually I suspect East Asians in general) don't take books as something supposed to be impactful. You are supposed to only use them to learn (knowledge or morals), or read stories as entertainment - nothing more than that. It's not for no reason that 1984 and Animal Farm have already got Vietnamese translations, and people barely made any ruckus - well their titles are used as insults against people who are pro-government though, but that's a niche forum thingy.
So that's another reason why Vietnamese (or East Asians) find it weird classic books can be controversial: people just take them as stories, not something more.
[1] My highschool literature teacher once put on blackboard a quote from this book. It's by Nikolai Ostrovsky but she attributed it to Tolstoy. I meekly corrected her "Miss Teacher, that book isn't written by Tolstoy". The entire class roaringly laughed at me. Only until did she concede that perhaps she could be wrong, the classmates made some awing noises.
...it's supposed to be a "national standard school", although to be fair my class was on the bottom of the ranking (which one you got into is based on how high your entrance scores are).
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To add another note: When I say Rand's moral message makes sense, I was kinda saying that her argument that "everybody is selfish, and things have to begin from the ego" cut through the cultural fabric that seems to make whatever my own schools and society made us to do a virtue.
It's not so much as an argument against collectivism that appealed to me (although I do hate working in groups a lot), but an argument against hypocrisy, or moralizing. Rand was saying all that moralizing are hollow, and people's talents should matter more, and they shouldn't get trampled, etc. All that jazz.
...but well, like I said I was an idiot back then, and what made the book inspiring to me was perhaps that I was misdiagnosing the cause of my issue. I thought my countrymen were stupid idiots, turned out they have always been just cruel authoritarians.
I don't think you really need to reread The Fountainhead by the way. I doubt you would appreciate the book any better - unless you happen to have a penchant for all the labour spirit Rand herself would love to deny that I mentioned. And I for one suspect I would be able to reread it again without issues - it was easy to read it 5-7 times when you are still in the phase for it. I did try to read Atlas Shrugged - in some ways it's fascinating as typical of Rand (personally speaking), but I had gotten to the point when I can no longer handle her some of her characters' narcissist dialogues, and besides I doubted there was still anything I would have loved to get from it once I had outgrown her.
Forgot to mention I only managed to read about 50-100 pages of Atlas Shrugged.
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Storytelling time - make of them whatever you will, could be relevant or not:
One notable thing about my schools was how students with the high scores tend to have to be assigned class roles (since nobody else was volunteering). And once those roles were settled, you don't have any say to the class teacher.
...actually even before that, you already had no say - unless the teacher decides to relent since you pester and cry too much, and there was some possible alternative somehow. But in any case the class and division[1] representatives tend to have no choice in having to do all those tasks. The experience is typically that we have classmates yelling at us because of the xyz we didn't even sign up for. Worse, in my 9th grade the class teacher devised some system of tracking classmates' participation during lectures (how much they raised their hands) that was a nightmare to keep track of, either you do it incorrectly or you can't focus on your own lecture.
[1] Each classroom divided into 4 divisions of classmates.
This is pretty much a very typical communist thing: back in middle and primary schools, the best students sometimes were supposed to be assigned to sit by the lesser students to help the latter. I think you may find it funny to imagine how many ways this stuff backfired before reading the answer: lesser students, when they don't bother to study by themselves, even have the gall to scream at the top students that their answer is wrong, since the answer they copied from many other classmates is different! This isn't even mentioning how they pull away your notebook right before you even finish the exercises just to copy stuff.
So in these contexts, Rand does make a lot of sense - it's absolutely anti-productive to live in a system where the rules make it easier for the lowest common denominators, but make it hell for those that have the best capacity to change things for the better.
>Most people just think of "collectivism" as a normal word, "individualism" an abstract word that makes no sense or means nothing special...
...actually this depends on the supposed equivalent of this word in Vietnamese. "Chủ nghĩa tập thể" definitely makes no sense and means nothing special as much as the other word. "Tinh thần tập thể" is definitely a buzzphrase.
What I was trying to say with this badly phrased sentence is those words don't conjure the same reactions or feelings in the West like they do in Vietnam. The dictum is that you are supposed to be friendly, harmonious with communities and friends, don't be too selfish or something something - and you supposed to obey this dictum all because there's nothing wrong with it. The idea that "the collective shouldn't trample on the individual" is just alien, something people would likely to dismiss "Well, we are not suppressing or trampling anybody here? We just find little Nguyễn to be too reserved and he should be more outgoing, isn't that a good thing?".
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