Customer Reviews

Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead

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Most people don't read literary criticism for pleasure. With good reason: most of it's pretentious, muddle-headed, even corrupt, spouting the poisonous dogma that your mind can't see facts, all it sees is warped by "class, race, and gender." (Then how can they claim that as fact?)

This book is a glowing exception.

It's a clear, straightforward, helpful, and fascinating look at Ayn Rand's immortal classic, written by noted scholars. Here are partial contents:

"The Fountainhead" from Notebook to Novel: The Composition of Ayn Rand's First Ideal Man, by Shoshana Milgram

Howard Roark and Frank Lloyd Wright, by Michael Berliner

Adapting "The Fountainhead" to Film, by Jeff Britting

"The Fountainhead" as a Romantic Novel, by Tore Boeckmann

What Might Be and Ought to Be: Aristotle's "Poetics" and "The Fountainhead," by Tore Boeckmann

Three Inspirations for the Ideal Man: Cyrus Paltons, Enjolras, and Cyrano de Bergerac, by Shoshana Milgram

Unborrowed Vision: Independence and Egoism in "The Fountainhead," by Tara Smith

Rorak's Integrity, by Dina Schein

A Moral Dynamiting, by Amy Peikoff

Highly recommended! Don't miss it!

Robert Mayhew's collection of essays is a fine addition to the growing literature on the fiction of Ayn Rand, next to his previous Essays on Anthem and Essays on We the Living (and the upcoming Essays on Atlas Shrugged). I've read most of the essays in this volume and can particularly recommend Onkar Ghate's, which I think really captures the essence and meaning of the novel. Ghate discusses the novel from the perspective of the conflict between the creators and the second handers and makes many excellent points. Highly recommended.

This book is a must read after you finish The Fountainhead. I still reference this book. the insights are invaluable.

A superb collection of essays on Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead". I read it specifically for its philosophical essays. The essay on Independence by UT Austin Professor, Dr Tara Smith, is worth the price of the book itself. Onkar Ghate's essay on the Creators and their basic motivation is stellar, too. The essays by Tore Boeckman, discussing Issues in aesthetics, are great but slightly difficult to digest, given that he is doing original work in this field.

The essays on the novel's history are worth reading, though I wasn't too Interested in them. All in all, this is the kind of scholarship that is deserved by this great classic. Two thumbs up!!

This is the third of four volumes edited by Robert Mayhew on Ayn Rand's four major works of fiction. As with the other volumes the essays are not particularly critical (all the authors are associated with Leonard Peikoff's Ayn Rand Institute, a quasi religious organization) but are valuable nonetheless. Shoshana Milgram's essay on Rand's writing The Fountainhead is excellent. Milgram demonstrates that Rand did in fact go through a Nietzschean phase in her work. Michael Berliner's essay on Howard Roark and Frank Lloyd Wright is also quite good.

And I should know. Read this book? Girl, I'm sorry to say I'm LIVING this book. I'd love to say more, but you probably figured already, the microphone is always on. Voice to skull. I love this place. The people are really nice. I love this place. The people are really nice. I love this place. The people are really nice. I love this place. The people are really nice. I love this place. The people are really nice. I love this place. The people are really nice. I love this place. The people are really nice. I love this place. The people are really nice. Btw, notice the photo of Rand? She looks REALLY trans.