Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Fountainhead Through A Glass, Darkly

Courtesy of Stephen Hicks, here's a peculiar essay on The Fountainhead. I've been trying to make sense of it. 

There's this:
In spite of being in love with Howard Roark, Dominique Francon marries first B. Peter Keating and then C. Gail Wynand.
Did the essayist imagine that Gail and Peter are middle names? I think this was meant:
In spite of being in love with A) Howard Roark, Dominique Francon marries first B) Peter Keating and then C) Gail Wynand.
Then there's this, also about Dominique:
Karen Horney says,

By various experiences with men, she strives to humiliate herself in order to experience some of the pain she believes Roark is feeling. Sex for her is a degrading experience, a subduing one because carried on with inferior men. . . . The obtaining of satisfaction by submersion in misery is an expression of the general principle of finding satisfaction by losing the self in something greater, by dissolving the individuality, by getting rid of the self with its doubts, conflicts, pains, limitations, and isolation. (Horney Karen, Qtd. in Deane, Paul, "Ayn Rand's Neurotic Personalities of Our Times." Revue des langues, vivantes, Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, 1970, pp. 125-99)
The first funny here is "Horney Karen". But the essayist clearly means "Horney, Karen". 

What's more, that quote is improperly sourced somehow. The article by Paul Deane is real, but he was the one discussing Rand, based on Horney's theories.

Finally, there's this closing sentence:
Rand is offering her view of an altruistic utopian society, a society that is best for all, not the few.
An altruistic utopian society,
of a Randian variety?
I question the writer's sobriety!

(Or can it be agreed
he simply failed to read
Roark's lengthy courtroom creed?)

No comments: