Fountainhead

Notes

Peter Keating / Howard Roark
Protagonists rewarded for their ego, narcissism, selfishness
Central female characters portrayed as weak-minded, submissive, exercise an empty form of power
Construction and sex evoke the same emotions in Roark - power, control, domination, phallic symbol of modernist skyscraper
"Rape" scene - likened to Roark's first experience of walking through a construction which he designed.
Catherine => weak, infantile, "we wouldn't love you if you were graceful as a duchess" (p245)

"Of all the crafts, yours is the most important. Important, not in the amount of money you might make, not in the degree of artists skill you might exhibit, but in the service you render to your fellow men. You are those who provide mankind's shelter...You are not lackeys of the rich. You are crusaders of the cause of the underprivileged and the unsheltered...and when our system of society collapses, the craft of builders will not be swept under, it will be swept up to greater prominence, and greater recognition." (p251)

"The worst curse of poverty was the lack of privacy; only the very rich or the very poor of the city could enjoy their summer vacations; the very rich, because they had private estates; the very poor, because they did not mind the feel and smell of one another's flesh." (p530-531)

"Something's got to be done about the masses...They've got to be led. They don't know what's good for them. What I mean is, I can't understand why people of culture and position like us understand the great ideal of collectivism so well and are willing to sacrifice our personal advantages, while the working man who has everything to gain from it remains so stupidly indifferent. I can't understand why the workers in this country have so little sympathy with collectivism" (p582)

"Jules Fougler said in last Sunday's Banner that in the world of the future the theater will not be necessary at all. He says that the daily life of the common man is as much a work of art in itself as the best Shakespearean tragedy. In the future there will be no need for a dramatist. The critic will simply observe the life of the masses and evaluate its artistic points for the public." (p583)