442
congratulation on the incontestable
superiority of their more scientific
methods. Scientific criticism has
also its booby-traps, demanding
ex–
traordinary imagination and char–
acter to escape the snares of the
New Academy. Few real literary
personalities emerge from it, and
it seems
to
rely too often on mere
application of good methods, as if
the subjective issue could be
ducked. At least the claim can be
made for Paul Rosenfeld that he
• was, on occasion, as Miss Moore
says, a poet.
"Whom do I write for?" he once
asked. "For the Archangel Ga–
briel!"
No remark he ever made to me
was more characteristic. He · be–
lieved quite simply that he had
observed such wonders on the
earth, especially in the handiwork
of his companions, that his account
of them must be addressed direct–
ly-air mail, special delivery, as it
were-to the highest echelons in
Heaven.
GERALD SYKES
Remarks On a Best Seller
T
HE FouNTAINHEAD, published
in 1943, has already sold some–
thing like 350,000 copies and has
been on the "best seller" list for
three or four years. This, in itself,
is no excuse for its extended treat–
ment here. It has simply enjoyed
the success shared by other bad
novels w,hich are 754 pages long
and boast of heroines with long legs
and high breasts. But there are
PARTISAN · REVIEW
other facts about the popularity of
Ayn Rand's novel which give it a
sociological if not a literary signifi–
cance and make it the kind of nov–
el, to quote an advertisement, "that
becomes an active force shaping
the lives of its readers."
Unlike its popular counterparts,
this novel was not launched with
the noise and lights we have now
come to expect whenever a new
and sultry hussy is about to set
forth on her erotic adventures. Ap–
parently the book achieved its repu–
tation through genuine reader re–
sponse. Ayn Rand writes in an
open letter to "every reader who
had the intelligence to understand
The Fountainhead,
the integrity to
like it and the courage to speak
about it," that twelve publishers
rejected the manuscript on the
grounds that it was "too intellec–
tual" and "too unconventional."
But Ayn Rand's readers prosely–
tized for her, spreading her mes–
sage over the land, and even though
Bobbs-Merrill has not stinted in
advertising the novel, it belongs
very definitely to the category of
books that people thrust into their
friends' hands with the air of
evangelists dispensing religious
tracts.
When we realize that the pro–
tagonist of
The Fountainhead
is
not Forever Amber but a man, an
architect, and a philosopher, its
success becomes all the more re–
markable. It is true that Miss Rand
makes real concessions to the slicks.
The hero, Howard Roark, has mag–
nificent muscles and
o~ange
hair
and rapes the heroine, Dominique
Francon, with considerable aplomb.
