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444
Roark has to face the swinishness
of the masses, the tastelessness of
the vulgar, but the most dangerous
heresy he strives to extirpate is
something Ayn Rand calls "collec–
tivism," a protean word respec–
tively identified with "the common
good," altruism, planning, democ–
racy, humanitarianism, Russia,
Germany, housing projects, social
workers, and mass imbecility. The
collectivists hate men who make
$40 a week or over, independent
artists, Nature, functional architec–
ture. Their spokesman in
The
Fountainhead
and Roark's only re–
spectable antagonist is Ellsworth
Toohey, a diabolical newspaper
columnist and art critic who con–
spires to paralyze society by preach–
ing the vicious doctrine of self-ab–
negation and by deliberately en–
shrining mediocrity. Toohey pulls
down genius, exalts the "second–
handers" (Miss Rand's term for
timid, second-rate group-men), and
almost perverts America with his
gospel of sentimental altruism.
It looks at hrst as
if
Roark is
going to be sucked into this hu–
manitarian bog. Like Frank Lloyd
Wright, whose ideas Miss Rand
misconstrues and perverts, Roark
serves his apprenticeship with some
one meant to suggest Louis Sulli–
van and then begins his slow ascent
to notoriety. Somewhere between
page one and page 754 his spiritual
and physical complement, Domi–
nique, marries several ·times-first
to a second-hander architect and
then to a Hearstian publisher–
while Roark builds buildings that
aren't appreciated. Toward the end
PARTISAN REVIEW
of the novel he finds out that the
plans for his housing project have
been tampered with by the second–
handers, that they have added fea–
tures of their own to the clean sym–
metry of his original designs. His
r~sponse
is as simple as his archi–
tectural principles. He blows up
the uncompleted constructions.
At the trial Roark explains to
the jury that his action was nec–
essary and inevitable. And it is at
thi~
point that Roark makes the
statement which Miss Rand tells
us is the key to
The Fountainhead:
"I ·wished
to
come here and say
that I am a man who does not
exist for others. It had to be said.
The world is perishing from an
or!Xy
cf
self-sacrificing." The true
creator, he argues before a remark–
ably receptive jury, serves no one.
He lives for himself. He simply re–
sponds to self-generative primal
forces. A man can be either a para–
sitical borrower or an independent
creator. "All that which proceeds
from man's independent ego is
good. All that which proceeds from
man's dependence upon men is
evil." It is the creator, Roark con–
tinues, who denies, opposes, per–
secutes, and exploits. "The only
good which men can do to one an–
other and the only statement of
their proper relationship is-Hands
off!" America, "the noblest coun–
try in the history of men," was
erected on that principle, not "on
selfless service, sacrifice, renuncia–
tion, or any precept of altruism. It
was based on a man's right to the
pursuit of happiness ... a private,
personal, selfish motive. Look at
