I’m done: an incomplete book review of The Fountainhead

I first read The Fountainhead when I was 18. It was a joy to read—never before had I read something that spoke so directly to my soul (Lord of the Rings excepted). I stayed up until 2am reading it during a week that I was teaching at a summer camp. I was enchanted.

(Yes, I realize that is weird to say about a book involving architecture and politics and NYC.)

This summer, I re-read The Fountainhead. While I still greatly enjoyed it, I was less enchanted. Now that I’m older, it’s easier to see the flaws and holes in Ayn Rand’s thinking.

However, I was struck at how much it could have been written today. It’s a book about media and public opinion just as much as it’s about architecture and the “ideal” man. If I were to pair it with another current book as a double-feature, I would put it with Vox Day’s SJWs always Lie. SJWAL lays a groundwork of theory, and TF dramatizes an SJW takeover.

That’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’ll do another post sometime when I’m more awake that talks about the weaknesses in the book.

What (or rather, who) I’m here to talk about is Dominique Francon. I loved her when I was 18 and I was surprised at how much I loved her today. She embodies a solid 1/3 of my own character, someone who is competent, cognizant of the world, but not of it.

In many ways, Dominique embodies the struggle that many of us have—the ability to see beyond what the crowd wants and what the media tells us we should feel, but the compassion and the weakness to try to get other people to understand and think for themselves. Even writing this sentence makes me second guess myself. This blog is a form of shouting into the void. Perhaps it’s futile, but reasoning with a CROWD will never work. You can only reason with individuals.

To punish herself for this greatest of crimes, she decides to degrade herself to the lowest possible depths by utterly obliterating her own Will. Her last act as a free woman is to marry Peter Keating, someone who evokes so many feelings in me that I can’t come up with a pithy description for him. As a man, he’s repulsive—very much seduction along the lines of “I did everything you asked, why don’t you want to jump my bones?”

Dominique lives for years without expressing a Will of her own, or really any desire or personal thought. Such exquisite discipline.

Now, I’m not saying that this is a good way to live. In fact, I think it is an absolutely horrible way to live and that nobody should do it. I firmly believe that the Human Will is one of the most beautiful and powerful things on this earth, and that it is a terrible and tragic event for any human being to submit his or her Will to anything short of God the Father Almighty. That said, I understand Dominique’s reasons for doing so. She was punishing herself.

And so Dominique will stand as my inspiration during the next few months at my day job, during which I will cease to have any opinions of my own. After my post last night and a good talk with a coworker who knows what’s up, I’ve decided that it’s no longer worth it to try to exert any of my Will at my job. I’m done. With a few exceptions* (there are some lines I absolutely will not cross), I will no longer provide any extra value at work. Minimal thinking, minimal creativity, just getting the job done. My boss gets what he wants.

I said so this afternoon, in a conversation. “Whatever you want.” My Ne/Fe picked up on a reaction—he was pleased, like I had finally submitted to his wishes. If that’s what he wants to think, fine. I’m done caring, in the way that I normally care about the work that I do.

I’m going to save all my caring for the work that I do for myself, on my own time. It’s going to become what I labor over in love, not my day job.

During the times when it gets tough to stomach because something is wrong and it would be so easy to fix, I’ll think of Dominique and her resolve at going to bed with a pawing, mumbling half-man every night and hosting high-society parties with not a hair or word out of place.

Some people might call this malicious compliance.

They might be right.