The Fountainhead: Part 1

On the recommendation of a friend I'm going to be reading Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead."

This is the book that started Rand down codifying "objectiveism," her hyper-capitalistic idea of the world. So, I'm going to be reading it, and periodically commenting on some stuff that seems to stand out.

I've just finished Chapter 1. And I'm noticing the same problem that I had when I read Atlas Shrugged, the Rand's habit of creating strawman characters she can set up to be knocked down by her ubermensch protagonists.

In Chapter 1, Howard Roark has an exchange with with his former Dean of the architectural school. Here's the part that stood out to me:

"But I don't understand. Why do you want me to think that this is great architecture?" He pointed to a picture of the Parthenon."

"That," said the Dean "is the Parthenon."

I've had professors who have been full of shit before, but Rand has created a Dean of an Architecture school who can't even express why something is considered good architecture. Apparently Roark's big problem is that he went to a school where the facility are mentally handicapped. Sure, Roark is going to look good compared to these kind of cartoons of characters.

Second thing: Roark's Rule's

"What can be done by one substance must never be done by another"

Why not? What set that thought off for him was that the Parthenon's columns were originally based off wooden utilitarian columns, and the character believes that the Greeks were just copying. But it doesn't seem to occur to Roark that maybe they just did that design on the marble columns because it looks good.

Roark's first rule just seems to be arbitrarily restricting the palette of choices for architectural design. Of course, the strawman Dean just sits there flabbergasted.

But it's only chapter one, and it's pretty enjoyable read so far. And just because a book uses strawmen doesn't mean it won't have good ideas to express, it's just a particular pet peeve of mine.