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THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
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To Frank O’Connor
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Copyright (c) 1943 The Bobbs-Merrill Company
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Copyright (c) renewed 1971 by Ayn Rand.
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All rights reserved. For information address The Bobbs-Merrill Company, a
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division of Macmillan, Inc., 866 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022.
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Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition
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Many people have asked me how I feel about the fact that The Fountainhead has
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been in print for twenty-five years. I cannot say that I feel anything in
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particular, except a kind of quiet satisfaction. In this respect, my attitude
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toward my writing is best expressed by a statement of Victor Hugo: "If a writer
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wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away."
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Certain writers, of whom I am one, do not live, think or write on the range of
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the moment. Novels, in the proper sense of the word, are not written to vanish
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in a month or a year. That most of them do, today, that they are written and
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published as if they were magazines, to fade as rapidly, is one of the sorriest
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aspects of today’s literature, and one of the clearest indictments of its
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dominant esthetic philosophy: concrete-bound, journalistic Naturalism which has
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now reached its dead end in the inarticulate sounds of panic.
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Longevity-predominantly, though not exclusively-is the prerogative of a literary
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school which is virtually non-existent today: Romanticism. This is not the place
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for a dissertation on the nature of Romantic fiction, so let me state--for the
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record and for the benefit of those college students who have never been allowed
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to discover it--only that Romanticism is the conceptual school of art. It deals,
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not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental,
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universal problems and values of human existence. It does not record or
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photograph; it creates and projects. It is concerned--in the words of
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Aristotle--not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and
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ought to be.
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And for the benefit of those who consider relevance to one’s own time as of
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crucial importance, I will add, in regard to our age, that never has there been
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a time when men have so desperately needed a projection of things as they ought
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to be.
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I do not mean to imply that I knew, when I wrote it, that The Fountainhead would
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remain in print for twenty-five years. I did not think of any specific time
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period. I knew only that it was a book that ought to live. It did.
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But that I knew it over twenty-five years ago--that I knew it while The
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1
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Fountainhead was being rejected by twelve publishers, some of whom declared that
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it was "too intellectual,"
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"too controversial" and would not sell because no audience existed for it--that
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was the difficult part of its history; difficult for me to bear. I mention it
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here for the sake of any other writer of my kind who might have to face the same
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battle--as a reminder of the fact that it can be done.
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It would be impossible for me to discuss The Fountainhead or any part of its
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history without mentioning the man who made it possible for me to write it: my
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husband, Frank O’Connor.
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In a play I wrote in my early thirties, Ideal, the heroine, a screen star,
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speaks for me when she says: "I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of
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my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know
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that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of
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seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit,
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too, needs fuel. It can run dry."
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Frank was the fuel. He gave me, in the hours of my own days, the reality of that
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sense of life, which created The Fountainhead--and he helped me to maintain it
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over a long span of years when there was nothing around us but a gray desert of
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people and events that evoked nothing but contempt and revulsion. The essence of
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the bond between us is the fact that neither of us has ever wanted or been
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tempted to settle for anything less than the world presented in The
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Fountainhead. We never will.
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If there is in me any touch of the Naturalistic writer who records "real-life"
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dialogue for use in a novel, it has been exercised only in regard to Frank. For
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instance, one of the most effective lines in The Fountainhead comes at the end
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of Part II, when, in reply to Toohey’s question: "Why don’t you tell me what you
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think of me?" Roark answers: "But I don’t think of you." That line was Frank’s
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answer to a different type of person, in a somewhat similar context. "You’re
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casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return," was said by Frank to
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me, in regard to my professional position. I gave that line to Dominique at
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Roark’s trial.
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I did not feel discouragement very often, and when I did, it did not last longer
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than overnight. But there was one evening, during the writing of The
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Fountainhead, when I felt so profound an indignation at the state of "things as
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they are" that it seemed as if I would never regain the energy to move one step
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farther toward "things as they ought to be." Frank talked to me for hours, that
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night. He convinced me of why one cannot give up the world to those one
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despises. By the time he finished, my discouragement was gone; it never came
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back in so intense a form.
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I had been opposed to the practice of dedicating books; I had held that a book
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is addressed to any reader who proves worthy of it. But, that night, I told
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Frank that I would dedicate The Fountainhead to him because he had saved it. And
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one of my happiest moments, about two years later, was given to me by the look
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on his face when he came home, one day, and saw the page-proofs of the book,
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headed by the page that stated in cold, clear, objective print: To Frank
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O’Connor.
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I have been asked whether I have changed in these past twenty-five years. No, I
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am the same--only more so. Have my ideas changed? No, my fundamental
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convictions, my view of life and of man, have never changed, from as far back as
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I can remember, but my knowledge of their applications has grown, in scope and
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in precision. What is my present evaluation of The Fountainhead? I am as proud
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2
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of it as I was on the day when I finished writing it.
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Was The Fountainhead written for the purpose of presenting my philosophy? Here,
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I shall quote from The Goal of My Writing, an address I gave at Lewis and Clark
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College, on October 1, 1963: "This is the motive and purpose of my writing; the
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