Roy Gaiot
Ayn Rand?s The Fountainhead is the only novel that I ever tossed into the recycling after reading the last page. I still remember the THUNK of paperback against the side of the bin. I had read it out of a sense of professional obligation, having worked with and around architects for a long time. For several generations of architects, The Fountainhead?s architect-protagonist Howard Roark is an inspiration. If you Google ?famous fictional architect,? you?ll get a list with his name at the top. Roark was the top fictional architect chosen by Building.co.uk in 2009. He was the first mentioned on a similar list published by The Guardian in 2012. He was number two on Architectural Record?s list from 2008, but only because they cheated, arguing the non-fictional life of Frank Lloyd Wright was dramatic enough to knock Roark out of the top spot. The existence of a single ?most famous fictional architect? is more than a little strange. It?s rare for one character to become the dominant representation of a profession: there are dozens of fictional doctors, cops, politicians, lawyers, scientists, journalists, and businesspeople. But Roark is to architects something like what Sherlock Holmes is to private detectives. He is the central depiction of a profession within fiction. But Roark is more than that. He is also the leading man in one of the literary touchstones of the political Right wing.
Decades after The Fountainhead?s 1943 publication, Rand still has many prominent lib...