WALTARGET CATHEDRAL

Somewhere between the garish Art Deco setpieces and the relentless monologuing, Ayn Rand's 1943 opus reveals itself as the literary equivalent of a Smashing Pumpkins B-side: grandiose, self-important, and convinced of its own genius in a way that becomes almost endearing in its complete lack of self-awareness.

Howard Roark blows into the novel's first pages like a frontman too cool to acknowledge the audience, standing on a cliff, naked, basically posing for an album cover that screams "I have transcended your petty concerns." If The Fountainhead were a band, it would be the kind that insists on a 40-minute soundcheck and refuses to play encores because encores are for people who need validation from the crowd.

Rand's prose has the subtlety of a John Zorn freakout—all jagged edges and confrontational posturing. Her characters don't converse so much as declaim. Every sentence lands like a thesis statement, every paragraph a dissertation defense. Roark speaks in the kind of aphorisms that would look great on a poster in a first-year philosophy student's dorm room, right next to the Scarface poster and the Bob Marley tapestry. "I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life," he announces, and you can almost hear the Minor Threat playing in the background.

The architecture at the novel's center functions less as a setting than as an extended metaphor that Rand beats like a drum machine. Roark's modernist buildings are good; traditional buildings are bad. That's it. That's the whole sonic palette. It's like listening to a band that only knows two chords but plays them with such conviction that you almost forget they haven't learned the bridge. The buildings become physical manifestations of ego, each steel beam a middle finger to collective society.

Dominique Francon emerges as the book's most fascinating and frustrating figure—a woman who recognizes genius and attempts to destroy it, which in Rand's moral universe makes her a tragic romantic rather than, you know, deeply problematic. Her relationship with Roark veers into territory that should make contemporary readers deeply uncomfortable, yet Rand presents it as the height of passion. It reads like a Nine Inch Nails song if Trent Reznor had minored in Nietzsche and attended cocktail parties.

Ellsworth Toohey, the villainous critic, is such a cartoonish representation of collectivism that he practically twirls a mustache while explaining his evil plans in extended monologues. He's less a character than a straw man in a three-piece suit, a convenient vessel for everything Rand despises. His takedown of Roark's work reads like a bad Pitchfork review written by someone trying too hard to sound smart—which is, perhaps, the most savage thing Rand could have imagined.

The novel's climax—Roark's courtroom speech defending his decision to dynamite a housing project—runs for approximately 7,000 words. It's the literary equivalent of a side-long prog-rock track: technically ambitious, occasionally thrilling, ultimately exhausting, and probably 4,000 words longer than it needs to be.

What makes The Fountainhead compelling despite its excesses is Rand's absolute conviction. Like an early Sonic Youth record, it commits fully to its aesthetic even when that aesthetic becomes alienating. At 700+ pages, it is overlong by at least half—Rand's editor clearly shared her philosophy about not compromising. It's undeniably powerful, bulldozer-like. Like a Captain Beefheart album, it creates its own universe. But it convinced millions that being interesting is the same as being right.