On this day in1943, Ayn RandsThe Fountainheadwas published. It tells the story of an impoverished architecture school dropout, Howard Roark, and how he navigatesor fails to navigatethe New York architecture scene. Rand is a hero in many minds and a villain in many more. And why wouldnt she be? She wrote, in addition to her fiction, books titledThe Virtue of SelfishnessandCapitalism: The Unknown Ideal. The virtue ofselfishness? The reckless and greedy pursuit ofgainas anideal? How awful. Doesnt she know there is more to life than money?

Of course she did. To claim that sheonlycared about money and said that people shouldonlycare about money is to show that you either havent read her books or at least havent understood them. This isnt to say that theres a subtlety you missed in between the long speeches and the rough-bordering-on-violent sex. This is to say that you have missed what is plainly there.

ConsiderThe Fountainhead. I tried to read it in college, gave up, and finally read it (along withAtlas Shrugged) as a graduate student.The Fountainheadis an entire novel about an artist who refuses to sell out. It seems odd in a writer famous for her paeans to capitalism and profit. To focus solely on what she says about profit and selfishness is to neglect her deeper ethic of fidelity to objective standards of right and wrong.

Unyielding and unwavering commitment to principle is why Roark wont budge. He cares about designing to his standards and being faithful to his vision of what abuildingshould be, how that changes based on the materials available, and what the building is being designedfor. He doesnt care about being famous. He doesnt care about being rich. He doesnt care about getting credit. He cares about his vision and seeing it fulfilled.

By contrast, his nemesis Peter Keating is the star of the New York architecture world. He is rich. He is famous. But he is a fraud and unprincipled faker. He designs poorly but after the style of the day as dictated in part by Ellsworth Toohey, an intellectual and architecture critic who surrounds himself with mediocrity and who works to destroy genuine excellence (he hates Roark, therefore). Keatings only good work isnt his work at all: it is Roarks. But Roark, again, doesnt want credit. He just wants to see his vision made a reality.

Keating is commissioned to design a housing project. As usual, he gets Roark to do the design work for him, and again Roark wants only to see that the building is done exactly to his specifications. But then other people involved in the project get their hands on it. They add an element here, a little theater there. They mangle Roarks vision, and Keating does nothing to stop them. Roark does: he dynamites the building.

The book has all the elements that make a Rand novel an Ayn Rand novel. One-dimensional, perfect or perfectly flawed characters who are written to highlight very specific virtues or vices. Courtroom drama. Long speeches. Sex. At the end of the novel, Roark stands triumphantly atop a tower he is building, a beacon of the triumph of reason and principle over vanity and avarice.

Object, if you will and must, to some or most or all of Rands philosophical and ethical position. I myself disagree with her atheism, among other things. But before you cast aspersions on a writer and a stack of books that have had a marked influence on so many people because you disagree with her exaltation of selfishness, think it possible that you misread her.

[Originally Published at Forbes]

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