best scene in The Fountainhead

[anonymous]

what do you think is the best scene in The Fountainhead? here is a
candidate:

> “Can’t you be human for once in your life?”
> “What?”
> “Human! Simple. Natural.”
> “But I am.”
> “Can’t you ever relax?”
> Roark smiled, because he was sitting on the window sill, leaning
> sloppily against the wall, his long legs hanging loosely, the
> cigarette held without pressure between limp fingers.
> “That’s not what I mean!” said Keating. “Why can’t you go
> out for a drink with me?”
> “What for?”
> “Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so
> damn serious? Can’t you ever do things without reason, just like
> everybody else? You’re so serious, so old. Everything’s important
> with you, everything’s great, significant in some way, every minute,
> even when you keep still. Can’t you ever be comfortable—and
> unimportant?”
> “No.”
> “Don’t you get tired of the heroic?”
> “What’s heroic about me?”
> “Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. It’s not what you do.
> It’s what you make people feel around you.”
> “What?”
> “The un-normal. The strain. When I’m with you—it’s always
> like a choice. Between you—and the rest of the world. I don’t want
> that kind of a choice. I don’t want to be an outsider. I want to
> belong. There’s so much in the world that’s simple and pleasant.
> It’s not all fighting and renunciation. It is—with you.”
> “What have I ever renounced?”
> “Oh, you’ll never renounce anything! You’d walk over corpses
> for what you want. But it’s what you’ve renounced by never wanting
> it.”
> “That’s because you can’t want both.”
> “Both what?”
> “Look, Peter. I’ve never told you any of those things about me.
> What makes you see them? I’ve never asked you to make a choice
> between me and anything else. What makes you feel that there is a
> choice involved? What makes you uncomfortable when you feel
> that—since you’re so sure I’m wrong?”
> “I ... I don’t know.” He added: “I don’t know what you’re
> talking about.” And then he asked suddenly:
> “Howard, why do you hate me?”
> “I don’t hate you.”
> “Well, that’s it! Why don’t you hate me at least?”
> “Why should I?”
> “Just to give me something. I know you can’t like me. You can’t
> like anybody. So it would be kinder to acknowledge people’s
> existence by hating them.”
> “I’m not kind, Peter.”
> And as Keating found nothing to say, Roark added:
> “Go home, Peter. You got what you wanted. Let it go at that. See
> you Monday.”

[Justin Mallone]

I actually agree it's the best, but I don't like wins by default, so here's another candidate:

> “You’re Howard Roark?” he asked. “I like your buildings. That’s why I didn’t want to meet you. So I wouldn’t have to be sick every time I looked at them. I wanted to go on thinking that they had been done by somebody who matched them.”
> “What if I do?”
> “That doesn’t happen.”
> But he sat down on the edge of the crumpled bed and slumped forward, his glance like a sensitive scale weighing Roark’s features, impertinent in its open action of appraisal.
> “Listen,” said Roark, speaking clearly and very carefully, “I want you to do a statue for the Stoddard Temple. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll write you a contract right now, stating that I will owe you a million dollars damages if I hire another sculptor or if your work is not used.”
> “You can speak normal. I’m not drunk. Not all the way. I understand.”
> “Well?”
> “Why did you pick me?”
> “Because you’re a good sculptor.”
> “That’s not true.”
> “That you’re good?”
> “No. That it’s your reason. Who asked you to hire me?”
> “Nobody.”
> “Some woman I laid?”
> “I don’t know any women you laid.”
> “Stuck on your building budget?”
> “No. The budget’s unlimited.”
> “Feel sorry for me?”
> “No. Why should I?”
> “Want to get publicity out of that shooting-Toohey business?”
> “Good God, no!”
> “Well, what then?”
> “Why do you fish for all that nonsense instead of the simplest reason?”
> “Which?”
> “That I like your work.”
> “Sure. That’s what they all say. That’s what we’re all supposed to say and to believe. Imagine what would happen if somebody blew the lid off that one! So, all right, you like my work. What’s the real reason?”
> “I like your work.”
> Mallory spoke earnestly, his voice sober.
> “You mean you saw the things I’ve done, and you liked them—you—yourself—alone—without anyone telling you that you should like them or why you should like them—and you decided that you wanted me, for that reason—only for that reason—without knowing anything about me or giving a damn—only because of the things I’ve done and ... and what you saw in them—only because of that, you decided to hire me, and you went to the bother of finding me, and coming here, and being insulted—only because you saw—and what you saw made me important to you, made you want me? Is that what you mean?”
> “Just that,” said Roark.
> The things that pulled Mallory’s eyes wide were frightening to see. Then he shook his head, and said very simply, in the tone of soothing himself:
> “No.”
> He leaned forward. His voice sounded dead and pleading.
> “Listen, Mr. Roark. I won’t be mad at you. I just want to know. All right, I see that you’re set on having me work for you, and you know you can get me, for anything you say, you don’t have to sign any million-dollar contract, look at this room, you know you’ve got me, so why shouldn’t you tell me the truth? It won’t make any difference to you-and it’s very important to me.”
> “What’s very important to you?”
> “Not to ... not to ... Look. I didn’t think anybody’d ever want me again. But you do. All right. I’ll go through it again. Only I don’t want to think again that I’m working for somebody who ... who likes my work. That, I couldn’t go through any more. I’ll feel better if you tell me. I’ll ... I’ll feel calmer. Why should you put on an act for me? I’m nothing. I won’t think less of you, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Don’t you see? It’s much more decent to tell me the truth. Then it will be simple and honest. I’ll respect you more. Really, I will.”
> “What’s the matter with you, kid? What have they done to you? Why do you want to say things like that?”
> “Because ...” Mallory roared suddenly, and then his voice broke, and his head dropped, and he finished in a flat whisper: “because I’ve spent two years”—his hand circled limply indicating the room—“that’s how I’ve spent them—trying to get used to the fact that what you’re trying to tell me doesn’t exist....”
> Roark walked over to him, lifted his chin, knocking it upward, and said:
> “You’re a God-damn fool. You have no right to care what I think of your work, what I am or why I’m here. You’re too good for that. But if you want
> to know it—I think you’re the best sculptor we’ve got. I think it, because your figures are not what men are, but what men could be—and should be. Because you’ve gone beyond the probable and made us see what is possible, but possible only through you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt for humanity than any work I’ve ever seen. Because you have a magnificent respect for the human being. Because your figures are the heroic in man. And so I didn’t come here to do you a favor or because I felt sorry for you or because you need a job pretty badly. I came for a simple, selfish reason—the same reason that makes a man choose the cleanest food he can find. It’s a law of survival, isn’t it?—to seek the best. I didn’t come for your sake. I came for mine.”
> Mallory jerked himself away from him, and dropped face down on the bed, his two arms stretched out, one on each side of his head, hands closed into two fists. The thin trembling of the shirt cloth on his back showed that he was sobbing; the shirt cloth and the fists that twisted slowly, digging into the pillow. Roark knew that he was looking at a man who had never cried before. He sat down on the side of the bed and could not take his eyes off the twisting wrists, even though the sight was hard to bear.
> After a while Mallory sat up. He looked at Roark and saw the calmest, kindest face—a face without a hint of pity. It did not look like the countenance of men who watch the agony of another with a secret pleasure, uplifted by the sight of a beggar who needs their compassion; it did not bear the cast of the hungry soul that feeds upon another’s humiliation. Roark’s face seemed tired, drawn at the temples, as if he had just taken a beating. But his eyes were serene and they looked at Mallory quietly, a hard, clean glance of understanding—and respect.
> “Lie down now,” said Roark. “Lie still for a while.”
> “How did they ever let you survive?”

There's more good stuff in the whole scene but I think this gives the idea.

[Elliot Temple]

what about this one? there's also the conversation with the dean near the start.

> “If you don’t approve, why don’t you say so?”
> “Have I said anything about not approving?”
> He thought back carefully. “No,” he admitted. “No, you haven’t.... But it’s the way you put things.”
> “Would you rather I put it in a more involved way—as I did about Vincent Knowlton?”
> “I’d rather ...” Then he cried: “I’d rather you’d express an opinion, God damn it, just once!”
> She asked, in the same level monotone: “Whose opinion, Peter? Gordon Prescott’s? Ralston Holcombe’s? Ellsworth Toohey’s?”
> He turned to her, leaning on the arm of his chair, half rising, suddenly tense. The thing between them was beginning to take shape. He had a first hint of words that would name it.
> “Dominique,” he said, softly, reasonably, “that’s it. Now I know. I know what’s been the matter all the time.”
> “Has anything been the matter?”
> “Wait. This is terribly important. Dominique, you’ve never said, not once, what you thought. Not about anything. You’ve never expressed a desire. Not of any kind.”
> “What’s wrong about that?”
> “But it’s ... it’s like death. You’re not real. You’re only a body. Look, Dominique, you don’t know it, I’ll try to explain. You understand what death is? When a body can’t move any more, when it has no ... no will, no meaning. You understand? Nothing. The absolute nothing. Well, your body moves—but that’s all. The other, the thing inside you, your—oh, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not talking religion, but there’s no other word for it, so I’ll say: your soul—your soul doesn’t exist. No will, no meaning. There’s no real you any more.”
> “What’s the real me?” she asked. For the first time, she looked attentive; not compassionate; but, at least, attentive.
> “What’s the real anyone?” he said, encouraged. “It’s not just the body. It’s ... it’s the soul.”
> “What is the soul?”
> “It’s—you. The thing inside you.”
> “The thing that thinks and values and makes decisions?”
> “Yes! Yes, that’s it. And the thing that feels. You’ve—you’ve given it up.”
> “So there are two things that one can’t give up: one’s thoughts and one’s desires?”
> “Yes! Oh, you do understand! So you see, you’re like a corpse to everybody around you. A kind of walking death. That’s worse than any active crime. It’s ...”
> “Negation?”
> “Yes. Just blank negation. You’re not here. You’ve never been here. If you’d tell me that the curtains in this room are ghastly and if you’d rip them off and put up some you like—something of you would be real, here, in this room. But you never have. You’ve never told the cook what dessert you liked for dinner. You’re not here, Dominique. You’re not alive. Where’s your I?”
> “Where’s yours, Peter?” she asked quietly.
> He sat still, his eyes wide. She knew that his thoughts, in this moment, were clear and immediate like visual perception, that the act of thinking was an act of seeing a procession of years behind him.
> “It’s not true,” he said at last, his voice hollow. “It’s not true.”
> “What is not true?”
> “What you said.”
> “I’ve said nothing. I asked you a question.”
> His eyes were begging her to speak, to deny. She rose, stood before him, and the taut erectness of her body was a sign of life, the life he had missed and begged for, a positive quality of purpose, but the quality of a judge.
> “You’re beginning to see, aren’t you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer? You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act—a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. You didn’t like what I said about Vincent Knowlton. You liked it when I said the same thing under cover of virtuous sentiments. You didn’t want me to believe. You only wanted me to convince you that I believed. My real soul, Peter? It’s real only when it’s independent—you’ve discovered that, haven’t you? It’s real only when it chooses curtains and desserts—you’re right about that—curtains, desserts and religions, Peter, and the shapes of buildings. But you’ve never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being—only without the trimmings. I didn’t go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment—I said I had no judgment. I didn’t borrow designs to hide my creative impotence—I created nothing. I didn’t say that equality is a noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind—I just agreed with everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death—I’ve imposed it on you and on everyone around us. But you-you haven’t done that. People are comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You’ve spared them the blank death. Because you’ve imposed it—on yourself.”
> He said nothing. She walked away from him, and sat down again, waiting.
> He got up. He made a few steps toward her. He said: “Dominique ...”
> Then he was on his knees before her, clutching her, his head buried against her legs.
> “Dominique, it’s not true—that I never loved you. I love you, I always have, it was not ... just to show the others—that was not all—I loved you. There were two people—you and another person, a man, who always made me feel the same thing—not fear exactly, but like a wall, a steep wall to climb—like a command to rise—I don’t know where—but a feeling going up—I’ve always hated that man—but you, I wanted you—always—that’s why I married you—when I knew you despised me—so you should have forgiven me that marriage—you shouldn’t have taken your revenge like this—not like this, Dominique—Dominique, I can’t fight back, I——”
> “Who is the man you hated, Peter?”
> “It doesn’t matter.”
> “Who is he?”
> “Nobody. I ...”
> “Name him.”
> “Howard Roark.”
> She said nothing for a long time. Then she put her hand on his hair. The gesture had the form of gentleness.
> “I never wanted to take a revenge on you, Peter,” she said softly.
> “Then—why?”
> “I married you for my own reasons. I acted as the world demands one should act. Only I can do nothing halfway. Those who can, have a fissure somewhere inside. Most people have many. They lie to themselves—not to know that. I’ve never lied to myself. So I had to do what you all do—only consistently and completely. I’ve probably destroyed you. If I could care, I’d say I’m sorry. That was not my purpose.”
> “Dominique, I love you. But I’m afraid. Because you’ve changed something in me, ever since our wedding, since I said yes to you—even if I were to lose you now, I couldn’t go back to what I was before—you took something I had ...”
> “No. I took something you never had. I grant you that’s worse.”
> “What?”
> “It’s said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that’s not true. Self-respect is something that can’t be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man’s pretense at it.”
> “Dominique, I ... I don’t want to talk.”
> She looked down at his face resting against her knees, and he saw pity in her eyes, and for one moment he knew what a dreadful thing true pity is, but he kept no knowledge of it, because he slammed his mind shut before the words in which he was about to preserve it.
> She bent down and kissed his forehead. It was the first kiss she had ever given him.
> “I don’t want you to suffer, Peter,” she said gently. “This, now, is real—it’s I—it’s my own words—I don’t want you to suffer—I can’t feel anything else—but I feel that much.”
> He pressed his lips to her hand.
> When he raised his head, she looked at him as if, for a moment, he was her husband. She said: “Peter, if you could hold on to it—to what you are now——”
> “I love you,” he said.
> They sat silently together for a long time. He felt no strain in the silence.
> The telephone rang.
> It was not the sound that destroyed the moment; it was the eagerness with which Keating jumped up and ran to answer it. She heard his voice through the open door, a voice indecent in its relief:
> “Hello? ... Oh, hello, Ellsworth! ... No, not a thing.... Free as a lark.... Sure, come over, come right over! ... Okey-doke!”


Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[Justin Mallone]

That's a good one. I also think the beginning of the Courtroom speech at the end would be a contender. The whole speech is good but the beginning I think is particularly like, evocative and moving and stuff.

We better be careful tho, or else we might wind up quoting the entire book in this thread :)

> “Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world. That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures—because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer—because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.
>
> Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred. The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

> No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building—that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.

[Elliot Temple]

On Apr 22, 2014, at 7:46 AM, Justin Mallone <just...@gmail.com> wrote:

From The Fountainhead

>> No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives.

that’s what TCS threatens to do: destroy the slothful routine of ppl’s lives

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us