The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 5

A year has passed since Keating joined Francon & Heyer, and Keating has undermined his friend Tim Davis (who married his sweetheart Elaine) by muttering comments to the boss along the lines of, "Poor newlywed, just can't keep his mind on his work." But no worries! After Davis is fired from F&H, Keating finds him a job with another architectural firm. Keating is promoted to Davis's position as lead draftsman.

Then he goes after chief designer Stengel, who has been thinking about starting up his own firm. Keating sneakily tips Stengel to a juicy home-building job, which Stengel plucks and runs off to have for his very own. Keating gets the chief designer position, the snake.

Handed his first design job, Keating feels inadequate to the task but bones up on Classical designs and comes up with some sketches—which he then takes to his old classmate Roark, because he knows (1) Roark is brilliant and (2) Roark is incapable of lying. Roark adds a sketch and suggests some simplifications to Keating's design, which go over well with Francon. Later, Keating hears that Cameron's firm is having tough times (and in fact the firm had just lost a major commission to a relative of the client's wife) and offers Roark a gift of $50. And I expected Roark to be a jerk and tell Keating to take a hike, but Roark is astonished and accepts the gift, which is really heartwarming. Nice bit of writing, Ayn Rand! But then Keating blows it by offering Roark a charity position at his firm, and Roark returns the money.

Roark and Cameron look at an issue of the New York Banner, a paper in the Wynand syndicate, and apparently to them it's nothing but a catalog of degradation:

... The front page carried the picture of an unwed mother with thick glistening lips, who had shot her lover; the picture headed the first installment of her autobiography and a detailed account of her trial. The other pages ran a crusade against utility companies; a daily horoscope; extracts from church sermons; recipes for young brides; pictures of girls with beautiful legs; advice on how to hold a husband; a baby contest; a poem proclaiming that to wash dishes was nobler than to write a symphony; an article proving that a woman who had borne a child was automatically a saint.

It's fascinating to think that some would consider these the greatest threats to civilization.