Sunday, February 27, 2011

The Fountainhead: Ellsworth M. Toohey: 3-4

Keating arrives at his office. Going through the morning papers, he finds an article saying that philanthropist Thomas L. Foster had died, and one of his beneficiaries was Ellsworth Toohey, to whom he had willed one hundred thousand dollars. Professing not to believe in inheritance, Toohey had turned the bequest over to a progressive institute, the Workshop of Social Study, where Toohey lectured on "Art as a Social Symptom."

OK. I'm sure this will eventually turn out to be interesting.

Keating is mulling over the selection of a sculptor for a statue of Industry to grace the lobby of the Cosmo-Slotnick building. A design had been solicited from Steven Mallory, an acquaintance of Dimples Williams, one of the stars employed by Cosmo-Slotnick Pictures. Mallory had crafted a model of a slender nude man, heroically poised to smash through any barrier he met. It gave the onlooker a feeling of diminishment. It would not do. Slotnick had asked Keating to find another sculptor.

Keating has a couple of possible sculptors in mind and is savoring the power of making the selection when he notices an envelope on his desk with his name. It contains a proof copy of Toohey's column for tomorrow's Banner. The column praises Keating for the Cosmo-Slotnick building, along with a handwritten note from Toohey asking Keating to come by his office. Keating phones Toohey's office and makes an appointment for late the following afternoon. After the call, Keating resumes his work and later passes the column along to Guy Francon. Returning from lunch, Keating learns that someone has fired a shot at Toohey in an apparent assassination attempt. The shot missed, and the shooter turned out to be Mallory, who was apprehended but would not reveal his motives. Toohey had taken the shooting in stride and had not recognized his assailant; but on hearing the name Mallory he appeared struck with fear.

The next day Keating keeps the appointment as scheduled. Toohey is a thin, fragile-looking man with an air of kindness and a habit of joshing. In conversation, they size one another up. Toohey seems to sense how little Keating had to do with the design of the Cosmo-Slotnick building; oddly, that seems to incline Toohey to like Keating all the more. Keating brings up the shooting and, sensing Toohey's fear, likes him all the more. Brothers in insecurity, I guess.

Toohey mentions a woman named Lois Cook, whom Toohey calls "the greatest literary genius since Goethe." Cook is looking for an architect to design a small residence for her in the Bowery. Keating is interested.

Toohey expresses pleasure that Keating is engaged to his niece, Catherine. Keating: Ah, yes. I love her very much. Toohey: Good! Take care of her.

A few days later, Keating is reading Clouds and Shrouds, a travel book by Lois Cook. It is incomprehensible gibberish. Keating likes it. Turning to the Sunday paper, he sees a sketch of the Enright House, designed by Howard Roark. It gives the appearance of a giant piece of crystal growing out of the ground, mathematically perfect. (Huh? Maybe some sort of way-ahead-of-its-time fractal design?)

Keating goes to tea at the residence where Katie and her uncle live. The subject of marriage comes up. Keating: Of course, when we're married, Katie will have to give up her job. Katie: Wha? But I love what I do. Katie is a day nursery attendant at the Clifford Settlement House. She enjoys caring for poor, sick children. New subject: Howard Roark. Keating: Roark and I go way back, you know. Toohey: Really? What's he like what's he like what's he like? Keating: Odd, but manic about architecture.

Keating meets Lois Cook, who is slovenly in appearance and cynical in demeanor. She hints at awareness that her writing is nonsense. She asks Keating to design the ugliest house in New York. Keating accepts.

I'm getting a bit of an odd vibe from Part 2. It reminds me of the experience I've had with some TV shows. The first season is wonderful, but when the second season rolls around, the show seems a bit off. Disjointed. Unfocused. Well, maybe Rand is just laying a lot of groundwork, setting up things that will all come together soon. We shall see.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

The Fountainhead: Ellsworth M. Toohey: 1-2

Roark is cutting granite at a quarry owned by Francon. It's an exhausting job. He likes it.

Dominique is spending the summer at a family mansion three miles from the quarry. She stays there alone, interacting with no one except the caretaker and his wife. Sometimes she hears blasting from the quarry.

One hot day Dominique walks to the quarry. She espies a redheaded laborer, a manly man. He sees her. They don't speak, but there is crack-a-blam! a connection. She desires him and hates him because she desires him. Miss Francon is thawing.

She comes back to the quarry a few times, always looking covertly for the red-headed worker. One time she encounters him close up, and she asks him why he is working there. He: For the money.

Dominique decides that to reclaim her freedom she must stop going to the quarry. She strikes up acquaintance with her neighbors and starts going to parties. One night a man taking her home tries to get fresh. She is repulsed.

She has protected herself by staying away from Red. But it would be even more exciting to be near him, so that she can test her resistance. She needs a pretext to bring him into her lair. There is a white marble slab in front of the fireplace in her bedroom. She takes a hammer and beats away at the slab with all her might. Eventually there is a noticeable scratch in the surface.

She goes to the quarry and looks up the redhead. Dominique: Would you like to earn some extra money? Redhead: Sure. Dominique: At my mansion, the marble in front of one of the fireplaces is broken. I need the stone taken out and a replacement ordered. Come tonight. Use the servants' entrance.

Red comes to the mansion, caked with dust from the quarry. Dominique points out the "broken" slab. Red has a look, takes out a hammer and chisel, sets the chisel in the scratch, and strikes once with the hammer. The marble splits. Now it's broken for real. While breaking up and removing the marble, he lectures her on types of marble. He also comments that the fireplace is poorly designed. (By Guy Francon.) He will order a replacement stone to be delivered to her home. She pays him a dollar and he leaves.

Every day Dominique waits feverishly for the marble. One day it arrives. She sends a note to the quarryman: The stone is here; I want it put in tonight. She gets a note back: It will be done.

That night Dominique is beside herself with anticipation, but instead of Red, a short Italian shows up. She: Why are you here? He: Red sent me to fix-a you fireplace. She: Oh! Uh, of course! Uh, go right ahead.

She is furious and terrified; she knows she's hooked. She is able to hold off several days but eventually goes on horseback to the quarry. He's not there. Furious, she finds a small tree branch, strips off the leaves, and whips her horse, racing hither and yon through the countryside. Then she happens upon the redhead, walking home from work. She stops. Dominique: Why didn't you come to fix the fireplace? Red: Surely it didn't make any difference who finished the work—or did it? (She hears: underline, triple question mark, triple exclamation point.) She slaps his face with the improvised quirt and rides off.

Three days later, Dominique is in her bedroom late at night when Red shows up, enters through the open French windows, and proceeds to have his rough way with her. She resists but does not cry out. After he leaves, she drags herself to the bathroom, but decides not to bathe because she wants to keep traces of him on her as long as possible.

Eww.

Some days later, Roark receives a letter from Roger Enright, the oil baron who wants to build an apartment building. Enright is still looking for an architect (and presumably has no idea his functionary had dismissed Roark long ago), and he has spent some time hunting down the designer of the Fargo store. Please come to New York! Roark is on a train within the hour. He is surprised to find himself thinking idly about Dominique. This is the first time in his life he has ever thought about another human being.

Dominique learns the redhead has quit his job at the quarry and left. She is relieved, in a way, that she never learned the man's name. If she knew who he was, she would feel compelled to track him down. If he remains a stranger, she is safe.

Okay, so as soon as I praise the quality of The Fountainhead, what should come up but two chapters of suds. I have to go rinse now.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 15

Keating is convinced he is going to lose the Cosmo-Slotnick competition, and he is very frightened. If only he can force Heyer out and get promoted to partner before the results are announced.... He digs up some old dirt on Heyer and goes to the old man's house, where he threatens to expose Heyer unless he resigns from the firm. Instead, Heyer strokes out and dies. After the funeral, Keating learns that Heyer, with no surviving relatives, had left everything to him: two hundred thousand dollars plus Heyer's stake in the firm.

The results of the Cosmo-Slotnick competition are announced: The winning firm is Francon & Heyer! Keating's share of the prize money is twelve thousand dollars, but more importantly, he is celebrated as the young genius architect of the moment. He goes to Roark and offers him a check for five hundred dollars for his help with the winning design. Roark endorses the check back to Keating. Roark: This is a bribe; I am buying your silence—never tell anyone that I helped design that building. Keating: You egoist! I hate you! Wait ... I been under stress lately. I sorry. Bye.

Roark, down to his last dollars, learns that the Manhattan Bank Company is ready to accept his design on a new building. If he'll just agree to a few very, very minor changes.... Roark: Nein! Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Then Roark goes to his office, locks up, and hands the key to the landlord. He is busted. He looks up his buddy Mike, who gets him a job as a quarryman.

But Howard Roark will be back.

And that's the end of Part One.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 14

Lucius Heyer seems to be recovering from his stroke and is disinclined to retire from the firm. This annoys Francon and Keating. Die, old man, die!

Cosmo-Slotnick Pictures, a Hollywood joint, announces a design contest for a splashy 40-story office building in New York. The building will house a movie theater in its lowest floors. This is a big deal; lots of architects are entering. For the entry from Francon and Heyer, Keating will draw up the design and be credited by name in the submission. Go, Peter, go!

Keating draws up a design with Renaissance features—Ralston Holcombe, who loves Renaissance, is one of the contest jurors. He hates his design, and for some reason he is angry at Roark (perhaps he resents that Roark would never draw a design that he, Roark, hated), but he goes to Roark for help. Roark spends several hours showing Keating where the design can be untangled and simplified. (Roark isn't entering the competition because he would "go blank" if he tried to produce a design to please someone else.) Keating incorporates Roark's suggestions into the design, which is sent off to Cosmo-Slotnick.

Roark isn't getting any more commissions. The Fargo store succeeds as a building but fails as a business enterprise; it's in a declining area of town. Athelstan Beasely, clown prince of the A.G.A., writes a column making fun of Roark's failures.

In March Roark reads about Roger Enright, an eccentric oil baron who wants to build a one-of-a-kind apartment building. Roark visits Enright's office, where a functionary dismisses him after a cursory interview.

Henry Cameron, dying, asks to have Roark with him for his last days. From his deathbed, he tells Roark that Gail Wynand, avatar of "overbearing vulgarity," will be Roark's greatest foe. Cameron's speech is characterized by lots of ellipses, because that's ... how ... people ... talk ... when ... they're ... fading ... away.

Cameron dies.

Keating is still putting off the marriage with Katie. Wait till after the Cosmo-Slotnick contest winner is announced in May. If Keating wins, then they can marry.

Keating is also seeing a lot of Dominique. One day while dropping her off at her place, he asks if he can come up, and she says yes. Inside, he eventually embraces and kisses her, and she is utterly unresponsive. Yes, her secret is out: She is the ickiest thing on the planet, a frigid woman. Why, that lousy anhedonist! Holding back his disgust and remembering that she is Francon's daughter, Keating tells Dominique that he loves her and asks her to marry him. She laughs and tells him that if she ever does something awful and wants to punish herself, she just might take him up on his offer.

Friday, February 18, 2011

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 13

October. The Heller house is nearly complete, and a young self-made man, Jimmy Gowan, asks Roark to build him a combination filling station/diner.

December. The filling station is built. All circles and ovals, it connotes flow. Gowan is pleased.

Austin Heller counsels Roark: You're not getting any more commissions because you don't care to cater to people. Sell yourself! Roark: Most people don't understand me. Only a very few have the Shining my love of individuality and my architectural insight that form follows function.

Roark waits idly in his office for customers. Good thing he's saved up his money!

February: Mrs. Wayne Wilmot visits Roark and tells him she wants him to build her a country house. You see, she's a big fan of Austin Heller, and she heard Roark built Heller's house (which she hasn't seen), and so Roark must build her house, too. English Tudor style, please. Roark: I don't do styles. Find another architect.

March: Mr. Robert L. Mundy wants a house in Connecticut, and Heller recommended Roark to build it. Mundy: Build it just like the plantation house I used to envy back in my Georgia childhood. Roark: A house like that wouldn't be you, it would be a monument to your envy. Find another builder.

April: Nathaniel Janss, another friend of Heller, wants to see if Roark will build a 30-story office building on Broadway. Roark explains his philosophy—how ornamentation and anachronistic styles look silly, and how functionality is the key. After some talking, Janss is won over. Roark draws up some designs, which Janss takes to his board of directors. They don't get it; what's the matter with Gothic? The board refuses to grant the commission.

John Fargo, another self-made man, owns a department store and wants Roark to design another store next to it. Fargo had seen the filling station and the Heller house. Roark is his man. Fargo: Here's the space; here's how much I have to spend. Build me a store, please.

In May, Whitford Sanborn visits Roark. He owns an office building designed by Henry Cameron, and now he wants a new country home. Cameron, retired, has recommended Roark very highly. Roark explains the sort of house he builds, and Sanborn is pleased. Mrs. Sanborn is not; she wants a French chateau.
Mrs. Sanborn was the president of many charity organizations and this had given her an addiction to autocracy such as no other avocation could develop.
What a nice, sharp, concise character sketch!

Whitford Sanborn contracts with Roark for the house, but Fanny Sanborn, the ass, nags and niggles and demands small revisions. The costs mount. During construction, Roark suddenly figures out an improvement in the design of one wing. (Roark is still learning his trade.) There's no money left for the revision, but Roark is so set on the correction that he pays for the change out of his own pocket.

Sanborn is pleased with the finished product, but the Mrs. refuses to live there. They pack off to Florida instead, and the Sanborns' son moves into a few of the house's rooms. The AGA bulletin calls the Sanford house uninhabitable and cites it as an example of architectural incompetence.

Monday, February 14, 2011

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 12

Ooh, lots of drama; good Dominique chapter!

Alvah Scarret (which looks like an anagram of something, but my best try was "Charles Varta," which doesn't really light up anything in Google) is the editor-in-chief of the Wynand papers and writes a homespun column which the readers gobble up. His latest cause is a campaign against slumlords. This eventually prods the slumlords to sell the properties at rock-bottom prices to business interests which can't be proven to belong to Gail Wynand.

As part of the series, Scarret assigns Dominique Francon to live in a slum property incognito for two weeks. She writes a couple of devastating columns about the conditions. At a cocktail party, she tears into a few of the society women who are part owners of the slum properties.

Dominique is invited to speak to a meeting of social workers, who of course sympathize with the tenants. From the pulpit, she looks out at a sea of "faces lecherously eager with the sense of their own virtue." She astonishes them with a listing of the moral failings of the tenants—laziness, foolish spending, neglect of their children.

Afterward she meets with Scarret, who is described as a kind, portly man with a hooked nose. (When I hear "hooked nose," I wonder if the writer is intentionally evoking an anti-Semitic stereotype, but I can't say for sure that's the case here.) He is creating a Women's Welfare Department, and he wants her to head it up. She says whoa and shows him a copy of the speech she just gave, sabotaging her own advancement. She explains that it would be terrible to have a job that she loved, because that would make her dependent on her boss for continued happiness, and she abhors the idea of strings attaching her to anything. Then she gives her view of mankind: Every poor person she has seen has degraded tastes, and the rich are no better. Even the people who act nobly turn out to have a seamy side. If people can't be perfect, she'll expect nothing of them. Depending on nothing is the sort of freedom she values most highly. Scarret: Don't you like anything? Dominique: I once bought a museum piece I admired, then smashed it by throwing it down an air shaft, just so that no one else could see it.

So apparently Dominique is TEH CRAZEE, but is she still some sorta stand-in for Ayn Rand? This is not the first time we've heard someone declare extreme devotion to freedom; a few chapters ago Austen Heller declared it a shame we had to live together (as a society, presumably). But Dominique really cranks up the misanthropy. You run into conservatives today who opine that the poor are morally bankrupt subhumans, but that the rich are the bee's knees. The Dominique Doctrine is way more radical than this; the totem pole is rotten, top to bottom.

Guy Francon reads his daughter's articles and remembers a moment from her childhood, when she leapt over an impossibly high hedge. Freedom = jumping high. But she needs a stable fellow like Peter Keating to keep her grounded. He arranges a lunch for the three of them, then as the lunch starts he begs off with a suddenly-remembered meeting. Dominique is kind to Keating to the point of condescension; he secretly loathes her, and yet ... so pretty! They agree to go to a show that evening. When he learns of the date, Francon is pleased. And his partner Lucius Heyer has had a stroke and may need to be replaced with younger blood....

After over a month with no contact, Katie shows up at Peter's door. She tells Peter and his mother that she has had a frightful vision of being menaced by her uncle Ellsworth's shadow. Katie: I feel impending danger. And since Peter and I are engaged ... Mrs. Keating: O RLY?? ... How ... very ... delightful. Katie: ... I was thinking Peter and I should get married right away. Peter: We can get the license tomorrow! Mrs. Keating: Excellent idea! Have some tea, dear, and run along home.

Katie leaves. Mrs. Keating: Peter, dear. Please do me the favor of not throwing your life away. I have nothing but fondness for Katie, but if you show up at Francon & Heyer married to that little guttersnipe, your career is ruined. Clearly Francon has chosen you as a match for his daughter, and once you're married to Dominique, there's a clear path to partnership in the firm. For the sake of your sainted mother, do not get married tomorrow! Peter: Yes, Mother.

The next day Keating goes to Katie's home. Katie the Innocent: I told Uncle we were getting married, and he had a good laugh. I think he was happy for us. Peter the Weasel: Say, Katie, I've been thinking. Francon wants me to marry his daughter (which of course I have no interest in doing), and Heyer is on his last legs. What say we hold off till Heyer is gone and I'm in his place? Then when we get married it'll be too late for Francon to do anything. Katie: Yes, of course. I was being such a silly yesterday. We can wait.

Keating leaves. Each of them separately feels a shiver of doom, as though their last chance for salvation has passed.

Best chapter yet.

Earlier today I was reading about plans to make Atlas Shrugged into a 4-part series of movies, and a commenter was going on about Ayn Rand being a sociopath and a terrible writer with no flair for drama. Based on what I've read so far, that commenter is an idiot. Well, half an idiot, anyway.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 11

"Howard Roark, Architect" is stenciled on the glass door of a newly opened office in New York. (Sure, Roark was expelled from school, but he's working on getting his license.) Snyte had tried to retract his firing; he wants Roark back, along with the Heller commission. Roark: No, thanks.

Keating comes to visit. Keating: Congrats! You'll be joining the A.G.A.? Roark: I'm not a joiner.

Roark visits Cameron in New Jersey the day after signing the Heller contract. Roark: I'm opening an office! I have a house to build! Cameron: Cool! You will change the world! Prepare for The Persecution!

Roark visits the cliff-top site where the Heller house is going up. Hey look! One of my builders is Mike! Mike: You are indecently happy, Red.

Heller visits the construction site and is amazed. Look at how wonderfully logical and functional everything is! Your design is very considerate of me! Roark: Wasn't thinking of you. Was thinking of the house.

Roark is Heller's bestest friend, ever.

The Heller house is completed in November of 1926. The following year, it is mentioned by exactly none of the "best house of the year" surveys. The neighbors giggle at the house. In the padded comfort of the private rooms of the Architects' Guild of America, the poobahs occasionally discuss the house. Holcombe calls it a disgrace. Snyte thinks it makes all architects look crazy. Prescott thinks it's funny-looking. Pettigill and Francon expect it to fall apart. Keating says, now, now, Roark has gone a little haywire here, but he's a great fellow.

Toohey withholds comment.

Monday, February 7, 2011

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 10

Ralston Holcombe is an enormous fellow, sixty-five, president of the Architects' Guild of America. He finds eclecticism in architecture abominable. There is only one correct style: Renaissance. His forty-two-year-old wife, Costance, calls herself Kiki in an attempt to maintain a death-grip on her youth.

Keating and Francon are at a party at the Holcombe mansion. Keating has just fended off a flirtation by Kiki when he spies Dominique. Keating (to Francon): Introduce me to your daughter! Francon: Your funeral.... Peter—Dominique; Dominique—lunch. Dominique tolerates Peter longer than she tolerates most men. Francon is impressed.

The Snyte firm is getting a chance to propose a design for a home for Austen Heller. The site is to be atop a jagged cliff overlooking the sea. Roark's design, an idiosyncratic house of granite that reflects and extends the cliff, is selected by Snyte over the sketches of the other four designers. Of course it is civilized by changing the granite to brick, and various incongruous classical forms are pasted on before the design is presented to the prospective customer. Heller, who knows nothing about architecture but wants a home that doesn't look like all other homes, likes some aspects of the design, but overall it doesn't quite grab him. Roark grabs the design and sketches his original design elements back in. Snyte: This is an outrage! Roark, you're fired. Heller: I love this! Roark, let's talk privately so I can ask you to build this for me yourself! Snyte: D'oh!

The scene with Snyte, Heller, and Roark is quite well done. So far, I'm really liking this book, but I have the feeling that somewhere in the remaining 566 pages it will get bogged down in silly ideology. But maybe not! ... Oh, who am I kidding?

Sunday, February 6, 2011

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 9

Roark has a job!

John Erik Snyte (what a great name!) has four other designers, nicknamed "Classic," "Gothic," "Renaissance," and "Miscellaneous" for their tendencies, and after looking at Roark's sketches, he now has a "Modernistic." For each prospect, he has the five designers produce a sketch and chooses the one most suitable to the job. Snyte then takes the winning design, modifies it with elements of the other four, and presents the result to the prospect. Under Snyte, Roark won't get to see an unaltered design of his own come to fruition, but the job will give him valuable experience solving design problems.

The building-trades unions are on strike, and one Francon & Heyer job being held up is a hotel owned indirectly by Gail Wynand. The Wynand papers are against the strike. Francon is on edge; in all fairness, Wynand can't blame his firm for the construction delay, but will Wynand be fair?

To unwind from the tension at the office, Keating plans an evening with Katie Halsey, but she isn't home. He finds her at a union rally, where she is handing out pamphlets as a gesture of solidarity with her uncle, Ellsworth Toohey, who supports the unions despite being a columnist for the Wynand chain. Peter and Katie listen to a speech by Austen Heller, an Oxford graduate and all-around smart guy who writes for the Chronicle, an independent paper. Heller speechifies about maximizing individual freedom by having as little law as possible; the larger the State, the more unethical it is. He also takes a dig at Wynand.

(Hmm, sounds like this Austen Heller may be a mouthpiece for the Rand philosophy of individualism über alles. We'll see where this goes.)

Then Ellsworth Toohey himself steps to the microphone, to uproarious applause. He calls on the workers to unite. "Let us organize, my brothers." Our two listeners wander off in the middle of the speech, which makes little sense, but which gives them some time together so Katie can say, "I want to be with you always."

The rumor around town is that on the day after the rally, Wynand gave Toohey a raise. Unexpected! The tycoon plays a deep game.

Eventually the strike is settled, and Francon regains his cheerful mood. One day Keating sees a young woman at the firm, headed toward Francon's office. She is slender and strikingly beautiful, with "an air of cold serenity and an exquisitely vicious mouth." She is Dominique Francon, the boss's daughter, and in her column in the Banner she has just published a slashing criticism of a home built by Francon & Heyer (and designed by Keating). Keating overhears father and daughter arguing. Smitten, he looks forward to meeting the young woman, even though he suspects it might be better if they didn't become acquainted. Guard your soul, Peter Keating!

Saturday, February 5, 2011

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 8

With Keating out of town on an assignment, Francon calls Roark into his office. A prospective client wants an office building designed along the lines of the Dana Building (which was built by Henry Cameron), and so far the client has turned down sketches by three architects from Francon & Heyer. Francon: Of course our firm has no intention to imitate Cameron's icky-poo, modernist, functional design; we will use classic Greek design elements, as always. Roark: Please don't ask me to design please don't ask me to design please don't ask me to design. Francon: Will you submit a design? Roark: No. Francon: For reals? Roark: For reals. Francon: You're fired.

Red and Mike commiserate.

Keating returns to town, and Francon fills him in on the news. Francon had been wooing an Austrian woman, Lili Landau, but that newpaper baron Gail Wynand snatched her away—as a gift, he bought up the little Bavarian village of her birth and had it disassembled, shipped to New York, and reassembled on the banks of the Hudson. Oh, well, Wynand never stays with a woman for long. Plus, that Roark guy got himself fired. Keating (to himself): I should visit Roark; but it's easier to stay away; I'll stay away.

Roark makes the rounds of architectural firms, looking for work. No luck. He reads an article by someone named Gordon L. Prescott, lamenting the lack of support given to talented beginner architects; originality should be encouraged! Roark calls on Prescott and shows him his portfolio. Prescott dismisses Roark's designs: interesting but immature and impractical. He tells about an architect he has hired and shows Roark an example of the man's genius:
The sketch represented a house in the shape of a grain silo incredibly merged with the simplified, emaciated shadow of the Parthenon.
Roark (to himself): These little setbacks are as nothing compared to the super-reality of my genius.

The Fountainhead: Peter Keating: 7

Keating still feels bad for his old classmate Roark and gets Francon's permission to offer the man a job. Roark, having anticipated the overture, accepts on condition that he not be asked to design; put him in engineering or building inspection. (Some day he will be a great architect, but right now he needs a job.) Pleased, Keating asks Roark to unbend a little and go out for a drink, but Roark isn't interested.

One day at the firm, Keating privately asks Roark for a little help with a design, which Roark provides. To let a Keating-designed building go up without aiding its design would be like refusing a lifeline to a drowning man. As Keating asks for more help, from time to time Roark sees small improvements in Keating's drawings.

Outside of these private conferences, Keating puts up a critical, demanding front with Roark. He halfway hopes for an explosive response, but Roark submits to the brow-beating.

Inspecting a hotel going up near Central Park, Roark meets an itinerant builder who calls himself Mike. (Real name: Sean Xavier Donnigan.) Mike is impressed with Roark's skill with an acetylene torch. He's met lots of fancy-pants architects in his day, says Mike, but the only one worth a damn was a fellow named Henry Cameron, probably dead by now. Howard: Hey, I used to work for Cameron, and he's still alive! Mike: For reals? Howard: For reals! Mike: Wow! Hey, Red (on account of Roark's hair), let's be buds and have a drink! Howard: You're on!

Woo-hoo! Roark has a friend!