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.