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.