By Shoshana Milgram
By creating Howard Roark, Ayn Rand achieved full success in the task she identified as the motive and purpose of her writing: the projection of an ideal man. Starting with a visual image, she went on to identify the essence of the human ideal and to dramatize it in action. She faced and solved an important literary challenge: portraying her hero as, simultaneously, changing in his state of knowledge-and changeless in his fundamentals. The lecture, which draws on Ayn Rand's hand-edited drafts of The Fountainhead, shows how she worked to give Roark the consistency and integration that are the core of his character. Her revisions in language and content are evidence of the dedication and passion that characterize Ayn Rand's hero and Ayn Rand herself.
This lecture was recorded at the 2003 Objectivist Summer Conference in Industry Hills, CA.
(MP3 download; 83 mins., with Q & A, 60.03 MB)
