Strange Little Roark

It’s odd, I can’t very easily recommend the book that hosts my all time favorite character in all of literature because it would be like me asking someone to cross the desert on a three legged camel with a canteen half-filled. Today’s society is consumed with technopportunity, with a myriad of ways to distract the once upon a time avid reader. The Fountainhead is a long and arduous task and I just don’t feel comfortable ranting about how great it is because I feel like I’m bragging that I was able to drag my eyes thru with the whole damn thing and you weren’t so look at how much more I am than you. In fact, please allow me to spare you that full time job and instead share with you the unflappable hero of the book, Howard Roark. I’ll even talk about him like he’s a friend of mine, not some grandiose figure finely propped up on a pedestal by the author and subsequent followers. Roark is too cool for that.

In a world full of people pleasers, Roark sets the bar as high as that proverbial bar will go. Because he himself is enough. A bonafide creator who refuses to take shit from anyone. He embodies self-respect and integrity like no other because he never gives anyone that power over him, no matter how much they criticize his creations and attempt to ostracize him. He won't betray those things that are most important to him. He never compromises his own vision and in turn, never violates his integrity. As a young girl, I came to understand thru Roark’s example that integrity is or isn’t. You have it, or you don’t. Those who follow their own passion and talents with real focus and fervor understand that this need not take away from anyone, but succeed in creating something purely their own.

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I used to hang out with Jude Law before he hit it big and got swallowed by the system. He was doing a Broadway show at the time, and after one of his performances we met up with friends and went out for drinks. I was my normal, boisterous self, speaking my mind loud and clear for everyone within a four block radius to hear. He put his arm around me as we walked thru Soho and he said, “You know what I like best about you? You’re uninfluentiable”. Was that even a word? I asked him what the hell he meant by that. He said that I would never do anything I didn’t want to do, no matter how much people tried to persuade me. I remember thinking of Roark in that moment, and I gave Jude a grin.