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Reception

The Fountainhead received mixed reviews when it was released.^[23] There was a positive review in The New York Times that Rand greatly appreciated.^[24] The Times reviewer called Rand "a writer of great power" who writes "brilliantly, beautifully and bitterly," and it stated that she had "written a hymn in praise of the individual... you will not be able to read this masterful book without thinking through some of the basic concepts of our time."^[25] There were other positive reviews, but Rand dismissed many of them as either not understanding her message or as being from unimportant publications.^[23] A number of negative reviews focused on the length of the novel,^[26] such as one that called it "a whale of a book" and another that said "anyone who is taken in by it deserves a stern lecture on paper-rationing." Other negative reviews called the characters unsympathetic and Rand's style "offensively pedestrian."^[23]

Benjamin DeCasseres, a columnist for the New York Journal-American wrote of Roark as "an uncompromising individualist" and "one of the most inspiring characters in modern American literature."^[27]

Susan Brownmiller, in her 1970s work on sexual assault, Against Our Will, denounced the alleged rape scene, and Dominique's subsequent relationship with Roark, for promoting the idea that "no means yes" and that non-consensual sex occurs because the woman subconsciously agrees to it.

Assessing the novel's legacy, philosopher Douglas Den Uyl described The Fountainhead as relatively neglected compared to her later novel, Atlas Shrugged, and said, "our problem is to find those topics that arise clearly with The Fountainhead and yet do not force us to read it simply through the eyes of Atlas Shrugged."^[28]