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A NEW CREDO OF FREEDOM 91
Roark that wins him his fi rst major client, Austen Heller. While Heller
is looking at a watercolor drawing of his proposed house, which has
drawn on Roark’s ideas but blended them with those of other architects,
Roark suddenly intervenes, destroying the watercolor by demonstrating
how he had originally designed the house.
Roark turned. He was at the other side of the table. He seized the sketch,
his hand fl ashed forward and a pencil ripped across the drawing, slashing
raw black lines over the untouchable watercolor. The lines blasted off
the Ionic columns, the pediment, the entrance, the spire, the blinds, the
bricks; they fl ung up two wings of stone; they rent the windows wide;
they splintered the balcony and hurled a terrace over the sea. It was being
done before the others had grasped the moment when it began. . . . Roark
threw his head up once, for a fl ash of a second, to look at Heller across the
table. It was all the introduction needed; it was like a handshake. (126)
On the spot, Heller offers Roark his fi rst major commission. Rand’s
tense, dramatic description brings the moment alive in all its emotional
signifi cance. As even the snooty Times Literary Supplement admitted,
“She contrives from somewhere a surprising amount of readability.” 43
With several plays, movie scenarios, and a novel behind her, Rand had
developed a fast-paced, sweeping style that easily sustained her readers’
interest.
Yet for many readers The Fountainhead was far more than a story. The
book inspired a range of passionate reactions, as can be seen in the large
volume of fan mail Rand began to receive. 44 In breathless, urgent letters,
readers recounted the impact the book had on their lives. For many The
Fountainhead had the power of revelation. As one reader told Rand after
fi nishing the book, echoing DeWitt Emery’s sentiments, “It is like being
awake for the fi rst time.” This metaphor of awakening was among the
most common devices readers used to describe the impact of Rand’s
writing. Adolescents responded with particular fervor to her insistence
that dreams, aspirations, and the voice of self be heeded, whatever the
consequences. An eighteen-year-old aspiring writer clung to the book
as to a lifeline: “But now, when I reach the point—and I reach it often
these days—where the pain can go down no further; I read part, any
part, of The Fountainhead.” Rand had anticipated responses like these,
and indeed hoped to stir her reader’s deepest feelings. Writing to Emery
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