"Any man with a serious central ambition is more of an outsider in his youth than in later years. It is particularly in his youth that he will be misunderstood and resented by others."~ Ayn Rand, from her 1958 series of private, extemporaneous lectures on literature collected in the book The Art of Fiction
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Monday, 14 September 2026
An outsider
3 comments:
We welcome thoughtful disagreement.
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I've never heard that comment from AR before, but think it's true, and can relate to it personally. I think the explanation lies in a variety of factors, off the top of my head being:
ReplyDelete1. You tend to be less confident when you are younger, and more confident as you get older. If you are different, but not as comfortable in your differences, nor cashed in yet on the benefits of the difference, you're an easier target for conventional types who resent it.
2. Those who lack much ambition in their younger years often gain some degree of it as they get older and become adults responsible for themselves and possibly their offspring (i.e. they move closer to you).
3. Once you've achieved some of your central ambitions, there's a tendency to turn your attention to improving areas that weren't a priority when younger - particularly in regard to human interaction, and appreciating the value to be gained from those who are different to you. Your social and communication skills improve, which allows you to move closer to, and appreciate more the interaction with more conventional types.
FYI, it was in relation to a discussion about Sinclair Lewis's novel 'Arrowsmith,' comparing and contrasting the young character there with Howard Roark.
ReplyDeleteThanks PC, I'll look into that novel.
DeleteOn a separate but related note, I'm nearly finished The Beautiful and the Damned by Scott F Fitzgerald. The two main characters (Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert) remind me very much of Peter Keating and Dominique Francon, albeit a more naive Dominique Francon that spirals into further self-destruction and co-dependency with the Peter Keating equivalent, rather than redemption. I think it highly likely that Ayn Rand read this book (written 13 years earlier than The Fountainhead) and it significantly influenced her characters and style. It's a lot more cynical than The Fountainhead, and certainly no 'Howard Roark' equivalent, but similar in explaining and disparaging 'second handers'.