Who is the greatest enemy of American business?

In Ayn Rand’s last public lecture, delivered before an audience of businessmen in 1981, she answered: businessmen themselves are their own worst enemy. Previously available in print as an article in Ayn Rand’s anthology The Voice of Reason, “The Sanction of the Victims” has now been published online by ARI for the first time, with permission from the publisher.

Announcer: Ladies and gentleman, I am honored to present to you Miss Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand: Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, since the subject of these seminars is investment, I must start by stating that I am not an economist, and have no purely economic advice to give you. But what I am anxious to discuss with you are the preconditions that make it possible for you to gain and to keep the money which you can then invest.

I shall by start by asking you a question on the moral premise: what human occupation is the most useful socially? The borrowed premise is the concept of social usefulness. It is not part of my philosophy to evaluate things by a social standard. But this is the predominant standard of value today, and sometimes it can be very enlightening to adopt the enemy’s standard. So let us borrow the notion of social concern for just a little while, just long enough to answer the question: what human occupation is the most useful socially?

Since men’s basic tool of survival is his mind, the most crucially important occupation is the discovery of knowledge. That is the occupation of scientists. But scientists are not concerned with society, with social issues or with other men. Scientists are essentially loners. They pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. A great many scientific discoveries and technological discoveries were known before the Industrial Revolution and did not affect human existence. The steam engine, for instance, was known in ancient Greece, but knowledge of that sort remained an exclusive concern that lived and died with the scientist, and for century after century had not connection to the lives of the rest of mankind.

Now suppose that a group of men decided to make it their job to bring the results of the achievements of science within the reach of man, to apply scientific knowledge to the improvement of man’s life on earth. Wouldn’t such men be the greatest social benefactors as they have been since the Industrial Revolution? (Will you excuse me please; I don’t want any pictures taken of me. Please, gentlemen, don’t photograph me. I am much too old for that. Just leave me as I am.) Wouldn’t such men be the greatest social benefactors as they have been since the Industrial Revolution? Shouldn’t the socially concerned humanitarians, those who hold social usefulness as their highest value, regard such men as heroes? If I say no, such men are not regarded as heroes today — they are the most hated, blamed, denounced men in the humanitarian society — would you believe me? Or would you think that I am inventing some sort of irrational fiction, and would you say that something is wrong, terribly wrong in such a society?

But this isn’t all. There is something much worse. It isn’t merely the fact that these heroic men are the victims of an unspeakable justice. It is the fact that they are first to perpetuate that injustice against themselves. That they adopt a public stance of perpetual apology and universal appeasement, proclaim themselves guilty of an unspecified evil, begging the forgiveness of every two-bit intellectual, every unskilled laborer, every unemployed politician. No, this is not fiction. That country is the United States of America today. That self-destroying group of men is you, the American businessman. When I say you, I mean the group as a whole. I accept the tenet present company is excepted. However, if any of you find the shoe that fits, wear it with my compliments.

Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would commit suicide. The American businessman are carrying out that prediction, in destroying themselves, they are destroying capitalism, of which they are the symbol and product in America which is the greatest and freest example that capitalism has ever reached. There is no outside power that can destroy such men in such a country. Only an inner power can do it: the power of morality. More specifically, the power of a contemptibly evil idea accepted as a moral principle: altruism. Remember that altruism does not mean benevolence or consideration for other men. Altruism is a moral theory which preaches that man must sacrifice himself for others. That he must place the interests of others above his own. That he must live for the sake of others.

Altruism is a monstrous notion. It is the morality of cannibals devouring one another. It is theory of profound hatred for man. (I seem to have competition here. I will let you go first. Okay?) It is a theory of profound hatred for men, for reason, for achievement, for any form of human success or happiness on earth. Altruism is incompatible with capitalism, and with businessmen. Businessmen are a cheerful, benevolent, optimistic, predominantly American phenomenon. The essence of their job is the constant struggle to improve human life, to satisfy human desires, not to practice resignation, surrender, and worship of suffering. And here is the profound gulf between businessmen and altruism: businessmen do not sacrifice themselves to others. If they did, they would be out of business in a few months or days. They profit, they grow rich, they are rewarded as they should be. This is what the altruists, the collectivists, the other humanitarians hate the businessmen for: that they pursue a personal goal and succeed at it.

Do not fool yourself by thinking that altruists are motivated by compassion for the suffering. They are motivated by hatred for the successful. The evidence is all around us. (Thank you.) The evidence is all around us, but one small example sticks in my mind as extremely eloquent. In the early 1930s, an assistant of Jane Addams, the famous social worker, went on a visit to Soviet Russia and wrote a book about her experience. The sentence that I remember is, “How wonderful it was to see everybody equally shabby.” If you think that you should try to appease the altruist, this is what you are appeasing.

The great tragedy of capitalism, and of America, is the fact that most businessmen have accepted the morality of altruism, and are trying to live up to it, which means that they are doomed before they start. Another contributory evil is the philosophical root of altruism, which is mysticism: the belief in the supernatural, which preaches contempt for matter, for wealth, well-being, or happiness on earth. The mystics are constantly crying appeals for your pity, your compassion, your help to the less fortunate, yet they are condemning you for all the qualities of character that make you able to help them.

Evil theories have to rely on evil means in order to hold their victims. Altruism and collectivism cannot appeal to human virtues. They have to appeal to human weaknesses. And when there not enough weaknesses, they have to manufacture them. It is in the nature of altruism and collectivism, that the more they need a person or group, the more they denounce their victims, induce guilt, and struggle to never let the victims discover their own importance and acquire self- esteem. The businessmen are needed most by the so-called humanitarians, because the businessmen produce the sustenance the humanitarians are unable to produce. Doctors come next in the hierarchy of being needed, and observe the hostility, the denunciations and the attempts to enslave the doctor’s in today’s society.

Most businessmen today have accepted the feeling of guilt induced in them by the altruist. They are accused of anything and everything. For instance, a college is denounce the businessmen to sacrifice themselves to the snail darter doctor and the Furbish lousewort. But the businessmen’s actual guilt is their treason against themselves, which is also a treason against their country. The statement that aroused such fury among the collectivists, “What is good for General Motors is good the country,” was true, and the reverse is also true. What is bad for industry is bad for this country. I am here to ask you a question on my own, not on borrowed premises. What are you doing to be the advocates of capitalism, particularly the young? Appeasement is the betrayal of not only one’s values, but of all those who share one’s values. If, for whatever misguided reason, businessmen are indifferent to and ignorant of philosophy, particularly moral and political philosophy, it would be better if they kept silent rather than spread the horrible advertisements that make us cringe with embarrassment. By us, I mean advocates of capitalism. Mobil Oil ran ads in the New York Times which stated the following, I quote from memory, “of the expression of free, private, responsible enterprise, will strike out free and private as non-essential.” One of the big industries advertises on television that they are full of “people working for people” and some other big company announces on television that its goal is “ideas that help people.” I do not know what the ghastly PR man who came up with these slogans wanted us to think. That the companies work for free, or that they traded with people rather than with animals? Actually, their purpose was to suggest populism in some indirect kind. It was actually the desire to give the impression that businessmen work for nothing but others, for the people, that they are in fact no better than the politicians.

The worst of the bunch is some new group in Washington D.C. called something like Committee for the American Way, which puts out a television commercial showing some ugly, commonplace people, of all kinds, each proclaiming that he likes a different kind of music. I like rock and roll, I like Jazz, I like Beethoven, and etc. ending on a voice declaring, “This is the American way, with every man entitled to have and express his own opinion.” I, who come from Soviet Russia, can assure you that the debates and differences of that kind were and are permitted in Soviet Russia. What about political or philosophical issues? Why didn’t they show people disagreeing about nuclear weapons or about abortion or about affirmative action? If that committee stands for the American way, there is no such way any longer.

Observe also that in today’s proliferation of pressure groups, the lowest sort of unskilled laborer is regarded as the public, and presents claims to society in the name of the public interest, and is encouraged to assert his right to a livelihood, but the businessman, the intelligent, the creative, the successful man, who made the laborers’ livelihood possible, have no rights and no legitimate interests, are not entitled to their livelihood, their profits, and are not part of the public. Every kind of ethnic group is enormously sensitive to any slight. If one made the derogatory remark about the Kurds of Iran, dozens of voices would leap to their defense. But no one speaks out for businessmen when they are attacked and insulted by everyone as a matter of routine.

What causes this overwhelming injustice? The businessmen’s own policies: their betrayal of their own values, their appeasement of enemies, their compromise, all of which add up to an air of moral cowardice. Actually, the fact that businessmen are creating and supporting their own destroyers.

The sources and centers of today’s philosophical corruption are the universities. Businessmen are both content. (Thank you, that is the most important point.) Businessmen are both contemptuous of and superstitiously frightened by the subject of philosophy. There is a vicious circle involved here. Businessmen have good grounds to despise philosophy, as it is taught today. But it is taught that way because businessmen have abandoned the intellect to the lowest rung of the unemployables. All the conditions and ideas necessary to turn men into abjectly helpless serfs of dictatorship rule the institutions of today’s higher education as the tight monopoly with very few and rare exceptions. Hatred of reason and worship of blind emotions, hatred of the success and worship of self-sacrifice, hatred of the individual and worship of the collective — these are the fundamental notions that dominate today’s universities. These notions condition and paralyze the minds of the young. If you want to discover how a country philosophy determines its history, I urge you to read The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff, to be published this coming spring by Stein and Day. This brilliant book presents the philosophical similarities between the state of America’s culture today and the state of Germany’s culture in the Weimar Republic in the years preceding the rise of Nazism. After you read this book, you will know the power of philosophy, and you will know that one cannot play with it irresponsibly as people do today, nor can one ignore it.

It is the businessmen’s money that supports American universities, not merely in the form of taxes and government handouts, but much worse, in the form of voluntary, private contributions, donations and endowments etc. In preparation for this lecture, I tried to do some research on the nature and amounts of such contributions. I had to give it up. It is too complex and too vast a field for the efforts of one person. To untangle it now would require a major research project and probably years of work. All I can say is only that millions and millions and millions of dollars are being donated to universities by big business enterprises every year, and that the donors have no idea what their money is being spent on, or whom it is supporting. What is certain is only the fact that some of worst anti-business, anti-capitalism propaganda has been financed by businessmen in such projects.

Money is a great power, because in a free or even a semi-free society, it is a frozen form of energy, of productive energy, and therefore the spending of money is a grave responsibility. Contrary to the altruists and the advocates of the so-called academic freedom, it is a moral crime to give money to support ideas with which you disagree. It means ideas, which you consider wrong, false, and evil. It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers, yet that is what businessmen are doing with such reckless irresponsibility. (Thank you.) On the faculties of most colleges and universities, the advocates of reason, individualism and capitalism are a very small minority, often represented by feeble specimens of window-dressing. But the valiant minority of authentic fighters is struggling against overwhelming odds and growing very slowly. The hardships, injustices and persecutions suffered by these young advocates of reason and capitalism are too terrible a story to be told briefly. These are the young people whom businessmen should support. Or, if businessmen are too ignorant of academic issues, they should leave academic matters alone. But to support irrationalists, nihilists, socialists, and communists, who form an impenetrable barrier against the young advocates of capitalism, denying them jobs, recognition, or a mere hearing is an unforgiveable outrage on the part of irresponsible businessmen, who imagine that it is morally safe to give money to institutions of higher learning.

The lasting influence of the universities is caused by the fact that most people question the truths or falsehood of philosophical ideas only in their youth, and whatever they learn in college marks them for life. If they are given intellectual poison, as they are today, they carry it into their professions, particularly in the humanities. Observe the lifeless, grayness, the boring mediocrity of today’s culture. Observe the empty pretentiousness and mawkish sentimentality of today’s stage, screen, and television writing. There are no serious dramas any longer, and such few as attempt to be serious are of a leftist-collectivist persuasion. On this subject, I can speak from personal experience. For several years, a distinguished producer in Hollywood has been attempting to make a television mini-series or a movie of my novel Atlas Shrugged. He was stopped on two counts. One: he could not find the writer able to write a Romantic drama, even though there are good writers in Hollywood. Romanticism is completely unknown to them. And two: he could not raise the money for his project. Allow me to say, even though I do not like to say it, that if there existed a novel of the same value and popularity as Atlas Shrugged, but written to glorify collectivism, which would be a contradiction in terms, it would have been produced on the screen long ago. You are not, I hope, applauding that fact, that there are too many supporters of left kind of writers. Well, I do not believe in giving up, and so, in answer to many questions, I chose this occasion to make a very special announcement. I am writing a nine hour teleplay for Atlas Shrugged. (Thank you. Thank you very much.) I intend to produce the mini-series myself. There is a strong possibility that I will be looking for outside financing to produce the Atlas Shrugged series. I am not afraid of that.

In conclusion, let me touch a briefly on another question often asked of me. What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be, “but I don’t think of him, and the more I see the less I think.” I did not vote for him, nor for anyone else, and events seem to justify me. The appalling disgrace of his administration is his connection with the so-called Moral Majority and sundry other severe religionists (thank you) who are struggling, apparently with his approval, to take us back to the Middle Ages by the unconstitutional union of religion and politics. The threat to the future of capitalism is the fact that Regan might fail so badly that he will become another ghost like Herbert Hoover to be invoked as an example of capitalism’s failure for the next fifty years. Observe Reagan’s futile attempts to arouse the country by some sort of inspirational appeal. He is right in thinking that the country needs an inspirational element, but he will not find it in the God, family, tradition swamp. The greatest inspirational leadership this country could ever find rests in the hands of the most typically American group: the businessmen, but they could provide it only if the acquired philosophical self-defense and self-esteem. Here is what young Americans have to say about it: I quote from the May 15, 1980 of the Intellectual Activist, a newsletter by Peter Schwartz, “Feminists threatened to publicize the names of psychologists that hold their convention in a state which has not yet endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment. Unionists protest political functions that serve lettuce approved by César Chavez, yet businessmen are willing not simply to tolerate denunciations of free enterprise, but to financially sponsor them.” Then, I quote from an article by M. Northrup Buechner, “The Root of Terrorism,” in the October, 1981 issue of the Objectivist Forum, published by Harry Binswanger, “Imagine the effect if some prominent businessmen were to defend publicly their right to their own lives. Imagine the earth-shaking social reverberations if they were to assert their moral, excuse me, if they were to assert their moral right to their own profits, not because those profits are necessary for economic progress or the elimination of poverty, which are purely collectivist justifications, but because a living being has the right to live and progress, and do the best he can for his life for the time he has on this earth.” I recommend both of these publications very highly. You may write to the Intellectual Activist at 131 Fifth Ave, NY, NY 10003, and to the Objectivist Forum at Box 5311, NY, NY 10150.

As for me, I will close with a quotation which is probably familiar to you, and I will say that the battle for capitalism will be won when we find a president capable of saying it. “The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours. But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, and grandeur, any goodness, any joy, that has ever existed on this earth.” Thank you.

In this 1977 lecture, Ayn Rand examines the meaning of “ethnicity” and the consequences of “modern tribalism” in politics. Drawing her title from the Balkan Peninsula, where tribal groups have warred for centuries, Rand argues that the global trend toward political organization based on race, language and religion bodes ill for the future of Western civilization. Pointing to examples from Canada to Europe as well as observations by the news media, Rand contrasts the disintegration inherent in modern tribalism with the unity displayed by societies that respect individual rights regardless of race or ancestry.

A version of this talk appeared in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (1989). With permission of the publisher, the full essay is available online for the first time below.

Have you ever wondered about the process of the collapse of a civilization? Not the cause of the collapse — the ultimate cause is always philosophical — but the process, the specific means by which the accumulated knowledge and achievements of centuries vanish from the earth?

The possibility of the collapse of Western civilization is not easy to imagine or to believe. Most people do not quite believe it — in spite of all the horror movies about the end of the world in a nuclear blast. But of course the world has never been destroyed by a sudden catastrophe. Man-made catastrophes of that size are not sudden; they are the result of a long, slow, gradual process, which can be observed in advance.

Let me remind you — as I have said many times before — that there is no such thing as historical determinism. The world does not have to continue moving toward disaster. But unless men change their philosophical direction — which they still have time to do — the collapse will come. And if you want to know the specific process that will bring it about, that process — the beginning of the end — is visible today.

In The New York Times of January 18, 1976, under the title “Europe’s Restive Tribes,” columnist C. L. Sulzberger is crying out in anxious bewilderment against a phenomenon he cannot understand: “It is distressing to return from Africa and find the cultivated old continent of Europe subsiding into its own form of tribalism just as new African governments make concerted efforts to curb the power of tribes and subordinate them to the greater concept of the nation-state.”

By “tribalism,” Mr. Sulzberger means the separatist movements spreading throughout Europe. “Indeed,” he declares,

it is a peculiar phenomenon of contemporary times that so many lands which had formerly been powerful and important seem obsessed with reducing the remnants of their own strength. . . . There is no logical reason that a Scotland which was proud to be considered part of the British Empire’s heart when the sun never set on it, from Calcutta to Capetown, is now increasingly eager to disengage from what is left of that grand tradition on an offshore European island. [Emphasis added.]

Oh yes, there is a very logical reason why Great Britain is falling apart, but Mr. Sulzberger does not see it — just as he does not see what was grand about that old tradition. He is the Times’ columnist specializing in European affairs, and, like a conscientious reporter, he is disturbed by something which he senses to be profoundly wrong — but, tending to be a liberal, he is unable to explain it.

He keeps coming back to the subject again and again. On July 3, 1976, in a column entitled “The Split Nationality Syndrome,” he writes: “The present era’s most paradoxical feature is the conflict between movements seeking to unify great geographical blocs into federations or confederations, and movements seeking to disintegrate into still smaller pieces the component nations trying to get together.”

He offers an impressive list of examples. In France there is a Corsican autonomy movement, and similar movements of French Basques, of French Bretons, and of French inhabitants of the Jura belt west of Switzerland. “Britain is now obsessed with what is awkwardly called ‘devolution.’ This means watered-down autonomy and is designed to satisfy Welsh, but above all Scottish, nationalists.” Belgium remains split “by an apparently insoluble language dispute between French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemish.” Spain is facing demands for local independence “in Catalonia and the northern Basque country. . . . German-speaking inhabitants of Italy’s Alto Adige yearn to leave Rome and submit to Vienna. There is a tiny British-Danish argument . . . over the status of the Faroe Islanders. . . . In Yugoslavia there are continuing disputes between Serbs and Croats. . . . There is also unresolved ferment among Macedonians . . . some of whom, on occasion, revive old dreams of their own state including Greek Salonika and part of Bulgaria.”

Please remember that these tribes and subtribes, which most of the world has never heard of — since they have achieved no distinction to hear about — are struggling to secede from whatever country they are in and to form their own separate, sovereign, independent nations on their two-by-four stretches of the earth’s crust.

I must make one correction. These tribes did achieve a certain kind of distinction: a history of endless, bloody warfare.

Coming back to Mr. Sulzberger: Africa, he points out, is torn apart by tribalism (in spite of the local governments’ efforts), and most of Africa’s recent wars were derived “from tribal causes.” He concludes by observing: “The schizophrenic impulses splitting Europe threaten actually to atomize Africa — and all in the name of progress and unity.”

In a column entitled “Western Schizophrenia” (December 22, 1976), Mr. Sulzberger cries: “The West is not drawing closer together; it is coming apart. This is less complicated but perhaps more distressing in North America than in Europe.” For myself, I will add: and more disgusting.

Mr. Sulzberger continues: “Canada is apparently getting ready to tear itself asunder for emotional if illogical reasons which, on a massive scale, resemble the language dispute that continually splits Belgium . . .” He predicts the possibility of a formal separation between French-speaking Quebec and the rest of Canada, and comments sadly and helplessly: “Whatever happens, it is hard to foresee much good for the West ensuing.” Which is certainly true.

Now what are the nature and the causes of modern tribalism?

Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. It is a logical consequence of modern philosophy. If men accept the notion that reason is not valid, what is to guide them and how are they to live? Obviously, they will seek to join some group — any group — which claims the ability to lead them and to provide some sort of knowledge acquired by some sort of unspecified means. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing, but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group — they will be pulled obediently to join a group. But which group? Well, if you believe that you have no mind and no moral value, you cannot have the confidence to make choices — so the only thing for you to do is to join an unchosen group, the group into which you were born, the group to which you were predestined to belong by the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient power of your body chemistry.

This, of course, is racism. But if your group is small enough, it will not be called “racism”: it will be called “ethnicity.”

For over half a century, modern liberals have been observing the fact that their ideas are achieving the opposite of their professed goals: instead of “liberation,” communism has brought the blood-drenched dictatorship of Soviet Russia — instead of “prosperity,” socialism has brought starvation to China, and Cuba, and India (and Russia) — instead of “brotherhood,” the welfare state has brought the crumbling stagnation and the fierce, “elitist” power struggle of Great Britain, and Sweden, and many other, less obvious victims — instead of “peace,” the spread of international altruism has brought about two world wars, an unceasing procession of local wars, and the suspending of a nuclear bomb over the heads of mankind. Yet this record does not prompt the liberals to check their premises or to glance, for contrast, at the record of the social system the last remnants of which they are so ferociously destroying.

Now we are seeing another demonstration of the fact that their professed goals are not the motive of today’s liberals. We are seeing a special kind of intellectual cover-up — a cover-up so dirty and so low that it makes Watergate look like a childish caper.

Observe that ever since World War II, racism has been regarded as a vicious falsehood and a great evil, which it certainly is. It is not the root of all social evils — the root is collectivism — but, as I have written before (in The Virtue of Selfishness), “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” One would think that Hitler had given a sufficient demonstration of racism’s evil. Yet today’s intellectuals, particularly the liberals, are supporting and propagating the most virulent form of racism on earth: tribalism.

The cover-up that makes it possible lies in a single word: ethnicity.

“Ethnicity” is an anti-concept, used as a disguise for the word “racism” — and it has no clearly definable meaning. But you can get a lead to its meaning if you hunt through a dictionary. The following are the results of my hunt through The Random House College Dictionary (1960), a book intended for young people.

I found no such term as “ethnicity.” But I found “ethnic,” which is defined as follows: “pertaining or peculiar to a population, esp. to a speech group, loosely also to a race.” Under “ethnic group,” the definition given as sociological usage reads: “a group of people, racially or historically related, having a common and distinctive culture, as an Italian or Chinese colony in a large American city.”

I looked up the word “culture.” The definition given as sociological usage reads: “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings, which is transmitted from one generation to another.” I looked up also the word “tribe.” The definition reads: “1. any aggregate of people united by ties of descent from a common ancestor, community of customs, and traditions, adherence to the same leaders, etc. 2. a local division of a primitive or barbarous people.”

The meaning of the sum of these definitions is fairly clear: the term “ethnicity” stresses the traditional, rather than the physiological characteristics of a group, such as language — but physiology, i.e., race, is involved and mentioned in all but one of these definitions. So the advocacy of “ethnicity,” means racism plus tradition — i.e., racism plus conformity — i.e., racism plus staleness.

The acceptance of the achievements of an individual by other individuals does not represent “ethnicity”: it represents a cultural division of labor in a free market; it represents a conscious, individual choice on the part of all the men involved; the achievements may be scientific or technological or industrial or intellectual or esthetic — and the sum of such accepted achievements constitutes a free, civilized nation’s culture. Tradition has nothing to do with it; tradition is being challenged and blasted daily in a free, civilized society: its citizens accept ideas and products because they are true and/or good — not because they are old or because their ancestors accepted them. In such a society, concretes change, but what remains immutable — by individual conviction, not by tradition — are those philosophical principles which correspond to reality, i.e., which are true.

The “old” and the “ancestral” are the standards of tradition, which supersedes reality, the standards of value of those who accept and practice “ethnicity.” Culture, in the modern sociologists’ view, is not a sum of achievements, but of “ways of living . . . transmitted from one generation to another.” This means: concrete, specific ways of living. Can you — who are still the children of the United States of America — imagine the utter horror of a way of living that does not change from generation to generation? Yet this is what the advocates of ethnicity are advocating.

Is such a way of living compatible with reason? It is not. Is it compatible with independence or individuality? It is not. Is it compatible with progress? Obviously not. Is it compatible with capitalism? Don’t be funny. What century are we talking about? We are dealing with a phenomenon that is rising out of prehistorical ages.

Atavistic remnants and echoes of those ages have always existed in the backwaters of civilized countries, particularly in Europe, among the old, the tired, the timid, and those who gave up before they started. Such people are the carriers of “ethnicity.” The “ways of living” they transmit from generation to generation consist in: folk songs, folk dances, special ways of cooking food, traditional costumes, and folk festivals. Although the professional “ethnics” would (and did) fight wars over the differences between their songs and those of their neighbors, there are no significant differences between them; all folk art is essentially similar and excruciatingly boring: if you’ve seen one set of people clapping their hands while jumping up and down, you’ve seen them all.

Now observe the nature of those traditional ethnic “achievements”: all of them belong to the perceptual level of man’s consciousness. All of them are ways of dealing with or manipulating the concrete, the immediately given, the directly perceivable. All of them are manifestations of the preconceptual stage of human development.

I quote from one of my articles: “The concrete-bound, anti-conceptual mentality can cope only with men who are bound by the same concretes — by the same kind of ‘finite’ world. To this mentality, it means a world in which men do not have to deal with abstract principles: principles are replaced by memorized rules of  behavior, which are accepted uncritically as the given. What is ‘finite’ in such a world is not its extension, but the degree of mental effort required of its inhabitants. When they say ‘finite,’ they mean ‘perceptual.’” (This is from “The Missing Link” [in Philosophy: Who Needs It]. That article deals with the psycho-epistemological roots of modern tribalism.)

In the same article I said: “John Dewey’s theory of Progressive education (which has dominated the schools for close to half a century), established a method of crippling a child’s conceptual faculty and replacing cognition with ‘social adjustment.’ It was and is a systematic attempt to manufacture tribal mentalities.”

A symptom of the tribal mentality’s self-arrested, perceptual level of development may be observed in the tribalists’ position on language.

Language is a conceptual tool — a code of visual-auditory symbols that denote concepts. To a person who understands the function of language, it makes no difference what sounds are chosen to name things, provided these sounds refer to clearly defined aspects of reality. But to a tribalist, language is a mystic heritage, a string of sounds handed down from his ancestors and memorized, not understood. To him the importance lies in the perceptual concrete, the sound of a word, not its meaning. He would kill and die for the privilege of printing on every postage stamp the word “postage” for the

English-speaking and the word “postes” for the French-speaking citizens of his bilingual Canada. Since most of the ethnic languages are not full languages, but merely dialects or local corruptions of a country’s language, the distinctions which the tribalists fight for are not even as big as that.

But, of course, it is not for their language that the tribalists are fighting: they are fighting to protect their level of awareness, their mental passivity, their obedience to the tribe, and their desire to ignore the existence of outsiders.

The learning of another language expands one’s abstract capacity and vision. Personally, I speak four — or rather three-and-a-half — languages: English, French, Russian, and the half is German, which I can read but not speak. I found this knowledge extremely helpful when I began writing: it gave me a wider range and choice of concepts; it showed me four different styles of expression; it made me grasp the nature of languages as such, apart from any set of concretes.

(Speaking of concretes, I would say that every civilized language has its own inimitable power and beauty, but the one I love is English — the language of my choice, not of my birth. English is the most eloquent, the most precise, the most economical, and, therefore, the most powerful. English fits me best — but I would be able to express my identity in any Western language.)

The tribalists clamor that their language preserves their “ethnic identity.” But there is no such thing. Conformity to a racist tradition does not constitute a human identity. Just as racism provides a pseudo-self-esteem for men who have not earned an authentic one, so their hysterical loyalty to their own dialect serves a similar function: it provides a pretense at “collective self-esteem,” an illusion of safety for the confused, frightened, precarious state of a tribalist’s stagnant consciousness.

The proclaimed desire to preserve one’s language and/or its literary works, if any, is a cover-up. In a free, or even semi-free country, no one is forbidden to speak any language he chooses with those who wish to speak it. But he cannot force it on others. A country has to have only one official language if men are to understand one another — and it makes no difference which language it is, since men live by the meaning, not the sound, of words. It is eminently fair that a country’s official language should be the language of the majority. As to literary works, their survival does not depend on political enforcement.

But to the tribalists, language is not a tool of thought and communication. Language to them is a symbol of tribal status and power — the power to force their dialect on all outsiders. This appeals not even to the tribal leaders, but to the sick, touchy vanity of the tribal rank and file.

In this connection, I want to mention a hypothesis of mine, which is only a hypothesis because I have given no special study to the subject of bilingual countries, i.e., countries that have two official languages. But I have observed the fact that bilingual countries tend to be culturally impoverished by comparison to the major countries whose language they share in part. Bilingual countries do not produce many great, first-rate achievements in any intellectual line of endeavor, whether in science, philosophy, literature, or art. Consider the record of Belgium (which is French-speaking in part) as against the record of France — or the record of Switzerland (a trilingual country) as against the record of France, of Germany, of Italy — or the record of Canada as against the record of the United States.

The cause of the poor records may lie in the comparative territorial smallness of those countries — but this does not apply to Canada versus the United States. The cause may lie in the fact that the best, most talented citizens of the bilingual countries tend to emigrate to the major countries — but this still leaves the question: Why do they?

My hypothesis is as follows: the policy of bilingual rule (which spares some citizens the necessity to learn another language) is a concession to, and a perpetuation of, a strong ethnic-tribalist element within a country. It is an element of anti-intellectuality, conformity, and stagnation. The best minds would run from such countries: they would sense, if not know it consciously, that tribalism leaves them no chance.

But quite apart from this particular hypothesis, there can be no doubt that the spread of tribalism is an enormously anti-intellectual evil. If, as I said, some elements of “ethnicity” did remain in the backyards of civilized countries and stayed harmless for centuries, why the sudden epidemic of their rebirth?

Irrationalism and collectivism — the philosophical notions of the prehistorical eras — had to be implemented in practice, in political action, before they could engulf the greatest

scientific-technological achievements mankind had ever reached. The political cause of tribalism’s rebirth is the mixed economy — the transitional stage of the formerly civilized countries of the West on their way to the political level from which the rest of the world has never emerged: the level of permanent tribal warfare.

As I wrote in my article on “Racism” (in The Virtue of Selfishness): “The growth of racism in a ‘mixed economy’ keeps step with the growth of government controls. A ‘mixed economy’ disintegrates a country into an institutionalized civil war of pressure groups, each fighting for legislative favors and special privileges at the expense of one another.”

When a country begins to use such expressions as “seeking a bigger share of the pie,” it is accepting a tenet of pure collectivism: the notion that the goods produced in a country do not belong to the producers, but belong to everybody, and that the government is the distributor. If so, what chance does an individual have of getting a slice of that pie? No chance at all, not even a few crumbs. An individual becomes “fair game” for every sort of organized predator. Thus people are pushed to surrender their independence in exchange for tribal protection.

The government of a mixed economy manufactures pressure groups — and, specifically, manufactures “ethnicity.” The profiteers are those group leaders who discover suddenly that they can exploit the helplessness, the fear, the frustration of their “ethnic” brothers, organize them into a group, present demands to the government — and deliver the vote. The result is political jobs, subsidies, influence, and prestige for the leaders of the ethnic groups.

This does not improve the lot of the group’s rank and file. It makes no difference to the hard-pressed unemployed of any race or color what quota of jobs, college admissions, and Washington appointments were handed out to the political manipulators from their particular race or color. But the ugly farce goes on, with the help and approval of the intellectuals, who write about “minority victories.”

Here is a sample of the goal of such victories. In The New York Times of January 17, 1977, a news story was headlined as follows: “Hispanic Groups Say They Are Inequitably Treated in Support for Arts.” At a hearing on the subject, New York State Senator Robert Garcia declared: “What we are really talking about is dollars and whether we are receiving a fair share of the revenues generated in this state.” The purpose of the demands for state dollars was “to assure the growth of ‘non-mainstream art forms.’” This means: art forms which people do not care to see or to support. The recommendations reached at the hearing included the demand that “at least twenty-five percent of the money goes to Hispanic arts.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what your tax money is being spent on: the new profiteers of altruism are not the poor, the sick, or the unemployed, but ethnic females swishing their skirts in old Spanish dances which were not too good even when they were new.

This is a typical example of the motives and the vested interests behind the growth, the pushing, and the touting of “ethnicity.” An interesting article was published in the British magazine Encounter (February 1975). It is entitled “The Universalisation of Ethnicity” and is written by Nathan Glazer, a well-known American sociologist. It is quite revealing of the modern intellectuals’ attitude toward the spread of ethnicity — more revealing in what Mr. Glazer does not say than in what he does.

He observes: “The overwhelming majority of people . . . are born into a religion, rather than adopt it, just as they are born into an ethnic group. In this respect both are similar. They are both groups by ‘ascription’ rather than ‘achievement.’ They are groups in which one’s status is immediately given by birth rather than gained by some activities in one’s life.”

This is eminently — and horribly — true. There is a great deal to be said about the horrifying approach of a world dominated by people who prefer “ascription” to “achievement,” and who seek a physiologically determined, automatically given status rather than a status they have to earn. Mr. Glazer does not say it; he merely reports.

He is disturbed by the relationship of “ethnic group” to “caste,” but treats it merely as a problem of definitions. But, of course, castes are inherent in the notion of ethnicity — castes of superiors and inferiors, determined by birth, enforced and perpetuated by law, dividing people into “aristocrats,” “commoners,” etc., down to “untouchables.”

Mr. Glazer makes a true and profoundly important statement: “The United States is perhaps unique among the states of the world in using the term ‘nation’ to refer not to an ethnic group but to all who choose to become Americans.” But he draws no conclusions from it. Yet it is extremely significant that the United States was the archenemy and the destroyer of ethnicity, that it abolished castes and any sort of inherited titles, that it granted no recognition to groups as such, that it recognized only the right of the individual to choose the associations he wished to join. Freedom of association is the opposite of ethnicity.

Mr. Glazer does not raise the question of the original American philosophy and the relationship of its destruction to the rise of ethnicity. The focus of his interest lies elsewhere. He writes: “The Socialist hope for a trans-national class struggle, based on class identification, never came to pass. Instead, it has been replaced by national and ethnic conflicts.” And: “In most countries national interests and ethnic interests seem to dominate over class interests.” Mr. Glazer is baffled by this development. He offers some tentative explanations with which he himself is not satisfied, such as: “The trends of modernisation, even while they do destroy some bases of distinctive culture and distinctive identity, create a need for a new kind of identity related to the old, intimate type of village or tribal association.” A modern, technological society, which includes nuclear bombs and space travel — to be run by villages or by tribal associations?

Mr. Glazer himself tends to dismiss theories of this sort, and admits that he cannot find an explanation. “This is the heart of the darkness. Why  didn’t the major lines of conflict within societies become class conflicts rather than ethnic conflicts? . . . In most developing countries Marxism remains the ideology of the students and often of the ruling group — but ethnicity is the focus around which identity and loyalty have been shaped.” Mr. Glazer comes closer to an answer when he observes that ethnicity has “an irrational appeal,” but he takes it no further. He says instead:

It would seem that the rallying cries that mobilise the classes have, in recent decades, had less power than the rallying cries that mobilise the races, tribes, religions, language-users — in short, the Ethnic Groups. Perhaps the epidemic of ethnic conflicts reflects the fact that leaders and organisers believe they can get a more potent response by appealing to ethnicity than they can by appealing to Class Interest.

True, leaders and organizers do believe this — but why? The answer to Mr. Glazer’s questions lies in the fact that Marxism is an intellectual construct; it is false, but it is an abstract theory — and it is too abstract for the tribalists’ concrete-bound, perceptual mentalities. It requires a significantly high level of abstraction to grasp the reality of “an international working class” — a level beyond the power of a consciousness that understands its own village, but has trouble treating the nearest town as fully real. No, the level of men’s intelligence has not deteriorated from natural causes; it has been pushed down, retarded, stultified by modern anti-intellectual education and modern irrationalist philosophy.

Mr. Glazer does not see or is not concerned with any part of this answer. It is obvious that he is disturbed by the spread of ethnicity, but he tries to hope for the best — and this leads him, in conclusion, to a truly unspeakable statement. After proposing some sort of solution in the form of “either guaranteed shares for each group, or guaranteed rights for each individual and each group,” he continues: “The United States in the past seemed to find the approach in terms of ‘guaranteed rights’ more congenial than the approach in terms of guaranteed shares; but recently Americans have begun to take individual rights less seriously, and to take group shares more seriously.” After I recovered from feeling sick at my stomach, I asked myself: What Americans has Mr. Glazer been observing or associating with? I do not know — but his statement is libel against an entire nation. His statement means that Americans are willing to sell their rights for money — for a “share of the pie.”

In his last paragraph Mr. Glazer observes that there was time when “the problems of Ethnicity, as a source of conflict within nations and between nations, have generally appeared as simply a left-over, an embarrassment from the past. It is my conviction they must now be placed at the very centre of our concern for the human condition.”

He is right to fear such a prospect.

There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred — brute, blind, virulent hatred — than by splitting it into ethnic groups or tribes. If a man believes that his own character is determined at birth in some unknown, ineffable way, and that the characters of all strangers are determined in the same way — then no communication, no understanding, no persuasion is possible among them, only mutual fear, suspicion, and hatred. Tribal or ethnic rule has existed, at some time, in every part of the world, and, in some country, in every period of mankind’s history. The record of hatred is always the same. The worst kinds of atrocities were perpetrated during ethnic (including religious) wars. A recent grand-scale example of it was Nazi Germany.

Warfare — permanent warfare — is the hallmark of tribal existence. A tribe — with its rules, dogmas, traditions, and arrested mental development — is not a productive organization. Tribes subsist on the edge of starvation, at the mercy of natural disasters, less successfully than herds of animals. War against other, momentarily luckier tribes, in the hope of looting some meager hoard, is their chronic emergency means of survival. The inculcation of hatred for other tribes is a necessary tool of tribal rulers, who need scapegoats to blame for the misery of their own subjects.

There is no tyranny worse than ethnic rule — since it is an unchosen serfdom one is asked to accept as a value, and since it applies primarily to one’s mind. A man of self-esteem will not accept the notion that the content of his mind is determined by his muscles, i.e., by his own body. But by the bodies of an unspecified string of ancestors? Determinism by the means of production is preferable; it is equally false, but less offensive to human dignity. Marxism is corrupt, but clean compared to the stale, rank, musty odor of ethnicity.

As to the stagnation under tribal rule — take a look at the Balkans. At the start of this century, the Balkans were regarded as the disgrace of Europe. Six or eight tribes, plus a number of sub-tribes with unpronounceable names, were crowded on the Balkan peninsula, engaging in endless wars among themselves or being conquered by stronger neighbors or practicing violence for the sake of violence over some microscopic language differences. “Balkanization” — the breakup of larger nations into ethnic tribes — was used as a pejorative term by the European intellectuals of the time. Those same intellectuals were pathetically proud when they managed, after World War I, to glue most of the Balkan tribes together into two larger countries: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. But the tribes never vanished; they have been popping up in minor explosions all along, and a major one is possible at any time.

In the light of tribalism’s historical record, it is ludicrous to compromise with it, to hope for the best or to expect some sort of fair “group shares.” Nothing can be expected from tribalism except brutality and war. But this time, it is not with bows and arrows that the tribes will be armed, but with nuclear bombs.

As a tiny preview of what tribalism would mean in a modern, technological civilization, a story in The New York Times of January 23, 1977, reports that the French-speaking Canadians of Quebec had demanded the use of French in all official dealings, including at airports, but “a federal court upheld a ban by the federal Ministry of Transport on the use of French for landings at Montreal’s two international airports. (English is the language accepted at airports in every nation of the world.)”

Let me remind you of the recent terrible collision of two planes in the Canary Islands. Although all the personnel involved spoke English perfectly, the investigations seem to indicate that the collision was caused by linguistic misunderstandings. But what is that to the Canadians of Quebec, or to Idi Amin of Uganda, or to any other ethnic tribalists who might demand that their language be spoken by every plane pilot in the world? Incidentally, that collision took place because the small airport was overcrowded with planes that could not land at a nearby major airport: the major airport had been bombed by ethnic terrorists who were seeking the independence of the Canary Islands from Spain.

How long would the achievements of a technological civilization last under this sort of tribal management?

Some people ask whether local groups or provinces have the right to secede from the country of which they are a part. The answer is: on ethnic grounds, no. Ethnicity is not a valid consideration, morally or politically, and does not endow anyone with any special rights. As to other than ethnic grounds, remember that rights belong only to individuals and that there is no such thing as “group rights.” If a province wants to secede from a dictatorship, or even from a mixed economy, in order to establish a free country — it has the right to do so. But if a local gang, ethnic or otherwise, wants to secede in order to establish its own government controls, it does not have that right. No group has the right to violate the rights of the individuals who happen to live in the same locality. A wish — individual or collective — is not a right.

Is there a way to avoid the rebirth of global tribalism and the approach of another Dark Ages? Yes, there is, but only one way — through the rebirth of the antagonist that has demonstrated its power to relegate ethnicity to a peaceful dump: capitalism.

Observe the paradoxes built up about capitalism. It has been called a system of selfishness (which, in my sense of the term, it is) — yet it is the only system that drew men to unite on a large scale into great countries, and peacefully to cooperate across national boundaries, while all the collectivist, internationalist, One-World systems are splitting the world into Balkanized tribes.

Capitalism has been called a system of greed — yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

Capitalism has been called nationalistic — yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.

Capitalism has been called cruel — yet it brought such hope, progress and general good will that the young people of today, who have not seen it, find it hard to believe.

As to pride, dignity, self-confidence, self-esteem — these are characteristics that mark a man for martyrdom in a tribal society and under any social system except capitalism.

If you want an example of what had once been the spirit of America — a spirit which would be impossible today, but which we must now struggle to bring to a rebirth — I will quote from an old poem that represents the opposite of the abject self-abasement of ethnicity. It is a poem called “The Westerner” by Badger Clark.

He begins with “My fathers sleep on the Eastern plain and each one sleeps alone” — he acknowledges his respect for his forefathers, then says:

But I lean on no dead kin.
My name is mine for fame or scorn,
And the world began when I was born,
And the world is mine to win.

In the essay, Ayn Rand portrays Romanticism as a superlative achievement of the nineteenth century. In her view, it was the artistic expression of an era marked by “an atmosphere of men intoxicated by the discovery of freedom, with all the ancient strongholds of tyranny — of church, state, monarchy, feudalism — crumbling around them, with unlimited roads opening in all directions and no barriers set to their newly unleashed energy.”

In Rand’s view, the essence of the Romantic spirit lay in their implicit recognition of man’s volition. As artists, they portrayed human beings as beings with free will, capable of shaping their lives through their own choices in the pursuit of meaningful values. Their approach stood in stark contrast to that of the Naturalist school of literature that followed, which, in its aim to portray “real-life” characters, operated on the premise that man is “determined by forces beyond his control.”

“What is Romanticism?” was originally published in The Romantic Manifesto (1971).

Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man and of existence. In forming a view of man’s nature, a fundamental question one must answer is whether man possesses the faculty of volition — because one’s conclusions and evaluations in regard to all the characteristics, requirements and actions of man depend on the answer.

Their opposite answers to this question constitute the respective basic premises of two broad categories of art: Romanticism, which recognizes the existence of man’s volition — and Naturalism, which denies it.

In the field of literature, the logical consequences of these basic premises (whether held consciously or subconsciously) determine the form of the key elements of a literary work.

1. If man possesses volition, then the crucial aspect of his life is his choice of values — if he chooses values, then he must act to gain and/or keep them — if so, then he must set his goals and engage in purposeful action to achieve them. The literary form expressing the essence of such action is the plot. (A plot is a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax.)

The faculty of volition operates in regard to the two fundamental aspects of man’s life: consciousness and existence, i.e., his psychological action and his existential action, i.e., the formation of his own character and the course of action he pursues in the physical world. Therefore, in a literary work, both the characterizations and the events are to be created by the author, according to his view of the role of values in human psychology and existence (and according to the code of values he holds to be right). His characters are abstract projections, not reproductions of concretes; they are invented conceptually, not copied reportorially from the particular individuals he might have observed. The specific characters of particular individuals are merely the evidence of their particular value-choices and have no wider metaphysical significance (except as material for the study of the general principles of human psychology); they do not exhaust man’s characterological potential.

2. If man does not possess volition, then his life and his character are determined by forces beyond his control — if so, then the choice of values is impossible to him — if so, then such values as he appears to hold are only an illusion, predetermined by the forces he has no power to resist — if so, then he is impotent to achieve his goals or to engage in purposeful action — and if he attempts the illusion of such action, he will be defeated by those forces, and his failure (or occasional success) will have no relation to his actions. The literary form expressing the essence of this view is plotlessness (since there can be no purposeful progression of events, no logical continuity, no resolution, no climax).

If man’s character and the course of his life are the product of unknown (or unknowable) forces, then, in a literary work, both the characterizations and the events are not to be invented by the author, but are to be copied from such particular characters and events as he has observed. Since he denies the existence of any effective motivational principle in human psychology, he cannot create his characters conceptually. He can only observe the people he meets, as he observes inanimate objects, and reproduce them — in the implicit hope that some clue to the unknown forces controlling human destiny may be discovered in such reproductions.

These basic premises of Romanticism and Naturalism (the volition or anti-volition premise) affect all the other aspects of a literary work, such as the choice of theme and the quality of the style, but it is the nature of the story structure — the attribute of plot or plotlessness — that represents the most important difference between them and serves as the main distinguishing characteristic for classifying a given work in one category or the other.

This is not to say that a writer identifies and applies all the consequences of his basic premise by a conscious process of thought. Art is the product of a man’s subconscious integrations, of his sense of life, to a larger extent than of his conscious philosophical convictions. Even the choice of the basic premise may be subconscious — since artists, like any other men, seldom translate their sense of life into conscious terms. And, since an artist’s sense of life may be as full of contradictions as that of any other man, these contradictions become apparent in his work; the dividing line between Romanticism and Naturalism is not always maintained consistently in every aspect of every given work of art (particularly since one of these basic premises is false). But if one surveys the field of art and studies the works produced, one will observe that the degree of consistency in the consequences of these two basic premises is a remarkably eloquent demonstration of the power of metaphysical premises in the realm of art.

With very rare (and partial) exceptions, Romanticism is non-existent in today’s literature. This is not astonishing when one considers the crushing weight of the philosophical wreckage under which generations of men have been brought up — a wreckage dominated by the doctrines of irrationalism and determinism. In their formative years, young people could not find much evidence on which to develop a rational, benevolent, value-oriented sense of life, neither in philosophical theory nor in its cultural echoes nor in the daily practice of the passively deteriorating society around them.

But observe the psychological symptoms of an unrecognized, unidentified issue: the virulently intense antagonism of today’s esthetic spokesmen to any manifestation of the Romantic premise in art. It is particularly the attribute of plot in literature that arouses an impassioned hostility among them — a hostility with deeply personal overtones, too violent for a mere issue of literary canons. If plot were a negligible and inappropriate element of literature, as they claim it to be, why the hysterical hatred in their denunciations? This type of reaction pertains to metaphysical issues, i.e., to issues that threaten the foundations of a person’s entire view of life (if that view is irrational). What they sense in a plot structure is the implicit premise of volition (and, therefore, of moral values). The same reaction, for the same subconscious reason, is evoked by such elements as heroes or happy endings or the triumph of virtue, or, in the visual arts, beauty. Physical beauty is not a moral or volitional issue — but the choice to paint a beautiful human being rather than an ugly one, implies the existence of volition: of choice, standards, values.

The destruction of Romanticism in esthetics — like the destruction of individualism in ethics or of capitalism in politics — was made possible by philosophical default. It is one more demonstration of the principle that that which is not known explicitly is not in man’s conscious control. In all three cases, the nature of the fundamental values involved had never been defined explicitly, the issues were fought in terms of non-essentials, and the values were destroyed by men who did not know what they were losing or why.

This was the predominant pattern of issues in the field of esthetics, which, throughout history, has been a virtual monopoly of mysticism. The definition of Romanticism given here is mine — it is not a generally known or accepted one. There is no generally accepted definition of Romanticism (nor of any key element in art, nor of art itself).

Romanticism is a product of the nineteenth century — a (largely subconscious) result of two great influences: Aristotelianism, which liberated man by validating the power of his mind — and capitalism, which gave man’s mind the freedom to translate ideas into practice (the second of these influences was itself the result of the first). But while the practical consequences of Aristotelianism were reaching men’s daily existence, its theoretical influence was long since gone: philosophy, since the Renaissance, had been retrogressing overwhelmingly to the mysticism of Plato. Thus the historically unprecedented events of the nineteenth century — the Industrial Revolution, the child-prodigy speed in the growth of science, the skyrocketing standard of living, the liberated torrent of human energy — were left without intellectual direction or evaluation. The nineteenth century was guided, not by an Aristotelian philosophy, but by an Aristotelian sense of life. (And, like a brilliantly violent adolescent who fails to translate his sense of life into conscious terms, it burned itself out, choked by the blind confusions of its own overpowering energy.)

Whatever their conscious convictions, the artists of that century’s great new school — the Romanticists — picked their sense of life out of the cultural atmosphere: it was an atmosphere of men intoxicated by the discovery of freedom, with all the ancient strongholds of tyranny — of church, state, monarchy, feudalism — crumbling around them, with unlimited roads opening in all directions and no barriers set to their newly unleashed energy. It was an atmosphere best expressed by that century’s naive, exuberant and tragically blind belief that human progress, from here on, was to be irresistible and automatic.

Esthetically, the Romanticists were the great rebels and innovators of the nineteenth century. But, in their conscious convictions, they were for the most part anti-Aristotelian and leaning toward a kind of wild, freewheeling mysticism. They did not see their own rebellion in fundamental terms; they were rebelling — in the name of the individual artist’s freedom — not against determinism, but, much more superficially, against the esthetic “Establishment” of the time: against Classicism.

Classicism (an example of a much deeper superficiality) was a school that had devised a set of arbitrary, concretely detailed rules purporting to represent the final and absolute criteria of esthetic value. In literature, these rules consisted of specific edicts, loosely derived from the Greek (and French) tragedies, which prescribed every formal aspect of a play (such as the unity of time, place and action) down to the number of acts and the number of verses permitted to a character in every act. Some of that stuff was based on Aristotle’s esthetics and can serve as an example of what happens when concrete-bound mentalities, seeking to by-pass the responsibility of thought, attempt to transform abstract principles into concrete prescriptions and to replace creation with imitation. (For an example of Classicism that survived well into the twentieth century, I refer you to the architectural dogmas represented by Howard Roark’s antagonists in The Fountainhead.)

Even though the Classicists had no answer to why their rules were to be accepted as valid (except the usual appeal to tradition, to scholarship and to the prestige of antiquity), this school was regarded as the representative of reason. (!)

Such were the roots of one of the grimmest ironies in cultural history: the early attempts to define the nature of Romanticism declared it to be an esthetic school based on the primacy of emotions — as against the champions of the primacy of reason, which were the Classicists (and, later, the Naturalists). In various forms, this definition has persisted to our day. It is an example of the intellectually disastrous consequences of definitions by non-essentials — and an example of the penalty one pays for a non-philosophical approach to cultural phenomena.

One can observe the misapprehended element of truth that gave rise to that early classification. What the Romanticists brought to art was the primacy of values, an element that had been missing in the stale, arid, third- and fourth-hand (and rate) repetitions of the Classicists’ formula-copying. Values (and value-judgments) are the source of emotions; a great deal of emotional intensity was projected in the work of the Romanticists and in the reactions of their audiences, as well as a great deal of color, imagination, originality, excitement and all the other consequences of a value-oriented view of life. This emotional element was the most easily perceivable characteristic of the new movement and it was taken as its defining characteristic, without deeper inquiry.

Such issues as the fact that the primacy of values in human life is not an irreducible primary, that it rests on man’s faculty of volition, and, therefore, that the Romanticists, philosophically, were the champions of volition (which is the root of values) and not of emotions (which are merely the consequences) — were issues to be defined by philosophers, who defaulted in regard to esthetics as they did in regard to every other crucial aspect of the nineteenth century.

The still deeper issue, the fact that the faculty of reason is the faculty of volition, was not known at the time, and the various theories of free will were for the most part of an anti-rational character, thus reinforcing the association of volition with mysticism.

The Romanticists saw their cause primarily as a battle for their right to individuality and — unable to grasp the deepest metaphysical justification of their cause, unable to identify their values in terms of reason — they fought for individuality in terms of feelings, surrendering the banner of reason to their enemies.

There were other, lesser consequences of this fundamental error, all of them symptoms of the intellectual confusion of the age. Groping blindly for a metaphysically oriented, grand-scale, exalted way of life, the Romanticists, predominantly, were enemies of capitalism, which they regarded as a prosaic, materialistic, “petty bourgeois” system — never realizing that it was the only system that could make freedom, individuality and the pursuit of values possible in practice. Some of them chose to be advocates of socialism; some turned for inspiration to the Middle Ages and became shameless glamorizers of that nightmare era; some ended up where most champions of the non-rational end up: in religion. All of it served to accelerate Romanticism’s growing break with reality.

When, in the later half of the nineteenth century, Naturalism rose to prominence and, assuming the mantle of reason and reality, proclaimed the artists’ duty to portray “things as they are” — Romanticism did not have much of an opposition to offer.

It must be noted that philosophers contributed to the confusion surrounding the term “Romanticism.” They attached the name “Romantic” to certain philosophers (such as Schelling and Schopenhauer) who were avowed mystics advocating the supremacy of emotions, instincts or will over reason. This movement in philosophy had no significant relation to Romanticism in esthetics, and the two movements must not be confused. The common nomenclature, however, is significant in one respect: it indicates the depth of the confusion on the subject of volition. The “Romantic” philosophers’ theories were a viciously malevolent, existence-hating attempt to uphold volition in the name of whim worship, while the esthetic Romanticists were groping blindly to uphold volition in the name of man’s life and values here, on earth. In terms of essentials, the brilliant sunlight of Victor Hugo’s universe is the diametrical opposite of the venomous muck of Schopenhauer’s. It was only philosophical package-dealing that could throw them in the same category. But the issue demonstrates the profound importance of the subject of volition, and the grotesque distortions it assumes when men are unable to grasp its nature. This issue may also serve as an illustration of the importance of establishing that volition is a function of man’s rational faculty.

In recent times, some literary historians have discarded, as inadequate, the definition of Romanticism as an emotion-oriented school and have attempted to redefine it, but without success. Following the rule of fundamentality, it is as a volition-oriented school that Romanticism must be defined — and it is in terms of this essential characteristic that the nature and history of Romantic literature can be traced and understood.

The (implicit) standards of Romanticism are so demanding that in spite of the abundance of Romantic writers at the time of its dominance, this school has produced very few pure, consistent Romanticists of the top rank. Among novelists, the greatest are Victor Hugo and Dostoevsky, and, as single novels (whose authors were not always consistent in the rest of their works), I would name Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Among playwrights, the greatest are Friedrich Schiller and Edmond Rostand.

The distinguishing characteristic of this top rank (apart from their purely literary genius) is their full commitment to the premise of volition in both of its fundamental areas: in regard to consciousness and to existence, in regard to man’s character and to his actions in the physical world. Maintaining a perfect integration of these two aspects, unmatched in the brilliant ingenuity of their plot structures, these writers are enormously concerned with man’s soul (i.e., his consciousness). They are moralists in the most profound sense of the word; their concern is not merely with values, but specifically with moral values and with the power of moral values in shaping human character. Their characters are “larger than life,” i.e., they are abstract projections in terms of essentials (not always successful projections, as we shall discuss later). In their stories, one will never find action for action’s sake, unrelated to moral values. The events of their plots are shaped, determined and motivated by the characters’ values (or treason to values), by their struggle in pursuit of spiritual goals and by profound value-conflicts. Their themes are fundamental, universal, timeless issues of man’s existence — and they are the only consistent creators of the rarest attribute of literature: the perfect integration of theme and plot, which they achieve with superlative virtuosity.

If philosophical significance is the criterion of what is to be taken seriously, then these are the most serious writers in world literature.

The second rank of Romanticists (who are still writers of considerable merit, but of lesser stature) indicates the direction of Romanticism’s future decline. This rank is represented by such writers as Walter Scott and Alexander Dumas. The distinguishing characteristic of their work is the emphasis on action, without spiritual goals or significant moral values. Their stories have well-built, imaginative, suspenseful plot structures, but the values pursued by their characters and motivating the action are of a primitive, superficial, emphatically non-metaphysical order: loyalty to a king, the reclaiming of a heritage, personal revenge, etc. The conflicts and story lines are predominantly external. The characters are abstractions, they are not Naturalistic copies, but they are abstractions of loosely generalized virtues or vices, and characterization is minimal. In time, they become a writer’s own self-made bromides, such as “a brave knight,” “a noble lady,” “a vicious courtier” — so that they are neither created nor drawn from life, but picked from a kind of ready-to-wear collection of stock characters of Romanticism. The absence of any metaphysical meaning (apart from the affirmation of volition implicit in a plot structure) is evident in the fact that these novels have plots, but no abstract themes — with the story’s central conflict serving as the theme, usually in the form of some actual or fictionalized historical event.

Going farther down, one can observe the breakup of Romanticism, the contradictions that proceed from a premise held subconsciously. On this level, there emerges a class of writers whose basic premise, in effect, is that man possesses volition in regard to existence, but not to consciousness, i.e., in regard to his physical actions, but not in regard to his own character. The distinguishing characteristic of this class is: stories of unusual events enacted by conventional characters. The stories are abstract projections, involving actions one does not observe in “real life,” the characters are commonplace concretes. The stories are Romantic, the characters Naturalistic. Such novels seldom have plots (since value-conflicts are not their motivational principle), but they do have a form resembling a plot: a coherent, imaginative, often suspenseful story held together by some one central goal or undertaking of the characters.

The contradictions in such a combination of elements are obvious; they lead to a total breach between action and characterization, leaving the action unmotivated and the characters unintelligible. The reader is left to feel: “These people couldn’t do these things!”

With its emphasis on sheer physical action and neglect of human psychology, this class of novels stands on the borderline between serious and popular literature. No top-rank novelists belong to this category; the better-known ones are writers of science fiction, such as H. G. Wells or Jules Verne. (Occasionally, a good writer of the Naturalistic school, with a repressed element of Romanticism, attempts a novel on an abstract theme that requires a Romantic approach; the result falls into this category. For example, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here.) It is obvious why the novels of this category are enormously unconvincing. And, no matter how skillfully or suspensefully their action is presented, they always have an unsatisfying, uninspiring quality.

On the other side of the same dichotomy, there are Romanticists whose basic premise, in effect, is that man possesses volition in regard to consciousness, but not to existence, i.e., in regard to his own character and choice of values, but not in regard to the possibility of achieving his goals in the physical world. The distinguishing characteristics of such writers are grand-scale themes and characters, no plots and an overwhelming sense of tragedy, the sense of a “malevolent universe.” The chief exponents of this category were poets. The leading one is Byron, whose name has been attached to this particular, “Byronic,” view of existence: its essence is the belief that man must lead a heroic life and fight for his values even though he is doomed to defeat by a malevolent fate over which he has no control.

Today, the same view is advocated philosophically by the existentialists, but without the grand-scale element and with Romanticism replaced by a kind of sub-Naturalism.

Philosophically, Romanticism is a crusade to glorify man’s existence; psychologically, it is experienced simply as the desire to make life interesting.

This desire is the root and motor of Romantic imagination, its greatest example, in popular literature, is O. Henry, whose unique characteristic is the pyrotechnical virtuosity of an inexhaustible imagination projecting the gaiety of a benevolent, almost childlike sense of life. More than any other writer, O. Henry represents the spirit of youth — specifically, the cardinal element of youth: the expectation of finding something wonderfully unexpected around all of life’s corners.

In the field of popular literature, Romanticism’s virtues and potential flaws may be seen in a simplified, more obvious form.

Popular literature is fiction that does not deal with abstract problems; it takes moral principles as the given, accepting certain generalized, common-sense ideas and values as its base. (Common-sense values and conventional values are not the same thing; the first can be justified rationally, the second cannot. Even though the second may include some of the first, they are justified, not on the ground of reason, but on the ground of social conformity.)

Popular fiction does not raise or answer abstract questions; it assumes that man knows what he needs to know in order to live, and it proceeds to show his adventures in living (which is one of the reasons for its popularity among all types of readers, including the problem-laden intellectuals). The distinctive characteristic of popular fiction is the absence of an explicitly ideational element, of the intent to convey intellectual information (or misinformation).

Detective, adventure, science-fiction novels and Westerns belong, for the most part, to the category of popular fiction. The best writers of this category come close to the Scott-Dumas group: their emphasis is on action, but their heroes and villains are abstract projections, and a loosely generalized view of moral values, of a struggle between good and evil, motivates the action. (As contemporary examples of the best in this class: Mickey Spillane, Ian Fleming, Donald Hamilton.)

When we go below the top level of popular fiction, we descend into a kind of no man’s land where literary principles are barely applicable (particularly if we include the field of movies and television). Here, the distinctive characteristics of Romanticism become almost indistinguishable. On this level, writing is not the product of subconscious premises: it is a mixture of elements picked by random imitation rather than by sense-of-life creation.

A certain characteristic is typical of this level: it is not merely the use of conventional, Naturalistic characters to enact Romantic events, but worse: the use of characters who are romanticized embodiments of conventional values. Such embodiments represent canned values, empty stereotypes that serve as an automatic substitute for value-judgments. This method lacks the essential attribute of Romanticism: the independent, creative projection of an individual writer’s values — and it lacks the reportorial honesty of the (better) Naturalists: it does not present concrete men “as they are,” it presents human pretensions (a collective role-playing or an indiscriminate collective daydream) and palms this off as reality.

Most of the “slick-magazine” fiction popular before World War II belongs to this class, with its endless variations on the Cinderella theme, the motherhood theme, the costume-drama theme, or the common-man-with-a-heart-of-gold theme. (For example, Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, Barry Benefield.) This type of fiction has no plots, only more or less cohesive stories, and no discernible characterizations: the characters are false journalistically, and meaningless metaphysically. (It is an open question whether this group belongs to the category of Romanticism; it is usually regarded as Romantic simply because it is far removed from anything perceivable in reality concretely or abstractly.)

As far as their fiction aspects are concerned, movies and television, by their nature, are media suited exclusively to Romanticism (to abstractions, essentials and drama). Unfortunately, both media came too late: the great day of Romanticism was gone, and only its sunset rays reached a few exceptional movies. (Fritz Lane’s Siegfried is the best among them.) For a while, the movie field was dominated by the equivalent of the slick-magazine Romanticism, with a still less discriminating level of taste and imagination, and an incommunicable vulgarity of spirit.

Partly in reaction against this debasement of values, but mainly in consequence of the general philosophical-cultural disintegration of our time (with its anti-value trend), Romanticism vanished from the movies and never reached television (except in the form of a few detective series, which are now gone also). What remains is the occasional appearance of cowardly pieces, whose authors apologize for their Romantic attempts, by means of comedy — or mongrel pieces, whose authors beg not to be mistaken for advocates of human values (or human greatness), by means of coyly, militantly commonplace characters who enact world-shaking events and perform fantastic feats, particularly in the realm of science. The nature of this type of scenario can best be encapsulated by a line of dialogue on the order of: “Sorry, baby, I can’t take you to the pizza joint tonight, I’ve got to go back to the lab and split the atom.”

The next, and final, level of disintegration is the attempt to eliminate Romanticism from Romantic fiction — i.e., to dispense with the element of values, morality and volition. This used to be called the “hard-boiled” school of detective fiction; today, it is plugged as “realistic.” This school makes no distinction between heroes and villains for detectives and criminals, or victims and executioners) and presents, in effect, two mobs of gangsters fighting savagely and incomprehensibly (no motivation is offered) for the same territory, neither side being able to do otherwise.

This is the dead end where, arriving by different roads, Romanticism and Naturalism meet, blend and vanish: deterministically helpless, compulsively evil characters go through a series of inexplicably exaggerated events and engage in purposeful conflicts without purpose.

Beyond this point, the field of literature, both “serious” and popular, is taken over by a genre compared to which Romanticism and Naturalism are clean, civilized and innocently rational: the Horror Story. The modern ancestor of this phenomenon is Edgar Allan Poe; its archetype or purest esthetic expression is Boris Karloff movies.

Popular literature, more honest in this respect, presents its horrors in the form of physical monstrosities. In “serious” literature, the horrors become psychological and bear less resemblance to anything human; this is the literary cult of depravity.

The Horror Story, in either variant, represents the metaphysical projection of a single human emotion: blind, stark, primitive terror. Those who live in such terror seem to find a momentary sense of relief or control in the process of reproducing that which they fear — as savages find a sense of mastery over their enemies by reproducing them in the form of dolls. Strictly speaking, this is not a metaphysical, but a purely psychological projection; such writers are not presenting their view of life; they are not looking at life; what they are saying is that they feel as if life consisted of werewolves, Draculas and Frankenstein monsters. In its basic motivation, this school belongs to psychopathology more than to esthetics.

Historically, neither Romanticism nor Naturalism could survive the collapse of philosophy. There are individual exceptions, but I am speaking of these schools as broad, active, creative movements. Since art is the expression and product of philosophy, it is the first to mirror the vacuum at the base of a culture and the first to crumble.

This general cause had special consequences affecting Romanticism, which hastened its decline and collapse. There were also special consequences affecting Naturalism, which were of a different character and their destructive potential worked at a slower rate.

The archenemy and destroyer of Romanticism was the altruist morality.

Since Romanticism’s essential characteristic is the projection of values, particularly moral values, altruism introduced an insolvable conflict into Romantic literature from the start. The altruist morality cannot be practiced (except in the form of self-destruction) and, therefore, cannot be projected or dramatized convincingly in terms of man’s life on earth (particularly in the realm of psychological motivation). With altruism as the criterion of value and virtue, it is impossible to create an image of man at his best — “as he might be and ought to be.” The major flaw that runs through the history of Romantic literature is the failure to present a convincing hero, i.e., a convincing image of a virtuous man.

It is the abstract intention — the grandeur of the author’s view of man — that one admires in the characters of Victor Hugo, not their actual characterizations. The greatest Romanticist never succeeded in projecting an ideal man or any convincing major characters of a positive nature. His most ambitious attempt, Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, remains a giant abstraction that never integrates into a person, in spite of isolated touches of profound psychological perceptiveness on the part of the author. In the same novel, Marius, the young man who is supposed to be Hugo’s autobiographical projection, acquires a certain stature only by means of what the author says about him, not by means of what he shows. As far as characterization is concerned, Marius is not a person, but the suggestion of a person squeezed into a straitjacket of cultural bromides. The best-drawn and most interesting characters in Hugo’s novels are the semi-villains (his benevolent sense of life made him unable to create a real villain): Javert in Les Misérables, Josiana in The Man Who Laughs, Claude Frollo in Notre-Dame de Paris.

Dostoevsky (whose sense of life was the diametrical opposite of Hugo’s) was a passionate moralist whose blind quest for values was expressed only in the fiercely merciless condemnation with which he presented evil characters; no one has equaled him in the psychological depth of his images of human evil. But he was totally incapable of creating a positive or virtuous character, such attempts as he made were crudely inept (for example, Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov). It is significant that according to Dostoevsky’s preliminary notes for The Possessed, his original intention was to create Stavrogin as an ideal man — an embodiment of the Russian-Christian-altruist soul. As the notes progressed, that intention changed gradually, in logically inexorable steps dictated by Dostoevsky’s artistic integrity. In the final result, in the actual novel, Stavrogin is one of Dostoevsky’s most repulsively evil characters.

In Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis, the best-drawn, most colorful character, who dominates the novel, is Petronius, the symbol of Roman decadence — while Vinicius, the author’s hero, the symbol of the rise of Christianity, is a cardboard figure.

This phenomenon — the fascinating villain or colorful rogue, who steals the story and the drama from the anemic hero — is prevalent in the history of Romantic literature, serious or popular, from top to bottom. It is as if, under the dead crust of the altruist code officially adopted by mankind, an illicit, subterranean fire were boiling chaotically and erupting once in a while; forbidden to the hero, the fire of self-assertiveness burst forth from the apologetic ashes of a “villain.”

The highest function of Romanticism — the projection of moral values — is an extremely difficult task under any moral code, rational or not, and, in literary history, only the top rank of Romanticists were able to attempt it. Given the added burden of an irrational code, such as altruism, the majority of Romantic writers had to avoid that task — which led to the weakness and neglect of the element of characterization in their writing. In addition, the impossibility of applying altruism to reality, to men’s actual existence, led many Romantic writers to avoid the problem by escaping into history, i.e., by choosing to place their stories in some distant past (such as the Middle Ages). Thus, the emphasis on action, the neglect of human psychology, the lack of convincing motivation were progressively dissociating Romanticism from reality — until the final remnants of Romanticism became a superficial, meaningless, “unserious” school that had nothing to say about human existence.

The disintegration of Naturalism brought it to the same state, for different reasons.

Although Naturalism is a product of the nineteenth century, its spiritual father, in modern history, was Shakespeare. The premise that man does not possess volition, that his destiny is determined by an innate “tragic flaw,” is fundamental in Shakespeare’s work, But, granted this false premise, his approach is metaphysical, not journalistic. His characters are not drawn from “real life,” they are not copies of observed concretes nor statistical averages: they are grand-scale abstractions of the character traits which a determinist would regard as inherent in human nature: ambition, power-lust, jealousy, greed, etc.

Some of the famous Naturalists attempted to maintain Shakespeare’s abstract level, i.e., to present their views of human nature in metaphysical terms (for example, Balzac, Tolstoy). But the majority, following the lead of Emile Zola, rejected metaphysics, as they rejected values, and adopted the method of journalism: the recording of observed concretes.

The contradictions inherent in determinism were obvious in this movement from the start. One does not read fiction except on the implicit premise of volition — i.e., on the premise that some element (some abstraction) of the fiction story is applicable to oneself, that one will learn, discover or contemplate something of value and that this experience will make a difference. If one were to accept the deterministic premise fully and literally — if one were to believe that the characters of a fiction story are as distant and irrelevant to oneself as the unknowable inhabitants of another galaxy and that they cannot affect one’s life in any way whatever, since neither they nor the reader have any power of choice — one would not be able to read beyond the first chapter.

Nor would one be able to write. Psychologically, the whole of the Naturalist movement rode on the premise of volition as on an unidentified subconscious “stolen concept.” Choosing “society” as the factor that determines man’s fate, most of the Naturalists were social reformers, advocating social changes, claiming that man has no volition, but society, somehow, has. Tolstoy preached resignation and passive obedience to society’s power. In Anna Karenina, the most evil book in serious literature, he attacked man’s desire for happiness and advocated its sacrifice to conformity.

No matter how concrete-bound their theories forced them to be, the writers of the Naturalist school still had to exercise their power of abstraction to a significant extent: in order to reproduce “real-life” characters, they had to select the characteristics they regarded as essential, differentiating them from the non-essential or accidental. Thus they were led to substitute statistics for values as a criterion of selectivity: that which is statistically prevalent among men, they held, is metaphysically significant and representative of man’s nature; that which is rare or exceptional, is not. (See Chapter 7.)

At first, having rejected the element of plot and even of story, the Naturalists concentrated on the element of characterization — and psychological perceptiveness was the chief value that the best of them had to offer. With the growth of the statistical method, however, that value shrank and vanished: characterization was replaced by indiscriminate recording and buried under a catalogue of trivia, such as minute inventories of a character’s apartment, clothing and meals. Naturalism lost the attempted universality of Shakespeare or Tolstoy, descending from metaphysics to photography with a rapidly shrinking lens directed at the range of the immediate moment — until the final remnants of Naturalism became a superficial, meaningless, “unserious” school that had nothing to say about human existence.

There were several reasons why Naturalism outlasted Romanticism, even if not for long. Chief among them is the fact that Naturalism’s standards are much less demanding. A third-rate Naturalist may still have some perceptive observations to offer; a third-rate Romanticist has nothing.

Romanticism demands mastery of the primary element of fiction: the art of storytelling — which requires three cardinal qualities: ingenuity, imagination, a sense of drama. All this (and more) goes into the construction of an original plot integrated to theme and characterization. Naturalism discards these elements and demands nothing but characterization, in as shapeless a narrative, as “uncontrived” (i.e., purposeless) a progression of events (if any) as a given author pleases.

The value of a Romanticist’s work has to be created by its author; he owes no allegiance to men (only to man), only to the metaphysical nature of reality and to his own values. The value of a Naturalist’s work depends on the specific characters, choices and actions of the men he reproduces — and he is judged by the fidelity with which he reproduces them.

The value of a Romanticist’s story lies in what might happen; the value of a Naturalist’s story lies in that it did happen. If the spiritual ancestor or symbol of the Romanticist is the medieval troubadour who roamed the countryside, inspiring men with visions of life’s potential beyond the dreary boundaries of their daily toil — then the symbol of the Naturalist is the back-fence gossip (as one contemporary Naturalist has somewhat boastfully admitted).

Contributing to the (temporary) dominance of Naturalism was the fact that precious stones attract a greater number of seekers of the unearned than do the more commonly available minerals. The essential element of Romanticism, the plot, can be purloined and disguised by recutting, even though it loses fire, brilliance and value with every stroke of a dime-store chisel. The original plots of Romantic literature have been borrowed in countless variations by countless imitators, losing color and meaning with each successive copy.

For example, compare the dramatic structure of The Lady of the Camellias (Camille) by Alexander Dumas fils, which is an unusually good play, to the endless series of dramas about a prostitute caught between her true love and her past, from Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie on down (or, properly speaking, on up) to Hollywood variants. The esthetic parasites of Romanticism helped to run it into the ground, turning its examples of inventiveness into worn-out bromides. This, however, does not detract from the original authors’ achievements; if anything, it underscores them.

Naturalism does not offer such opportunities to imitators. The essential element of Naturalism — the presentation of “a slice of life” at a specific time and place — cannot be borrowed literally. A writer cannot copy the Russian society of 1812 as presented in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He has to employ some thought and effort of his own, at least in the sense of using his own observations to present the people of his own time and place. Thus, paradoxically, on its lower levels Naturalism offers a chance for some minimal originality, which Romanticism does not. In this respect, Naturalism would appeal to some writers seeking the possibility of a literary achievement on a modest scale.

There were, however, many imitators (of a less obvious kind) among the Naturalists, and many pretentious mediocrities, particularly in Europe. (For example, Romain Rolland, a romanticizing Naturalist who, in intellectual stature, belongs with the slick-magazine Romanticists.) But at Naturalism’s height, the movement included writers of genuine literary talent, particularly in America. Its best representative is Sinclair Lewis, whose novels display a perceptive, critical, first-rate intelligence at work. The best of Naturalism’s contemporary survivors is John O’Hara, who combines a sensitive intelligence with a beautifully disciplined style.

Just as there was a kind of naively innocent, optimistic benevolence in the great Romanticists of the nineteenth century, so there was in the better Naturalists of the twentieth. The first were individual-oriented; the second, society-oriented. World War I marked the end of the great era of Romanticism, and accelerated the fading of individualism. (One may take as a tragic symbol the fact that Edmond Rostand died in 1918, in the flu epidemic following that war.) World War II marked the end of Naturalism, exposing the bankruptcy of collectivism, blasting the vague hopes and illusions of achieving a “benevolent” welfare state. These wars demonstrated existentially what their literary consequences demonstrated psychologically: that man cannot live without philosophy, and neither can he write.

In the eclectic shambles of today’s literature, it is hard to tell which is worse: a Western that explains the deeds of a cattle rustler by reference to his Oedipus complex — or a gory, cynical, “realistic” account of sundry horrors which reveals the message that love is the solution to everything.

Except for the exceptions, there is no literature (and no art) today — in the sense of a broad, vital cultural movement and influence. There are only bewildered imitators with nothing to imitate — and charlatans who rise to split-second notoriety, as they always did in periods of cultural collapse.

Some remnants of Romanticism may still be found in the popular media — but in such a mangled, disfigured form that they achieve the opposite of Romanticism’s original purpose.

The best symbolic projection of these remnants’ meaning (whether the author intended it or not) was given in a brief television story of The Twilight Zone series, some years ago. In some indeterminate world of another dimension, the shadowy, white-clad, authoritarian figures of doctors and social scientists are deeply concerned with the problem of a young girl who looks so different from everyone else that she is shunned as a freak, a disfigured outcast unable to lead a normal life. She has appealed to them for help, but all plastic surgery operations have failed — and now the doctors are grimly preparing to give her a last chance: one more attempt at plastic surgery; if it fails, she will remain a monstrosity for life. In heavily tragic tones, the doctors speak of the girl’s need to be like others, to belong, to be loved, etc. We are not shown any of the characters’ faces, but we hear the tense, ominous, oddly lifeless voices of their dim figures, as the last operation progresses. The operation fails. The doctors declare, with contemptuous compassion, that they will have to find a young man as deformed as this girl, who might be able to accept her. Then, for the first time, we see the girl’s face: lying motionless on the pillow of a hospital bed, it is a face of perfect, radiant beauty. The camera moves to the faces of the doctors: it is an unspeakably horrifying row, not of human faces, but of mangled, distorted, disfigured pigs’ heads, recognizable only by their snouts. Fade-out.

The last remnants of Romanticism are sneaking apologetically on the outskirts of our culture, wearing the masks of a similar plastic surgery operation which has been partially successful. Under the pressure of conformity to the pigs’ snouts of decadence, today’s Romanticists are escaping, not into the past, but into the supernatural — explicitly giving up reality and this earth. The exciting, the dramatic, the unusual — their policy is declaring, in effect — do not exist; please don’t take us seriously, what we’re offering is only a spooky daydream.

Rod Serling, one of the most talented writers of television, started as a Naturalist, dramatizing controversial journalistic issues of the moment, never taking sides, conspicuously avoiding value-judgments, writing about ordinary people — except that these people spoke the most beautifully, eloquently romanticized dialogue, a purposeful, intellectual, sharply focused dialogue-by-essentials, of a kind that people do not speak in “real life,” but should. Prompted, apparently, by the need to give full scope to his colorful imagination and brilliant sense of drama, Rod Serling turned to Romanticism — but placed his stories in another dimension, in The Twilight Zone.

Ira Levin, who started with an excellent first novel (A Kiss Before Dying), now comes out with Rosemary’s Baby, which goes beyond the physical trappings of the Middle Ages, straight to that eras spirit, and presents (seriously) a story about witchcraft in a modern setting; and, since the original version of the Virgin Birth, involving God, would probably be regarded as “camp” by today’s intellectual establishment, this story revolves around the obscenity of a Virgin Birth authored by the Devil.

Fredric Brown, an unusually ingenious writer, had been devoting his ingenuity to turning science fiction into stories of earthly or supernatural evil; now, he has stopped writing.

Alfred Hitchcock, the last movie-maker who has managed to preserve his stature and his following, gets away with Romanticism by means of an overemphasis on malevolence or on sheer horror.

This is the manner in which men of imagination now express their need to make life interesting. Romanticism — which started, in defiance of primordial evils, as a violent, passionate torrent of righteous self-assertiveness — ends up by dribbling through the fingers of tottering heirs who disguise their works and motives by paying lip service to evil.

I do not mean to imply that this type of appeasement is the product of conscious cowardice; I do not believe it is: which makes it worse.

Such is the esthetic state of our day. But so long as men exist, the need of art will exist, since that need is rooted metaphysically in the nature of man’s consciousness — and it will survive a period when, under the reign of irrationality run amuck, men produce and accept tainted scraps to satisfy that need.

As in the case of an individual, so in the case of a culture: disasters can be accomplished subconsciously, but a cure cannot. A cure in both cases requires conscious knowledge, i.e., a consciously grasped, explicit philosophy. It is impossible to predict the time of a philosophical Renaissance. One can only define the road to follow, but not its length. What is certain, however, is that every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics — a rational ethics — as a precondition of rebirth.

And, perhaps, no aspect needs it more desperately than the realm of art.

When reason and philosophy are reborn, literature will be the first phoenix to rise out of today’s ashes. And, armed with a code of rational values, aware of its own nature, confident of the supreme importance of its mission, Romanticism will have come of age.

(May–July 1969)

We’re often told that self-interest is a zero-sum game: if you win, someone else must lose. Whether it’s landing a job, getting a promotion, or falling in love, your gain is assumed to come at another’s expense. It’s a grim view of life — and one that rarely gets questioned. Ayn Rand questioned it. In “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests,” Ayn Rand dismantles the popular belief that such clashes are inevitable. Rand argues that the real source of conflict isn’t competing goals — it’s a mistaken view of what our interests actually are. Too many people assume that wanting something makes it good for them. But desire alone doesn’t determine what truly serves our well-being.

Some students of Objectivism find it difficult to grasp the Objectivist principle that “there are no conflicts of interests among rational men.”

A typical question runs as follows: “Suppose two men apply for the same job. Only one of them can be hired. Isn’t this an instance of a conflict of interests, and isn’t the benefit of one man achieved at the price of the sacrifice of the other?”

There are four interrelated considerations which are involved in a rational man’s view of his interests, but which are ignored or evaded in the above question and in all similar approaches to the issue. I shall designate these four as: (a) “Reality,” (b) “Context,” (c) “Responsibility,” (d) “Effort.”

(a) Reality. The term “interests” is a wide abstraction that covers the entire field of ethics. It includes the issues of: man’s values, his desires, his goals and their actual achievement in reality. A man’s “interests” depend on the kind of goals he chooses to pursue, his choice of goals depends on his desires, his desires depend on his values—and, for a rational man, his values depend on the judgment of his mind.

Desires (or feelings or emotions or wishes or whims) are not tools of cognition; they are not a valid standard of value, nor a valid criterion of man’s interests. The mere fact that a man desires something does not constitute a proof that the object of his desire is good, nor that its achievement is actually to his interest.

To claim that a man’s interests are sacrificed whenever a desire of his is frustrated—is to hold a subjectivist view of man’s values and interests. Which means: to believe that it is proper, moral and possible for man to achieve his goals, regardless of whether they contradict the facts of reality or not. Which means: to hold an irrational or mystical view of existence. Which means: to deserve no further consideration.

In choosing his goals (the specific values he seeks to gain and/or keep), a rational man is guided by his thinking (by a process of reason)—not by his feelings or desires. He does not regard desires as irreducible primaries, as the given, which he is destined irresistibly to pursue. He does not regard “because I want it” or “because I feel like it” as a sufficient cause and validation of his actions. He chooses and/or identifies his desires by a process of reason, and he does not act to achieve a desire until and unless he is able rationally to validate it in the full context of his knowledge and of his other values and goals. He does not act until he is able to say: “I want it because it is right.”

The Law of Identity (A is A) is a rational man’s paramount consideration in the process of determining his interests. He knows that the contradictory is the impossible, that a contradiction cannot be achieved in reality and that the attempt to achieve it can lead only to disaster and destruction. Therefore, he does not permit himself to hold contradictory values, to pursue contradictory goals, or to imagine that the pursuit of a contradiction can ever be to his interest.

Only an irrationalist (or mystic or subjectivist—in which category I place all those who regard faith, feelings or desires as man’s standard of value) exists in a perpetual conflict of “interests.” Not only do his alleged interests clash with those of other men, but they clash also with one another.

No one finds it difficult to dismiss from philosophical consideration the problem of a man who wails that life entraps him in an irreconcilable conflict because he cannot eat his cake and have it, too. That problem does not acquire intellectual validity by being expanded to involve more than cake—whether one expands it to the whole universe, as in the doctrines of Existentialism, or only to a few random whims and evasions, as in most people’s views of their interests.

When a person reaches the stage of claiming that man’s interests conflict with reality, the concept “interests” ceases to be meaningful—and his problem ceases to be philosophical and becomes psychological.

(b) Context. Just as a rational man does not hold any conviction out of context—that is: without relating it to the rest of his knowledge and resolving any possible contradictions—so he does not hold or pursue any desire out of context. And he does not judge what is or is not to his interest out of context, on the range of any given moment.

Context-dropping is one of the chief psychological tools of evasion. In regard to one’s desires, there are two major ways of context-dropping: the issues of range and of means.

A rational man sees his interests in terms of a lifetime and selects his goals accordingly. This does not mean that he has to be omniscient, infallible or clairvoyant. It means that he does not live his life short-range and does not drift like a bum pushed by the spur of the moment. It means that he does not regard any moment as cut off from the context of the rest of his life, and that he allows no conflicts or contradictions between his short-range and long-range interests. He does not become his own destroyer by pursuing a desire today which wipes out all his values tomorrow.

A rational man does not indulge in wistful longings for ends divorced from means. He does not hold a desire without knowing (or learning) and considering the means by which it is to be achieved. Since he knows that nature does not provide man with the automatic satisfaction of his desires, that a man’s goals or values have to be achieved by his own effort, that the lives and efforts of other men are not his property and are not there to serve his wishes—a rational man never holds a desire or pursues a goal which cannot be achieved directly or indirectly by his own effort.

It is with a proper understanding of this “indirectly” that the crucial social issue begins.

Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life. The only difference is that he supports his life by trading his products or services for the products or services of others. And, in this process of trade, a rational man does not seek or desire any more or any less than his own effort can earn. What determines his earnings? The free market, that is: the voluntary choice and judgment of the men who are willing to trade him their effort in return.

When a man trades with others, he is counting—explicitly or implicitly— on their rationality, that is: on their ability to recognize the objective value of his work. (A trade based on any other premise is a con game or a fraud.) Thus, when a rational man pursues a goal in a free society, he does not place himself at the mercy of whims, the favors or the prejudices of others; he depends on nothing but his own effort: directly, by doing objectively valuable work—indirectly, through the objective evaluation of his work by others.

It is in this sense that a rational man never holds a desire or pursues a goal which cannot be achieved by his own effort. He trades value for value. He never seeks or desires the unearned. If he undertakes to achieve a goal that requires the cooperation of many people, he never counts on anything but his own ability to persuade them and their voluntary agreement.

Needless to say, a rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity or dishonesty of others. He knows that such a course is suicidal. He knows that one’s only practical chance to achieve any degree of success or anything humanly desirable lies in dealing with those who are rational, whether there are many of them or few. If, in any given set of circumstances, any victory is possible at all, it is only reason that can win it. And, in a free society, no matter how hard the struggle might be, it is reason that ultimately wins.

Since he never drops the context of the issues he deals with, a rational man accepts that struggle as to his interest—because he knows that freedom is to his interest. He knows that the struggle to achieve his values includes the possibility of defeat. He knows also that there is no alternative and no automatic guarantee of success for man’s effort, neither in dealing with nature nor with other men. So he does not judge his interests by any particular defeat nor by the range of any particular moment. He lives and judges long-range. And he assumes the full responsibility of knowing what conditions are necessary for the achievement of his goals.

(c) Responsibility. This last is the particular form of intellectual responsibility that most people evade. That evasion is the major cause of their frustrations and defeats.

Most people hold their desires without any context whatever, as ends hanging in a foggy vacuum, the fog hiding any concept of means. They rouse themselves mentally only long enough to utter an “I wish,” and stop there, and wait, as if the rest were up to some unknown power.

What they evade is the responsibility of judging the social world. They take the world as the given. “A world I never made” is the deepest essence of their attitude—and they seek only to adjust themselves uncritically to the incomprehensible requirements of those unknowable others who did make the world, whoever those might be.

But humility and presumptuousness are two sides of the same psychological medal. In the willingness to throw oneself blindly on the mercy of others there is the implicit privilege of making blind demands on one’s masters.

There are countless ways in which this sort of “metaphysical humility” reveals itself. For instance, there is the man who wishes to be rich, but never thinks of discovering what means, actions and conditions are required to achieve wealth. Who is he to judge? He never made the world—and “nobody gave him a break.”

There is the girl who wishes to be loved, but never thinks of discovering what love is, what values it requires, and whether she possesses any virtues to be loved for. Who is she to judge? Love, she feels, is an inexplicable favor—so she merely longs for it, feeling that somebody has deprived her of her share in the distribution of favors.

There are the parents who suffer deeply and genuinely, because their son (or daughter) does not love them, and who, simultaneously, ignore, oppose or attempt to destroy everything they know of their son’s convictions, values and goals, never thinking of the connection between these two facts, never making an attempt to understand their son. The world they never made and dare not challenge, has told them that children love parents automatically.

There is the man who wants a job, but never thinks of discovering what qualifications the job requires or what constitutes doing one’s work well. Who is he to judge? He never made the world. Somebody owes him a living. How? Somehow.

A European architect of my acquaintance was talking, one day, of his trip to Puerto Rico. He described—with great indignation at the universe at large—the squalor of the Puerto Ricans’ living conditions. Then he described what wonders modern housing could do for them, which he had daydreamed in detail, including electric refrigerators and tiled bathrooms. I asked: “Who would pay for it?” He answered, in a faintly offended, almost huffy tone of voice: “Oh, that’s not for me to worry about! An architect’s task is only to project what should be done. Let somebody else think about the money.”

That is the psychology from which all “social reforms” or “welfare states” or “noble experiments” or the destruction of the world have come.

In dropping the responsibility for one’s own interests and life, one drops the responsibility of ever having to consider the interests and lives of others—of those others who are, somehow, to provide the satisfaction of one’s desires.

Whoever allows a “somehow” into his view of the means by which his desires are to be achieved, is guilty of that “metaphysical humility” which, psychologically, is the premise of a parasite. As Nathaniel Branden pointed out in a lecture, “somehow” always means “somebody.”

(d) Effort. Since a rational man knows that man must achieve his goals by his own effort, he knows that neither wealth nor jobs nor any human values exist in a given, limited, static quantity, waiting to be He knows that all benefits have to be produced, that the gain of one man does not represent the loss of another, that a man’s achievement is not earned at the expense of those who have not achieved it.

Therefore, he never imagines that he has any sort of unearned, unilateral claim on any human being—and he never leaves his interests at the mercy of any one person or single, specific concrete. He may need clients, but not any one particular customer—he may need a job, but not any one particular job.

If he encounters competition, he either meets it or chooses another line of work. There is no job so slow that a better, more skillful performance of it would pass unnoticed and unappreciated; not in a free society. Ask any office manager.

It is only the passive, parasitical representatives of the “humility metaphysics” school who regard any competitor as a threat, because the thought of earning one’s position by personal merit is not part of their view of life. They regard themselves as interchangeable mediocrities who have nothing to offer and who fight, in a “static” universe, for someone’s causeless favor.

A rational man knows that one does not live by means of “luck,” “breaks” or favors, that there is no such thing as an “only chance” or a single opportunity, and that this is guaranteed precisely by the existence of competition. He does not regard any concrete, specific goal or value as irreplaceable. He knows that only persons are irreplaceable—only those one loves.

He knows also that there are no conflicts of interests among rational men even in the issue of love. Like any other value, love is not a static quantity to be divided, but an unlimited response to be earned. The love for one friend is not a threat to the love for another, and neither is the love for the various members of one’s family, assuming they have earned it. The most exclusive form—romantic love—is not an issue of competition. If two men are in love with the same woman, what she feels for either of them is not determined by what she feels for the other and is not taken away from him. If she chooses one of them, the “loser” could not have had what the “winner” has earned.

It is only among the irrational, emotion-motivated persons, whose love is divorced from any standards of value, that chance rivalries, accidental conflicts and blind choices prevail. But then, whoever wins does not win much. Among the emotion-driven, neither love nor any other emotion has any meaning.

Such, in brief essence, are the four major considerations involved in a rational man’s view of his interests.

Now let us return to the question originally asked—about the two men applying for the same job—and observe in what manner it ignores or opposes these four considerations.

(a) Reality. The mere fact that two men desire the same job does not constitute proof that either of them is entitled to it or deserves it, and that his interests are damaged if he does not obtain it.

(b) Context. Both men should know that if they desire a job, their goal is made possible only by the existence of a business concern able to provide employment—that that business concern requires the availability of more than one applicant for any job—that if only one applicant existed, he would not obtain the job, because the business concern would have to close its doors—and that their competition for the job is to their interest, even though one of them will lose in that particular encounter.

(c) Responsibility. Neither man has the moral right to declare that he doesn’t want to consider all those things, he just wants a He is not entitled to any desire or to any “interest” without knowledge of what is required to make its fulfillment possible.

(d) Effort. Whoever gets the job, has earned it (assuming that the employer’s choice is rational). This benefit is due to his own merit—not to the “sacrifice” of the other man who never had any vested right to that job. The failure to give to a man what had never belonged to him can hardly be described as “sacrificing his interests.”

All of the above discussion applies only to the relationships among rational men and only to a free society. In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.

In a nonfree society, no pursuit of any interests is possible to anyone; nothing is possible but gradual and general destruction.

In this essay, Ayn Rand also draws out the implications of such appeasement for society as a whole. She connects it to trends in politics — such as the widespread sympathy for dictatorships — as well as to trends in esthetics, such as the celebration of “depravity” in modern art and literature. More broadly, she explains how appeasement by intellectuals unleashes the minority of deliberately evil men on society, while abandoning average men to “accept what the culture offers them,” however irrational or anti-rational the culture may be.

“Altruism as Appeasement” was originally published in the January 1966 issue of The Objectivist, now available in paperback, and later anthologized in The Voice of Reason (1989).

A few years ago, on the occasion of giving a lecture at M.I.T., I met a young student who was earnestly, intelligently concerned with opposing the trend to collectivism. I asked him his views on why so many of today’s young intellectuals were becoming “liberals.” He could not give me a full answer. But a few weeks later, he wrote me a remarkable letter.

He explained that he had given a great deal of thought to my question and had reached certain conclusions. The majority of college students, he wrote, do not choose to think; they accept the status quo, conform to the prescribed code of values and evade the responsibility of independent thought. “In adopting this attitude, they are encouraged by teachers who inspire imitation, rather than creation.”

But there are a few who are not willing to renounce their rational faculty. “They are the intellectuals — and they are the outsiders. Their willingness to think makes them shine forth as a threat to the stagnant security of the levelers in which they are immersed. They are teased and rejected by their schoolmates. An immense amount of faith in oneself and a rational philosophical basis are required to set oneself against all that society has ever taught. . . . The man who preaches individual integrity, pride and self-esteem is today virtually nonexistent. Far more common is the man who, driven by the young adult’s driving need for acceptance, has compromised. And here is the key — [the result of] the compromise is the liberal.

Per our agreement with publishers, to make room for other Ayn Rand non-fiction content, this essay has been temporarily removed, but will return in due course.

 

 

Ayn Rand Letters: Personal (1938 – 1950)

This is the fourth and final installment of previously unpublished Ayn Rand letters selected by Michael S. Berliner, editor of Letters of Ayn Rand. A total of forty letters have been divided into four groups for publication, according to general subject matter: Hollywood, novels, nonfiction (including political activism), and more personal correspondence.

“While recently writing the complete finding aid to the Ayn Rand Papers, I noted some interesting letters that I hadn’t selected for the Letters book,” Berliner says. “Now, more than twenty years later, these letters struck me as meriting a wider audience. These unpublished letters were selected because of their insight into some particular topic or some aspect of Ayn Rand’s life, or, more often, as further evidence of how her mind worked on a variety of matters.

“I’d always been impressed by the care she took with non-philosophical issues and relatively trivial matters, and this mind-set comes across in virtually all of her correspondence. For a variety of reasons, she was not a ‘casual’ letter writer but always took great care to write with great precision on matters that today are usually relegated to a quick, unpunctuated tweet. For an explanation of her non-casual approach, see my preface to Letters of Ayn Rand on page xvi.”

This fourth installment of unpublished material contains six letters addressed to the following individuals on the dates listed:

• Ethel Boileau (June 21, 1938)
• Leonard Read (November 30, 1945)
• Lynda Lynneberg (February 21, 1948)
• Hal Wallis (January 6, 1950)
• Lorine Pruette (April 28, 1950)
• Archibald Ogden (August 25, 1950)

What follows is the text of each letter, accompanied by remarks from Berliner (always in italics) supplying necessary context.¹

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To Ethel Boileau (June 21, 1938)

Lady Ethel Boileau (1881–1942) was an English novelist, best known for Clansmen and Ballade in G Minor. Her correspondence with Rand began in 1936, when she wrote a glowing homage to We the Living after her American publisher had sent her a copy. After Rand read Clansmen in 1936, she wrote to Boileau that her “descriptions are so lovely that they have made me, an Americanized Russian, experience a feeling of patriotism toward Scotland. Your book makes me believe that Scotland is a country of strong individuals and, as such, she has all my sympathy and admiration.”  The letter below is a rare instance of Rand commenting about World War II.

Dear Lady Boileau,

Thank you so much for your letter. I was very sorry to hear that you have not been well, and I do hope that you have recovered completely. I am so happy to have met you and am looking forward to the time when you may come to American for another visit.²

However, looking at the picture of your charming house, I suspect that you may not be inclined to leave it often. I am sure that I should not. It has such a magnificent air of old Europe. I feel somewhat wistful as I say this, for the thought of Europe at present gives me a great deal of anxiety. I can well understand your feeling about it. I should not, perhaps, allow myself a definite opinion of the policy of a country which I do not know thoroughly, but I cannot help feeling a great sympathy for Premier Chamberlain. The least co-operation any European country has with Soviet Russia — the greater are the chances of saving Europe from another catastrophe. I am convinced that the major forces preparing for a general world conflict originate in Russia. I can only hope that the propaganda by the Soviet “United Front” will be defeated in England. It is being defeated here, or so it seems at present. The wave of Red public opinion appears to be ebbing quite definitely in New York, where it has always been at its strongest. I feel relieved for the first time in years.

I do hope that you have begun your next book. And I shall be waiting impatiently for the time when you resume the story of the Mallory family. The point at which you left them in “Ballade in G-minor” makes it unfair to keep your readers waiting too long. It will be interesting to see what happens to Colin now.

I am sending you a copy of “Anthem,” my new novel which I mentioned to you. It came out in England about a month ago, I believe. But there has been a delay in my receiving the copies here and they did not arrive until a few days ago. Incidentally, the clippings of reviews have been lost on their way to me from England and I have no idea how the book was received.³ I have been promised duplicates and am now waiting for them. I shall be most anxious to hear your opinion of this book.⁴

At present, I am working on my next novel — the very big one about American architects. For the last few months I have been wracking my brain and nerves upon the preliminary outline. It is always the hardest part of the work for me — and my particular kind of torture. Now it is done, finished, every chapter outlined—and there are eighty of them at present! The actual writing of it is now before me, but I would rather write ten chapters than plan one. So the worst of it is over.

I received a very charming letter from Princess [Marina] Chavchavadze. As she did not tell me her address, would you be so kind as to give her for me my regards and my gratitude for the kind things she said about “We the Living.”

My husband joins me in sending you our best wishes.

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To Leonard Read (November 30, 1945)

Leonard Read (1898–1983) was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education. He was general manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce when Rand met him (via Isabel Paterson). The meeting took place in late 1943, when Read arranged a dinner for some pro-free enterprisers (mostly businessmen and attorneys) to meet Rand. In her biographical interviews, she reported that at the dinner “were twelve men, and I was the thirteenth, and the only woman. And we had a round table. And I met all the best conservatives there.” That seems to be a major impetus in Rand’s involvement with leaders of the “conservative” movement, a movement with which she eventually became disillusioned. In 1961, she commented that Read “was much more — how would I put it — intellectual and idealistic then than he is now. And, for a long time, both Isabel Paterson and I regarded him as the hopeful rising conservative of a practical, but intellectual kind. Which he lost totally once he went on his own.” Based on her daily calendars, her last socializing with Read seems to have been in 1951.

Dear Leonard:

Thank you for your letter. I am sorry that we didn’t have a chance to see you again before we left New York. If you come to the Coast again on one of your flying trips, do let us know and try to give us an evening if possible.

I didn’t have any extra copies of “The Fountainhead,” but I got one here in town, have autographed it and am sending it to your friends, as you requested. The enclosed buck is your change — you sent four dollars and the book cost only $3.00. The postage is something like 7 cents, so I’ll contribute that.

Thanks for the copy of Rose Wilder Lane’s book reviews. I appreciate very much her note on my book. Yes, she has done a very good job on Bastiat and she is an excellent reviewer.

You asked where to get “We the Living.” It’s out of print. I have only my own single copy left. But I’m sending you, under separate cover, a copy of the English edition. It’s the same as the American edition, except that my love scenes have been slightly censored, unfortunately.

Let me know if anything of interest is happening among our conservatives. It seemed awfully dull and disappointing to me, what I saw of their activities in New York.

My trip east has done me a lot of good — I feel rested and reconciled to California for a while. But I’ll always miss New York and I’ll always love it better than any place on earth.

With best regards from both of us,

Sincerely,

On December 28, 1945, Read replied, “I am only partly through [We the Living], but what a book!”

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To Linda Lynneberg (February 21, 1948)

Rand met Linda Lynneberg when she came to work under Rand as a volunteer researcher during Wendell Willkie’s 1940 presidential campaign. They became friends, and Rand employed her as a typist in the early 1950s. In her biographical interviews, Rand said that Lynneberg got converted to Catholicism under Isabel Paterson’s influence and was “almost wrecked by it.” Nevertheless, Rand was still socializing with Lynneberg as late as 1975.

Dear Linda:

You are quite right, if I don’t write letters it’s because the book has been going along wonderfully. But thank you for your letters and for all the clippings and information about oil. I haven’t read all the booklets yet, but I believe it is just the kind of stuff I need.

I was very startled to hear about the existence of a Miss Ann Taggart. Now all you have to do is find Mr. Wesley Mouch for me. (I am afraid, however, that the Mouches are all around us everywhere.)

I hope you like the cigarette holder. I couldn’t get you a silver one in this shape. The silver ones were shorter and stubbier; I think they are intended for men. So I decided to buy the same kind I had. I hope the color will remind you of me.

No special news about us, except that I have been working on the novel very well indeed. I had to be interrupted this week with a lot of other business, such as the Italian movie of WE THE LIVING, which I ran for some of my friends and for which I am still negotiating a settlement. Also, you may have read in the papers that Warner Bros. are starting now on the production of THE FOUNTAINHEAD. Nobody is set for the cast yet — except Gary Cooper. Do you remember our meeting with him? I am certainly delighted about this, since of all the big name stars, he is my choice for Roark. The director is to be King Vidor. I have not met him yet, but I understand he is a conservative, at least he was a member of M.P.A. at one time, so I’m glad about that.

I have taken some time off to write to Pat and couldn’t do it in less than five single-spaced pages. I had a wonderful letter from her in answer, and believe it or not, I answered back, too. When Pat is in a good mood, she is like quicksand, completely irresistible, so maybe I shall become a good correspondent.

We had some terribly cold nights, and our moats were frozen solid, but I think spring is coming now. I am looking for your Texas bluebonnets, but so far they have not appeared yet.

The enclosed ad was discovered by Frank in a Valley paper. He thought you’d be pleased to see it. I think your sense of humor and his are very much alike.

I hope that your business will pick up and that you’ll feel better than you sounded in your last letter. I enjoyed your visit here so much that I hope you will come back before you return to New York. Incidentally, Teresa is back with us and everything is going along wonderfully, and the house is really comfortable and well run now.

Love from both of us,

P.S. I am sending this to your Tulsa address because I could not decipher the one you gave me for Oklahoma City. Your handwriting is as bad as mine. I hope this reaches you.

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To Hal Wallis (January 6, 1950)

From 1944 to 1949, Rand was a screenwriter for Hal Wallis (1898–1986), producer of Casablanca and many other famous films. Under Wallis, she wrote the screenplay for Love Letters (1945) and unproduced scripts of “The Crying Sisters” and “House of Mist.” Although she generally liked working with Wallis she became disappointed with the stories he was producing and disappointed in him personally when she discovered that their project for a film about the atom bomb (working title “Top Secret”) was merely a ploy by Wallis for him to sell the story rights to MGM, which was producing The Beginning or the End (1947). However, although she considered him a second-hander (in the Peter Keating sense) as a producer, she said in her biographical interviews in 1961 that “he was a very nice person, as a person, pleasant to deal with,” and they continued on friendly relations.

Dear Boss:

This is to thank you formally for your lovely present. It was such a nice gesture on your part that you broke my heart with kindness — a thing you have always known how to do. I was happy to know that you still remembered me. I hope you know that I will always think of you with respect and admiration.

Thank you for the past and the present, and all my best wishes to you for a Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

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To Lorine Pruette (April 28, 1950)

Lorine Pruette (1896–1977) was a well-known writer, psychoanalyst and feminist. In 1943, she reviewed The Fountainhead for the New York Times, a review that Rand was especially grateful for. In her biographical interviews, Rand commented: “That really saved my universe in that period. I expected nothing like that from the Times. And it’s the only intelligent review I have really had in my whole career as far as novels are concerned.”

Dear Lorine:

Thank you for your post card. I can’t tell you how homesick it made me for New York and for the nice evening we spent with you.

I don’t know yet when I will be back East, as I am deep in work on my new novel. It’s going along wonderfully and I am very happy with it. Your rose quartz is here on my desk as reminder and inspiration.

What are you doing? Have you been writing any articles or reviews? What has happened to your proposed article about me — or is it a subject the magazines are afraid of at present? Did you ever meet Archie Ogden? He has just gone back into the publishing business and is now editor of Appleton-Century. Do let me hear from you when you have the time.

With love from both of us.

This is the last correspondence between Rand and Pruette in the Ayn Rand Archives, but Rand moved permanently to New York City in 1951, and her daily calendars show numerous dinners with Pruette from 1951 through 1958.

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To Archibald Ogden (August 25, 1950)

Archibald Ogden was Rand’s editor on The Fountainhead. His almost legendary status among Objectivists was secured when he put his job on the line, telling his employer, Bobbs-Merrill, that if The Fountainhead wasn’t the book for them, then he wasn’t the editor for them.

Archie darling:

Thank you for your letter. It is I who have to ask you to forgive me for my long delay in answering, this time. I think you know that the only valid reason which could have prevented me from writing you sooner was the work on my novel. I am just approaching the end of Part I, and I did not dare interrupt myself while I had the whole world crashing — in the novel, I mean.

I hope that you won’t be let down by hearing that I am only at the end of Part I. As you know, my speed of writing always accelerates as I approach the climax of a story, so I don’t think that it will be too long now before I finish the whole book — but I won’t even make a guess at the date, in order not to disappoint you later. Part I, however, is about two-thirds of the whole book in length. I can’t tell you how much I wish I could show you what I have written since I saw you last. I know you would be pleased. Be patient with me for taking such a long time — it is really going to be worth the waiting. As for me, I am simply crazy about the story and I am very happy with it.

Thank you for the things you said about me in your letter, about my manner of integrating ideas into a story. You and I are probably the only two people in the literary profession who understand fully how difficult and how important this is. Your remarks on the subject were one more proof to me, though I didn’t need any, that you are the one and only editor for me. I hope that sooner or later you will be my official editor in fact. You will always be my personal one in spirit.

I was delighted to hear that you are happy at being back in the publishing business. This supports what I had always expected. You were wasting your talent on the movies, and publishing is where you belong.

Who is the young man you mention in your letter, the one who admires THE FOUNTAINHEAD and is writing a novel about the steel business? Is his name Thaddeus Ashby? I strongly suspect that it is, and if so, I must warn you to be careful. Ashby is a boy whom I met here some years ago and who professed a great admiration for THE FOUNTAINHEAD. I have not been in touch with him for a long time, but I have heard that he had gone to work in a steel mill and was writing a novel. He is a young man who professes all the ideals of Roark, but practices the methods of Peter Keating, or worse. When I met him, he told me a great many things about himself, all of which turned out to be untrue. For instance, he said that he had just come from the Pacific where he had been an aviator and had been shot down twice. Later, I learned that he had been in aviation training during the war, but had never left this country. If he gave you the impression that he learned about you and the history of THE FOUNTAINHEAD in some mysterious way — then that is a typical example of his behavior. He heard all about you and the history of THE FOUNTAINHEAD — from me. If he did not tell you so, it is probably because he knows that I would not give him a good recommendation, and that he had no right to approach you in that manner, to use — without my knowledge or approval — any information which he obtained from me. I do not want to be indirectly responsible for some fraud which he might possibly have in mind against you. My impression of him is that he is intelligent, but I have my doubts about his literary talent. It is possible that he may develop, but I would be inclined to doubt whether he is yet ready to produce a good novel. If you find that you want to deal with him, I would warn you to take every legal precaution that might be necessary. For instance, I would not advise you to give him any advance or commitment on unfinished work.

Let me know the name of the novel which is your own choice on your fall list — I would like to read it. No, do not send me a free copy — I want to have the privilege of buying and supporting any novel which is your choice. If I were a collectivist, I would be jealous of any writer you select, but since I am an individualist who believes that there is no clash of interest among people and that any talent is a help, not a threat, to another talent, I will wish you to discover a whole list of your own writers, all of them good. In fact, I wish you a whole harem of them. But, of course, being selfish, I want to be the wife No. 1. And being conceited, I am not afraid of competition for that title.

With best regards to both of you from both of us — and all my love to you,

Rand and Ogden remained friends until 1967, when Ogden submitted an introduction to the novel’s 25th anniversary edition, an introduction that Rand considered inappropriate. Her lengthy letter to him (pages 643–46 in Letters of Ayn Rand) concluded, “I must tell you frankly that I do not think it will be possible for you to write an Introduction which would be acceptable to me . . . . I will not attempt to tell you how sad and painful this is for me.”

Ayn Rand Letters: Nonfiction and Activism (1941 – 1961)

This is the third of four installments featuring previously unpublished Ayn Rand letters selected by Michael S. Berliner, editor of Letters of Ayn Rand. A total of forty letters have been divided into four groups for publication, according to general subject matter: Hollywood, novels, nonfiction (including political activism), and more personal correspondence.

“While recently writing the complete finding aid to the Ayn Rand Papers, I noted some interesting letters that I hadn’t selected for the Letters book,” Berliner says. “Now, more than twenty years later, these letters struck me as meriting a wider audience. These unpublished letters were selected because of their insight into some particular topic or some aspect of Ayn Rand’s life, or, more often, as further evidence of how her mind worked on a variety of matters.

“I’d always been impressed by the care she took with non-philosophical issues and relatively trivial matters, and this mind-set comes across in virtually all of her correspondence. For a variety of reasons, she was not a ‘casual’ letter writer but always took great care to write with great precision on matters that today are usually relegated to a quick, unpunctuated tweet. For an explanation of her non-casual approach, see my preface to Letters of Ayn Rand on page xvi.”

This third group of unpublished material contains twelve letters addressed to the following individuals on the dates listed:

• Gloria Swanson (February 3, 1941)
• DeWitt M. Emery (September 23, 1941)
• Edward A. Rumely (December 8, 1943)
• DeWitt Wallace (December 8, 1943)
• Leonard Read (April 16, 1946)
• Leonard Read (July 17, 1946)
• Alan Collins (August 19, 1946)
• Ev Suffens (August 30, 1946)
• Edna Lonigan (January 29, 1949)
• Edna Lonigan (February 12, 1949)
• Hedda Hopper (November 9, 1950)
• Editor, Commercial & Financial Chronicle (May 26, 1961)

What follows is the text of each letter with accompanying remarks from Berliner (always in italics) supplying necessary context.¹

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To Gloria Swanson (February 3, 1941)

Ayn Rand met Gloria Swanson (1899–1983) during Wendell Willkie’s 1940 campaign for president and, during the last week of the doomed campaign, answered questions in a Manhattan movie studio converted into an auditorium and rented by Swanson for use in the campaign. “Of all the speakers who came to talk there and share the podium with me, the most memorable by far was Ayn Rand, who had a fascinating mind and held audiences spellbound,” wrote Swanson in her autobiography, Swanson on Swanson. Rand’s copy of the letter exists only in handwritten pencil.

Dear Miss Swanson,

I have just heard from Mr. Joseph Kamp that you are back in New York, and I am writing to thank you for the picture you sent me, for remembering my request and for the lovely way in which you granted it.⁵

Your picture is the only remembrance of the campaign that will remain with me. And working with you is my nicest memory of the whole campaign. I do hope that you have recovered a little from the disappointment which we all felt. I am not sure that I have quite recovered — or ever will. But then, I’ve always been like an elephant — and now I am beginning to realize what a sad load an elephant must be carrying through life.

With my gratitude and sincere admiration for you — since my days in Russia⁶ — to the present — and always —

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To DeWitt M. Emery (September 23, 1941)

DeWitt Emery (1882–1958) was founder of the National Small Business Men’s Association and the Small Business Economic Foundation (whose purpose was to explain to workers the advantages of the free-enterprise system). In her biographical interviews, Ayn Rand said that Emery was “a very outspoken free-enterpriser at the time. Since then, he’s become a compromiser.”

Two days before Rand’s letter below, Emery had written a note to her about a booklet that was designed to promote a proposed individualist organization, requesting that she “read and return [it] with your comments.” Also, dated the same day (September 23) as her letter, is a telegram from Emery: “Need your suggestions for revising booklet can you mail today.”

Dear Mr. Emery:

If I tell you that it is now 5 a.m. and I have just finished typing my version of the booklet which I am enclosing — you will forgive me for my delay in sending you the material I promised.

Not only did I have one of my busiest weeks, with heavy rush assignments from the studio, but I had to hunt for a new apartment and to make arrangements for moving day after tomorrow. I thought that you wanted the outline of the organization first, so I had not worked on the booklet until today — I only had a general idea of what I wanted to do with it. When I got your wire, I had to make arrangements with the studio to give me the day off. I hope that I have not inconvenienced you too much by the delay and that this will reach you in time.

I re-typed the whole thing — using parts of your version and substituting others. I hope that I have not departed too far from what you wanted. I made an outline of what I thought was the aim and purpose of the booklet — then stated it in my own way. I hope that it will meet with your approval — but you know that I am always open to and grateful for criticism.

I know that you will see for yourself what reasons prompted me to make such changes as I made. But if you want my written criticism of the booklet’s original version — for any possible discussion with your colleagues — I will state it here briefly:

1. There is a glaring, dangerous, unresolved contradiction between the opening of the booklet — the statement that national defense is destroying small business — and the later declaration that “the unconditional building of an impregnable defense” is the first aim of the NSBMA. As long as the defense situation is being used as the basis of the booklet’s whole appeal — our attitude towards it has to be stated unequivocably, beyond any un-patriotic suspicion and to the advantage of our cause.
2. Page 12 of booklet: Defense should not be placed as the first aim of a business men’s organization. It sounds false. If a prospective member is interested chiefly and primarily in defense — he will go to the U.S.O. or some such place.
3. Page 12. If an amateur like me may be permitted to be very emphatic about anything — I shall be so about the point of “labor’s rights” and “collective bargaining” being placed as one of the three sole, cardinal aims of a business men’s organization. Why, in the name of heaven, must we do that? Can’t we be considered respectable in defending our own rights and concerns without having to proclaim ourselves as champions of labor’s rights? For that noble purpose there’s the C.I.O. It is doing quite well. And I don’t see any declarations about protecting the rights of business men in its pamphlets. If that point was introduced into the booklet only as a sort of protection to cover the second part of the same paragraph — about “abolishing racketeering from labor unions” — it doesn’t work. It merely sounds like Willkie’s Elwood speech — and you know what that cost us. The whole subject of business men’s attitude towards labor is much too delicate. It is better not to touch it — unless we can devote to it pages and pages of full, clear-cut statement. A pious generality destroys the confidence of both labor and business men.
4. I think the printed booklet is too short. When we over-cut and over-simplify, we cannot help but be reduced to generalities. In this case, I think it is simply poor business practice. It looks as if we are trying to sell a pig in a poke. We say that we object to certain propaganda and we offer people to buy our counter-propaganda, but we never give a concrete indication of the nature of either. We say in effect that we’ll sell you “a product” — come and pay for it without asking what it is. After all, when a business man advertises an important commercial product, he puts out a long, beautiful, detailed prospectus — with fancy text and photographs. Shouldn’t ideas be sold in the same way? We must remember that people who are in a position to contribute money to our cause are still terribly bitter about the millions they poured into the Willkie campaign and the miserable results they got. I know that from the people who were connected with the Willkie Clubs. They all feel stung. Willkie, too, promised anti-government propaganda — and look at him now. That is why any mild, compromising generality reminds people too much of the barefoot boy from Indiana. Unless we can be strong, clear, positive, militant — as you were in your radio speech — nobody will trust us or follow us. Besides, take this much from an author: people would rather read twenty pages that give them some meat and hold their interest than ten pages of boiled down generalities that bore them.

Please don’t be angry at me for this criticism — and don’t tell me that I am “talking to you like to one of the masses,” as you snapped at me once. I think you know all this. I think also that you must have some “appeasers” on your board — all organizations of our side have them — and these arguments are intended for your use against them.

I shall type the outline of the organization set-up, which we discussed, this week-end and airmail it to you immediately. I am moving on Thursday evening. My new address will be:

The Bromley

139 East 35th Street

New York City

I don’t know yet what my new telephone number will be, but if you should want to reach me before I send it to you, the operator will give you the new number when you call the old one.

Please let me know what you think of my version of the booklet as soon as you find time. I shall be most anxious to hear it.

My best regards,

Sincerely,

On September 26, Emery responded that he had received her letter and turned it over to his colleague John Pratt. The only other reference in the Archives to Rand’s letter is Emery’s undated apology for not answering, “but I will.”

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To Edward A. Rumely (December 8, 1943)

Ed Rumely (1882–1964) was, according to Wikipedia, pro-Germany in World War I. He was convicted of “trading with the enemy” but was pardoned by President Coolidge. Rumely helped establish the Committee for Constitutional Government in 1941. An early supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he broke with FDR over his attempted Supreme Court “packing” plan (a term that Rumely supposedly coined).

Dear Dr. Rumely:

I am very sorry that I have unwittingly kept you waiting — but I did not arrive in Hollywood until December 5th (I stopped in Chicago for a few days) and I did not report to the Warner Brother Studios until yesterday, when your letter and wire were given to me.

The terms of the division of the $1,500 paid by Reader’s Digest for “The Only Path to Tomorrow” are acceptable to me as you suggest: $800 to me and $700 to your organization for the further distribution of the article.

I have made some changes in the proofs of the condensed article, which I am enclosing. I am enclosing also a letter to Mr. DeWitt Wallace, explaining my changes. Please read it and forward it to him. You will see why the changes were necessary. There aren’t many, but I have to insist on them. Also, please explain to Mr. Wallace the reason for my delay in answering you.

I am enclosing the copy of your letter, which I have signed — with the one added provision about the changes in the proofs of the article.

I am greatly disturbed by the fact that the proofs contain a separate box with the quotation from Wendell Willkie. The disturbing question is: will this box appear in the reprints of my article which you are ordering from the Reader’s Digest? If it does, it will look as if I am more being endorsed by or am collaborating with Mr. Willkie. There is no man in America at present to whom I am more opposed than to Mr. Willkie. I do not mind the box in the pages of a magazine, because it has no relation to me, but in the pages of a separate pamphlet, it will have. I never dreamed of a possibility of my pamphlet being issued like that and I am most anxious to prevent it. Can you have the thing reprinted without the box? If you can, please do so and save me from a most embarrassing and unhappy situation.

Thanking you for your co-operation and with my best wishes for our mutual success,

Sincerely yours,

P.S. Thank you for the books which you sent me. I appreciate it very much.

On December 16, 1941, Rumely wired Rand that the January “edition” of his newsletter had already been distributed and failure to correct the proof in time “was due partly [to] your delay” in returning the proof. However, he wrote, “Reprints can and will be adjusted in accordance with your letter and corrections.” The copy in the Archives does indeed reflect the requested changes that the Reader’s Digest ignored.

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To DeWitt Wallace (December 8, 1943)

DeWitt Wallace (1889–1981) was co-founder of Reader’s Digest in 1922. A staunch anti-Communist, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard Nixon in 1972.

Dear Mr. Wallace:

Thank you for accepting my article “The Individualist Credo,” now entitled “The Only Path to Tomorrow.” I am very glad and proud to have become a contributor to the Reader’s Digest.

I do not know whether it is considered correct in the circumstances to argue about the text of your condensation or whether one ever argues with the editor of the Reader’s Digest — but I assume that you do not want writers on such crucial subjects as politics and philosophy to sign their names to statements which are not their exact belief, so I feel sure you will not mind the few corrections I have made in the proofs.

With the exception of these few points, let me say that your condensation is excellent and I appreciate it very much.

In order not to appear arbitrary, I shall list here my reasons and explanations for each correction I made.

Page 1. The examples of totalitarian dictators I used were Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. Stalin has been eliminated in the proof. If you find it inadvisable to include Stalin at this time, then we must eliminate the whole list of examples and leave only the general statement. I do not object to that. But I object most emphatically to any mention of specific dictators which does not include Stalin. By omission and implication it amounts to saying that Stalin is not a totalitarian dictator. I would not allow this to be said in my name under any circumstances whatsoever.

In the following paragraph my definition of what constitutes the collectivist doctrine has been given an entirely different meaning. I have corrected it to read as I intended it. If you find this too strong, then cut the line out entirely and make the paragraph read: “No tyrant has ever lasted long by force of arms alone. No dictator could rise if men…etc.” If you find it possible, please add the last sentence of this paragraph as I have marked it. I think it cinches the point. But I do not insist on this sentence. It is up to you. I would only be very pleased it you find it possible to include it.

Next paragraph: here I think it most important to end my sentence as marked. To say “where men deal with one another as equals” is a generality to which even a communist could subscribe. The whole point of my statement is the end of the sentence: “in voluntary, unregulated exchange.” Since individualism is my whole theme, religion and mission in life, you can understand why I want to give the best definition I can, and why I do not want to sound as if, at the most crucial point, I got away with a mere generality.

Page 2. My statement on what we must reject as total evil has been given an entirely different meaning. As the statement stands in the proof, it amounts to my saying that I would tolerate the abolition of individual rights if it really served the common good, but that I object to it only because it doesn’t. This is not my belief at all. In fact, this is the point on which our entire conservative side has ruined its stand. My belief is that I would not tolerate such an abolition for any cause and in any circumstances whatsoever. This is the heart of my whole article. Therefore, the statement must read as I marked it. By putting the words “common good” in quotes, we will avoid the impression which I believe your editors had in mind or were afraid of when they changed this sentence.

The other cut I made on this page is merely a suggestion to save you space. I notice that the article runs over and you need some cuts.

Page 3. The line: “when the Active is destroyed, the Passive can no longer be cared for” sounds as if I advocate that the Passive must be cared for, that it is our duty. I do not, when I say, as I marked, “the Passive cannot survive” it is a simple statement of fact, without altruistic implications.

In the next paragraph, the line: “There is no other way to help him in the long run” is inexact. There is no other way to help him in any run, long or short. Who but the Active can ever help anyone in any way?

In the same paragraph, I would like very much to add the final sentence, which I marked, about the extermination of the Active in a collectivist society. I think it clinches the point. But I leave this to your discretion. If you prefer to omit that sentence, do so. In this case, I don’t insist.

But the line about “the savage’s whole existence” (at bottom of page) must be kept as I marked it. Here again the meaning has been changed. It is incorrect to say that savages are ruled by their leaders; they are not; they are ruled by tribal laws and customs which also bind the leaders. It is my point that leaders usurp power. It is my point that the attempt to make all existence public and subject to communal laws or decrees is a reversion to savagery.

In the marginal note of my biography (Page 1), somebody gave you some wrong information. I came to this country in 1926, not 1931. My play “Night of January 16th” ran on Broadway for seven months, not three years. It was a good run, but not that good. I would rather not list my novel “Anthem” because it has not been published in this country, only in England. Above all — and this is most important to me — I would like my novel “The Fountainhead” described as “a novel on individualism.” I am asking this merely as a favor. If a reader likes my article and knows that my novel deals with the same subject, he would want to read the novel. This was my main purpose in selling this article to the Committee for Constitutional Government — to publicize the theme of my novel. So it is most important to me that this note appear in the article and its reprints. If you find it possible to do this — I would be extremely grateful.

Thanking you again for your acceptance,

Sincerely yours,

The Ayn Rand Archives contains no response from Wallace regarding Rand’s changes, and, despite the importance of her changes, the published version does not reflect those changes. In her biographical interviews, Rand mentions the Reader’s Digest reprint but makes no reference to their editing. The reprint by the Committee for Constitutional Government (see letter above) does reflect Rand’s changes, as does the reprint in The Ayn Rand Column.

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To Leonard Read (April 16, 1946)

Leonard Read (1898–1983) was a leading free-enterpriser and founder of the Foundation for Economic Education. This is one of many letters (and probably in-person discussions) in which Rand critiqued Read’s writing and thinking. Both she and Read even referred to her as his “loyal ghost.” Although she considered Read to be the best of the young right-wing intellectuals, she clearly had to exercise considerable patience to explain some fundamental errors.

Dear Leonard:

Thank you for your letter of April 9th, for the ANTHEM contract and for “The Road to Serfdom,” which I have received.

I have sent the completed version of ANTHEM to Miss Lindley.⁷ Can you tell me when we can expect to have galley proofs of it and approximately when you plan to have it out?

I am enclosing “The Scope of Economics and of Economic Education.” I have read it very carefully and to tell you the truth I find it completely confusing; I cannot quite figure out its point or purpose. It either contains too much or not enough. If it’s intended as a defense of capitalism, it’s not enough. If it’s intended as a prospectus for your educational program, it should not contain arguments, it sounds too much on the defensive; it should then contain nothing but statements.

The dictionary definition of economics, which you give on page 1, is clear and valid as its stands. So I don’t see the point of the elaboration that follows. I fail to see the purpose of the argument that to economize means to use to best advantage, therefore economics concerns only free men. This is not a good argument and will not hold. By this very definition, collectivists will claim that the best choice men can make is to let a central planning board plan all their economic activities, using everyone to best advantage, eliminating waste, duplication etc. In fact, this is just what the collectivists do claim; society as a single collective, they say, functions much more economically than a group of free, competing individuals; they call this last “economic chaos.” Of course, we’ll say that this isn’t true, that collectivism doesn’t accomplish any of its claims and that free enterprise is the only system that works to man’s best advantage. Then it becomes, or remains, an argument about the merits of two economics systems. The above definition accomplishes nothing; it can be claimed by both systems as a starting point for argument.

If you look up my long letter to you about economic education, you will see why I consider the last paragraph on page 2 of this article extremely wrong. This paragraph proposes, in effect, to teach freedom and independence by teaching economics. This can’t be done.

Page 3 of the article contains the truly dangerous confusion. To refer to burglary as an economic, though misdirected, activity is really to rob definitions of all meaning. Burglary comes under the head of “crime.” “Criminal activity” and “Economic activity” are two distinct conceptions. You may prove, and rightly, that the rulers of totalitarian economies engage in criminal activities, that their policies belong in the class of criminal violence. But you cannot say that a common burglar is engaged in economic activity. Yet this is what you do say, in a sentence such as: “Burglary may be an economic activity for a few successful and unpunished burglars.” This is really talking communist dialectics and adding to the present day idea that “all terms are relative.”

I have already mentioned to you my most emphatic objection to the use of the word “anti-social.” You know my reasons for this. The same applies to the implications of such phrases as “from the point of view of all concerned.”

What religious sanctions do you refer to in the first paragraph of page 3, as aiding economic violence? This is a question, not yet an objection. I don’t know what is meant here.

Why do you say — paragraph 2, page 3 — that Communism etc. restrict the economic opportunity “for at least a part of the citizenry?” Which part of the citizenry is not restricted under Communism? Do you mean to imply that Commissars have freedom of enterprise?

If you tell me what this article in intended to accomplish and to whom it is directed, I may be more helpful with positive suggestions on how to rewrite it.

Incidentally, since you’ve moved, will you give me your new address? I hope this will reach you.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

On April 19, Read answered Rand’s letter, suggesting that they discuss her points “personally.” He did, however, write that he tried to “rationalize” the definition of “economics” and hoped that she would have thought that “sensible.” But he said that he would edit out the “common good” wordage. The “long letter” to which Rand refers was her seven-page letter of February 2, 1946, in which she argues that “the mistake is in the very name” of his organization (Foundation for Economic Education) because what’s needed is philosophic not economic education. See Letters of Ayn Rand, pages 256–62.

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To Leonard Read (July 17, 1946)

Dear Leonard:

Thank you for your nice letter. I was certainly glad to hear of my popularity in the Read family. Please give my personal thanks to your son, Jim — but you must tell me just what he said in his introduction of me. Writers and women are notoriously curious; so you are making me suffer on both counts. Also, I would like to know what quotation you selected from Roark’s speech for your office. It is one of the few places where I wouldn’t mind seeing a quotation from Roark.⁸

Yesterday, I received the first copy of ANTHEM. It looks wonderful, and I was thrilled to see it.

I am enclosing the list you asked for, of the people to whom it might be advisable to send copies of ANTHEM. As you will notice, I have two lists — one of those to whom we might send a copy of the book, and the other one of people to whom I would send only the advertising leaflet, and who might want to buy a copy themselves. Some of the names on these lists are probably on your own mailing list and some are subscribers to The Freeman; so please have that checked, in order not to send out two copies to the same persons.

There are seven free copies which I would like to send out myself to the following people: Hal Wallis, Henry Blanke, Cecil deMille, Walt Disney, the Readers Digest, William Randolph Hearst and Lorine Pruette. If you will send me these seven copies, I will mail them out myself with a personal letter.

There is a question in my mind in regard to Lorine Pruette, which I mentioned to you when you were here. She is the reviewer who gave a grand review to THE FOUNTAINHEAD in the New York Times book section. If you remember, you wanted to ask Henry Hazlitt to review ANTHEM for the Times. I think it would be wonderful if he could do it, but if he can’t, please ask him whether it would be permissible for me to send a copy of the book to Miss Pruette and have her ask the book editor to let her review it. If such a procedure is permitted on the Times, I would like to ask her to do it. Let me know what Henry says about this, and if I can’t ask Miss Pruette to review the book, I will just send it to her for her own reading.

I am enclosing the first two issues of The Vigil which contain my TEXTBOOK OF AMERICANISM. I have asked The Vigil to put you on their mailing list, but I am not sure that they have attended to it. Please let me know whether you have already received these copies.

Now, about your speech, DEALING WITH COLLECTIVISM, which you sent me. I read it with interest, and I don’t think it is bad at all. In fact, it is quite good and accomplishes its purpose very tactfully. I like particularly the fact that you stressed the words “individualism” and “collectivism” often enough and in the right places.

But I found one startling instance of giving our case away — which was surprising from you. This was the second paragraph on Page 5: “No true lover of liberty will admit that there is another side to the case. He may admit that he does not know how to accomplish everything by voluntary methods, but his thinking will be aimed at finding out. He knows that coercion is destructive except when it is used as police force to prevent interferences with personal liberty.”

The second sentence of this paragraph is a blatant denial of the first. It is an admission that there are things which we should accomplish, and which can be accomplished by coercion, but not by voluntary methods. What are these things? There is not a single issue, objective or purpose — and I mean none whatever — which is desirable but cannot be accomplished by voluntary methods. If anyone presents you with an objective which you cannot accomplish by voluntary methods, it merely means that it should not be accomplished at all, that the objective itself is evil and improper. I cannot imagine what you had in mind when you wrote that sentence. If, as an example, you meant some such objective as how to insure permanent prosperity to everybody, the answer is that it cannot be done and should not be attempted. Any objective which cannot be achieved voluntarily is a self-contradictory proposition, a request for the impossible.

That sentence in your speech is an admission that coercive methods work sometimes for good purposes and with good results. Surely, you do not believe that. If you do, it is a loophole through which a collectivist can destroy your whole case. Once you grant him that some proper objective can be accomplished by force, the rest of the argument becomes merely a squabble over which objectives you or he will consider proper. You have granted him his premise.

Please let me know what you had in mind. I am worried about this, because it is the first breach I have seen in your intellectual armor. If you are not clear on this point, I would like to discuss it further, as my first job in the position of your “loyal ghost.”

Also, the last sentence of your paragraph which I quoted is extremely inaccurate and bad in its implications. You describe the police power of the government as the power of coercion, and you place it in the same category as any other coercion exercised by a government. That is not correct. What the government does in regard to criminals is not coercion; it is not an action, but a reaction; the use of force to answer force. The use of force here is not initiated by the government but by the criminal. Therefore, it is not the same thing (and does not rest on the same principle) as the action of a government initiating the use of force for some “social” purpose of its own.

I cover this very point in the second installment of my TEXTBOOK OF AMERICANISM. I would suggest that you read very carefully my questions #7 and #8. I think the definitions I give there cover the case — and it is extremely important for our side not to mix the proper police powers of the government with its usurped powers of economic coercion. This is a crucial point which collectivists are using to the hilt; one of their most frequent arguments goes like this: “If the government has the right to seize criminals, it also has the right to seize you.” We must not help them spread that kind of confusion.

There are two other points to which I object in your speech. On page 7, you mention as your aim: “Encouragement, including financial assistance, when necessary, to those scholars who are competent to produce such fundamental works as The Wealth of Nations, The Federalist Papers,” etc. This sentence sounds a bit naive. Such works as “The Wealth of Nations” or “The Federalist Papers” are achievements of genius, which is rare in any century, and they cannot be produced to order, just through financial assistance to scholars. I suggest that you say, instead, that you would like to provide financial assistance to scholars who can produce important works. That is the best any organization can hope to accomplish. Also, in the same paragraph. I would suggest that you do not quote Friedrich Hayek. I believe you agreed with me as to the dangerous weaknesses of his book which are viciously destructive to our cause. Therefore, I would not help to publicize his book.

The last sentence of this paragraph, to the effect that the support of the intellectuals can be regained “only as their devotion and understanding are re-won” is quite a dubious sentence, because it seems to imply that this devotion is to be re-won by financial assistance, that is, in plain language, by a bribe. I am sure you did not want to give that impression.

On page 8, fourth paragraph from the bottom, I object to your sentence: “I have almost a mystic faith in what can be accomplished by pursuing a course of utter and complete honesty — .” This sentence implies the confession that the speaker does not believe in reason as the final and most powerful argument in support of the ideas he advocates. It implies that he considers mystic faith a more convincing basis for the truth of his ideas. I am sure that few of your listeners would realize this, but what I am concerned with here is your own attitude. Unless, you are convinced, firmly, unquestionably, totally, completely and absolutely, in your own mind and for your own purposes, that REASON, not mystic faith, is the proper basis for all human actions and convictions, you will not be able to achieve for yourself a clear and consistent philosophy of life. The issue of rationalism versus anti-rationalism is a much more profound one than that of individualism versus collectivism. In fact, the first issue is the root of the second. I could write volumes on this particular point — and intend to do it some day. For the moment, I hope that you will understand this and agree with me. If not, I will have to attempt to write you a longer treatise on this.

Please let me know whether I have convinced you in regard to these objections or not. I take my duties of “ghost” very seriously, and want to be sure that they are bearing fruit.

With best regards.

Sincerely,

Read answered Rand’s letter on July 19, 1946. He wrote that he agreed “wholly” with her criticisms re “points no. 7 and 8” (unidentified), and he admitted to some “careless writing,” “but that’s all.” Read also agreed with her comment about Hayek and said that he had already changed “mystic faith” to “proposed faith.” But he defended himself against her charge that he was “giving our case away.” He was, he wrote, referring to people who want to support liberty but don’t know how, not implying that coercion might be a legitimate option.

As to Rand’s request that Read contact Lorine Pruette to write a review of Anthem, Read wrote that he would — but if he did, it was too late. Pruette wrote to Rand that she did want to review that book (calling it a “brilliant and heartening conception”), but the New York Times had already assigned another reviewer before Pruette offered herself. For Rand’s letters to Pruette about this issue, see Letters of Ayn Rand, pages 314, 330 and 336.

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To Alan Collins (August 19, 1946)

Alan Collins (1904–68) was Rand’s agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. from 1943 until his death in 1968. Beginning with the publishing of We the Living, Rand had long experience dealing with leftists in the book, film and theater worlds. We the Living had the misfortune to appear in the midst of the pro-Soviet “Red Decade,” when the New York publishing company staffs included Communist Party members, including Macmillan’s Granville Hicks, who tried unsuccessfully to prevent Macmillan from publishing the novel. As a consequence, she was particularly sensitive to the perils of navigating through those worlds. Herman Shumlin, the focus of this letter, was a highly successful theatrical producer and director whose Broadway hits include Inherit the Wind and Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes. His lengthy obituary in the New York Times includes this relevant and somewhat euphemistic characterization: “A crusty perfectionist who was a passionate political liberal, Mr. Shumlin had a strong sense of social commitment.”

The politically-tinged disagreement between Rand and Collins, evident in the letter below, was not the only such dispute between the two. One month later, Collins advised her not to join the American Writers Association because it was headed by “rabid reactionaries” Eugene Lyons and John T. Flynn. She replied that “the only thing I have against Flynn and Lyons is that they aren’t ‘reactionary’ enough.” (See Letters of Ayn Rand at page 327.)

Dear Alan:

Thank you for your letter of August 14th.

Yes, I know that there are damn few people connected with the theatre who are not pink or pinkish. This merely means that our field is limited, and that we can submit IDEAL only to a small group among theatrical producers. If we do not find the right man among that group, we must not try any further. It is useless even to consider the others. For my purposes they do not exist, nor are they in the theatrical business. Realistically speaking, they are in the propaganda business.

I have had to go through exactly the same situation in relation to publishers and THE FOUNTAINHEAD. The problem is only to find one man of taste and intelligence who would be to the theatrical equivalent of Archie Ogden. That is all I need. The more pink junk is being produced, the better chance there is for somebody to make a great hit with a serious play which is not pink. There is a growing audience for that in the theatre, just as there was among novel readers.

As to Herman Shumlin, you have unwittingly caused me some embarrassment by submitting IDEAL to him. I have never met the “gink,” but apparently he knows about me and has gone out of his way to be nasty, because he has made it a point to “smear” me and my work both to Warner Bros., when I was with them, and to Hal Wallis, when I went to work for him. This has been reported to me from both places. So you see what a bad position you put me in, when Shumlin finds that I am submitting a play to him.

Therefore, I would appreciate very much if you will tell him just exactly what you said in your letter: that you sent the script to him “with your tongue in your cheek” and without my knowledge; and that I objected to it, when I heard about it. I don’t actually care too much what people like Shumlin think, but since you gave him the impression that I am seeking his favor or support, I think you should correct that impression. I would appreciate it very much, just to keep the record clear.

Sincerely,

The Rand-Collins correspondence in the Archives contains no further reference to this issue.

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To Ev Suffens (August 30, 1946)

Ev Suffens was the stage name of Raymond Nelson, host of Midnight Jamboree, a classical music program on WEVD radio in New York City. Under his real name, he had an advertising business and taught at City College of New York. The O’Connors were big fans of Suffens. Rand made musical requests and in April 1936 sent him a fan letter addressed to “Dear Announcer” (see pages 26–27 in Letters of Ayn Rand), one of six letters to him reprinted in Letters of Ayn Rand. Shortly after her first letter, she inscribed a copy of We the Living to him as “my favorite radio announcer.” She and Frank owned two stuffed lions named Oscar and Oswald after characters on Suffens’s program, and the lions were like family pets. The O’Connors and the Suffenses became friends, as shown by the twenty-one calendar entries (mostly dinners) between 1943 (the earliest Rand daily calendar available) and 1952.

Dear Ev:

Sorry to have taken longer to answer this time. I didn’t know I would cause so much trouble in regard to the television rights to NIGHT OF JANUARY 16TH.

I had forgotten all about the movie strings attached, so I have been trying to get them for you from the west coast front office. They have now asked me to ask you to write me an official letter, stating all the pertinent details of your proposed broadcast, such as: who will do it, what station, when and where, at whose expense — and particularly, is it a strictly experimental performance or a commercial one with a sponsor, and if so, who? I am then to send that letter to the Paramount officials, with a request from me that they grant you permission for this broadcast. I think they will do it, but I can’t be sure, because any legal matter or rights is always extremely complicated at the studios. Anyway, send me the letter, and I will try my best.

No, I don’t do my troweling in a floppy hat. I do it in a checkered shirt and shorts. If you saw me in that costume, I don’t think it would strain a beautiful friendship, but quite the opposite. At least, I hope so.

As to my new novel, I have just finished my final outline, and will start on the actual writing any moment. Can’t tell you much about it in a few words — but if THE FOUNTAINHEAD was a kind of a bombshell, wait until you read this one!

It looks as if we won’t be able to come to New York this time. I don’t like California any better than I did, but I am now so busy that I haven’t time to notice it. Still, I do miss New York, and I intend to come there to celebrate the new novel as soon as I can, which I hope will be next year.

Here is an idea that I wanted to consult you about — I am not sure I will do it, but let me know what you think of it. A small group of my conservative friends here, known as The Pamphleteers, who publish political non-fiction booklets, are publishing an American edition of my novelette, ANTHEM. If you remember, that is the one that was published only in England. They intend to sell it as a paper covered booklet in the regular book channels. Of course, they have to start it on a very small scale with very little advertising, but they hope that it will grow on the strength of my name. Would you undertake to handle a publicity campaign for it? I realize that publicity and advertising are two different mediums, but would you be interested in trying it? If so, what would you charge us, and what would be your general idea of a campaign? Let me know your ideas on the subject. I know that your ideas of salesmanship are about like mine — the dramatic and the different, so I thought you might be the ideal man for it, if we decide to have a publicity campaign.

Best regards from the two of us to the three of you. (And from Oscar and Oswald, too)

Sincerely,

Suffens responded by setting out the difficulties of getting backing for a television production, despite his having major clients such as Sears, Roebuck. He continued that he would “like to do” the publicity for Anthem and that “the fashionable shade of red is a much more subdued one than it was in the days when you first started singing in the wilderness.” Neither project came to fruition.

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To Edna Lonigan (January 29, 1949)

Edna Lonigan was a well-known conservative writer on economics and politics. She was a member of the board of directors and was secretary of the American Writers Association, which, according to Wikipedia, was “formed as a response to the ‘Cain Plan,’ a proposal put forth by the novelist and screenwriter James M. Cain. In July 1946, Cain proposed that an “American Authors’ Authority” be created to act as a central repository for copyrights and to negotiate collectively for authors to give them greater bargaining power. The AWA successfully opposed this plan.

Rand was on the AWA letterhead as a member of the National Committee from at least September 1947 and was elected to the board of directors in November 1949. Other board members included Morrie Ryskind, Fred Niblo and perennial Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas.

In a March 1949 letter to Rand, Lonigan wrote of Rand’s House Un-American Activities Committee testimony: “Your courageous, positive, beautifully clear statements fill me with joy.”

The Archives contains no letters to Rand from Lonigan that are specific responses to Rand’s letters below.

Dear Miss Lonigan:

Thank you very much for your letter of January 24.

I shall be glad to help the Association in any way I can with the plan to fight the Authors League’s defense of the ten Hollywood writers convicted of contempt of Congress.

If our Association plans to submit a brief to the Court in the case of these ten, I would like very much to see a copy of it before it is released officially and publicly. I think all the members of the Board should have a copy and a chance to make suggestions before it is released in our name.

My concern here is that the brief must be written most carefully so that it contain no sentences and no implication, direct or indirect, that we advocate any sort of Government censorship of ideas. You may remember my concern last year when I was in New York over the unfortunate stand taken by the Hearst papers at the time, when they tried to use the Hollywood hearings as a justification for establishing a Federal censorship of the movies. That is what the Reds accuse all conservatives of doing or trying to do — and we must be very sure not to give them any foothold to justify such an accusation.

I am enclosing a few suggestions for what I think should be our official stand on this question. Would you show it to the persons who will write the brief? I hope that they may find it of some help or value.⁹

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Edna Lonigan (February 12, 1949)

Dear Miss Lonigan:

Thank you for your report on the Board Meeting of January 27.

In regard to the three proposed versions of a possible amendment to the By-Laws of the Association, barring Communist as members, I want to place on record my approval of the first version, the one proposed by Louis Waldman, and my most emphatic opposition to the other two versions, those of John T. Flynn and Morris Markey.

Mr. Waldman’s version is clear-cut, objective and covers the issue completely. The other two versions are so inexact, self-contradictory and controversial that they do not constitute a definition of any kind.

I could not subscribe to Mr. Flynn’s version, because it confuses private boycotts with government censorship. I believe, for instance, that every member of our Association has a perfect right, and a moral duty, to boycott the DAILY WORKER.

Mr. Markey’s version would make it necessary for me to resign from the Association and necessary for the Association to expel me, because I most emphatically do not believe that the philosophy set forth in the Constitution of the United States is a “Democratic philosophy,” and I do not hold a “Democratic” philosophy, if one uses that word correctly. Nowadays, the word “Democratic,” like the word “liberal,” has lost all specific, objective meaning. It has become a rubber word which every person stretches to mean whatever he wishes it to mean. But since we are an organization of writers, we, above all people, should use words in their exact meaning. Historically and philosophically, a democratic philosophy means a belief in unlimited majority rule (total rule by the majority, unlimited by any individual rights). This is not the philosophy on which the Constitution was based. The United States is a Republic, not a Democracy. If proof is needed, here is a quotation from THE FEDERALIST:

“Such democracies (pure democracies) have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security of the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

And what does Mr. Markey mean when he states that we should all believe “the philosophy set forth in the Constitution of the United States and its Amendments”? Does he believe the Eighteenth Amendment? I don’t.¹⁰

I would appreciate it very much if you would read this letter at the next meeting of the Board when the proposed amendments are discussed.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Hedda Hopper (November 9, 1950)

Hedda Hopper (1885–1966) was a famous Hollywood gossip columnist and staunch anti-Communist. In her September 1957 column in the New York Daily News, Hopper referred to Rand as “one of the finest American citizens I know.”

Dear Hedda:

In case you have not seen it yet, here is the first copy of “The Freeman,” the new magazine of our side. I call your attention particularly to the statement of policy on p. 5 — “The Faith of the Freeman.” I think this magazine is the best thing that has happened among us “revolutionaries” in a long time.

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday.¹¹

Sincerely,

The Archives contains no letter in response to Rand’s letter.

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To Editor, Commercial & Financial Chronicle (May 26, 1961)

The Commercial & Financial Chronicle was a weekly business newspaper, founded in 1865 and modeled on The Economist. Never nearing the circulation of the Wall Street Journal, it ceased operation in 1987.

Dear Sir:

In the May 4, 1961 issue of The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, there appeared a review, by Mr. John Dutton, of my book FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND.¹² I wish to register my emphatic objection to Mr. Dutton’s literary procedure which I find incomprehensible: for some reason or motive unknown to me, about half of the review consists of statements attributed to me and presented in quotation marks, statements which I have never made and which are not contained in my book nor in anything else I have ever written.

The review consists of three columns of print. In paragraph 3, column 1, Mr. Dutton quotes a passage which, except for minor misprints, does come from my book FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL. In the next paragraph, Mr. Dutton takes parts of sentences which appear in different parts of my book, but which he puts together, without the customary dots or ellipsis, into a single, embarrassingly unintelligible passage.

Thereafter, all the passages purporting to be quotations from my book do not contain a single sentence written by me (paragraphs 2, 3, 4, 5 of column 2, and paragraphs 1, 2 of column 3) and do not correspond to anything in my book. These passages are not condensations or paraphrases, they are Mr. Dutton’s own editorializing improvisations on political themes, never seen by me before, yet presented in quotation marks. And the intention to pass them off as my words is emphasized by such inserts as “And Ayn Rand asks:” followed by long paragraphs that are not mine and that bear no resemblance to any writing, language or thought-sequence of mine.

I must state that the appallingly superficial, journalistic character of the ideas which Mr. Dutton attributes to me has no place in a book on philosophy and that my book does not deal with journalistic topics and is not written in journalistic terms. Some of those allegedly quoted passages contain Mr. Dutton’s own applications of my abstract ideas to currents events, and some contain the exact opposite of my ideas. What I am primarily concerned with is the fact that Mr. Dutton’s has permitted himself to paste my name or, in effect, my signature, on his own writing, without my knowledge and permission (a permission I would never grant to anyone) — and that his writing is far below the standard I have set for myself.

Since I have always maintained that ideas must be treated with the same scrupulous precision as financial matters or legal documents, and since I take an enormous amount of time, effort and thought on the formulation of my ideas, Mr. Dutton’s action is extremely embarrassing to me and damaging to my professional reputation. In as much as your newspaper is known for its accuracy and reliability, I feel certain that you will want to correct a misrepresentation of that kind.

I wish to state, for the record, that none of the quotations attributed to me in Mr. Dutton’s review are mine (with the exception of the first one, as noted above) — and that they are not my method of approach, nor my level of thinking, nor my kind of writing.

Sincerely,

P.S. Please print in full.

On June 15, 1961, the newspaper published “With Apologies To Ayn Rand” by John Dutton, which stated: “My column in the May 4 issue was based on Ayn Rand’s book entitled “FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND,” published by Random House. Owing to the erroneous use of quotation marks in some instances, what were actually the views of this columnist appeared in print as being specific quotations from Miss Rand’s book. This error is particularly to be regretted in light of the fact that in certain socio-economic areas touched on in my column, my own thinking and philosophy is not shared by Miss Rand.”¹³

Ayn Rand Letters: Fiction (1935 – 1980)

This is the second of four installments featuring previously unpublished Ayn Rand letters selected by Michael S. Berliner, editor of Letters of Ayn Rand. A total of forty letters have been divided into four groups for publication, according to general subject matter: Hollywood, fiction, nonfiction (including political activism), and more personal correspondence.

“While recently writing the complete finding aid to the Ayn Rand Papers, I noted some interesting letters that I hadn’t selected for the Letters book,” Berliner says. “Now, more than twenty years later, these letters struck me as meriting a wider audience. These unpublished letters were selected because of their insight into some particular topic or some aspect of Ayn Rand’s life, or, more often, as further evidence of how her mind worked on a variety of matters.

“I’d always been impressed by the care she took with non-philosophical issues and relatively trivial matters, and this mind-set comes across in virtually all of her correspondence. For a variety of reasons, she was not a ‘casual’ letter writer but always took great care to write with great precision on matters that today are usually relegated to a quick, unpunctuated tweet. For an explanation of her non-casual approach, see my preface to Letters of Ayn Rand on page xvi.”

This second group of unpublished letters contains fourteen letters addressed to the following individuals on the dates listed:

• A. H. Woods (October 17, 1935)
• Newman Flower (June 3, 1936)
• Channing Pollock (December 10, 1941)
• D. L. Chambers (February 14, 1944)
• Alan Collins (February 15, 1946)
• Ann Watkins (March 29, 1946)
• Ruth Meilandt (July 11, 1946)
• Ruth Meilandt (August 5, 1946)
• Alan Collins (August 6, 1946)
• Gerald Loeb (July 31, 1947)
• John L. B. Williams (December 13, 1947)
• Pincus Berner (April 3, 1948)
• Rosemary York (September 4, 1948)
• Jeannie Cornuelle (April 19, 1980)

What follows is an introduction by Berliner to this installment, followed by the text of each letter with remarks from Berliner (always in italics) supplying necessary context.¹

Please note:

• The letters published in this series are letters and not formal statements of Ayn Rand’s philosophic positions written for publication. Consequently, they should not be taken as definitive, and the reader should not ex­aggerate the importance of (a) possible ambiguities caused by her using informal rather than more precise language or (b) seeming conflicts with her published views. In all cases, her published statements are definitive.
• Photos, images, captions and footnotes are not part of Ayn Rand’s letters unless otherwise noted.
• These letters, owned by Leonard Peikoff, are part of Ayn Rand Papers collection. Their reproduction here is courtesy of the Ayn Rand Archives. The Ayn Rand Institute extends its warm appreciation to Leonard Peikoff and the Ayn Rand Archives, and also to Clarisa M. Randazzo, the volunteer who carefully transcribed all of the newly published Ayn Rand letters from the originals.

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The following fourteen letters concern Ayn Rand’s fiction output. Spread over forty-five years, these are among many dozens of her letters that illustrate the care she took with all aspects of her writing career — from advertising to cover art, from theatrical casting to book distribution and legal contracts.

To A. H. Woods (October 17, 1935)

H. (Al) Woods (1870–1951) was the producer of Night of January 16th on Broadway. Of his 142 Broadway plays, January 16th was his 136th. The first production of Ayn Rand’s play was in 1934 in Hollywood, under the title Woman on Trial, and was produced by E. E. Clive and starred Barbara Bedford (#13 on Rand’s Soviet-era list of favorite actresses). The play was then purchased by Woods and had a 29-week run on Broadway beginning September 16, 1935, one month before the letter below was written. Although the play provided significant income and induced Rand and her husband to move to New York City for the first time, it was not a pleasurable experience for her, because it was beset by actors who didn’t understand their lines, constant disputes with Woods over script and casting changes, pointless experiments and, finally, legal arbitration (won by Rand) over unpaid royalties. One such casting dispute is the subject of this letter to Woods. Rand was partly responding to an October 15 letter from Woods, in which he argued that Bakewell was good for the part, adding that “my judgment might be just a little bit better than yours.”

Dear Mr. Woods,

In reply to your letter of October 15th, I must state that I find it impossible to agree to the choice of Mr. William Bakewell for the part of “Guts Regan.” Since you went to some length in explaining your reasons for this choice, I must explain in detail my reasons for refusing to approve Mr. Bakewell in that part.

As I have stated in my letter of October 14th, I find Mr. Bakewell much too young for the part. Mr. Bakewell’s personality is that of a meek, harmless, wholesome high-school child and this is the type of part which he has played on the screen. His personality would not allow him to play even the part of a small-time gangster, merely a member of a gang. But when it comes to playing a man who, as “Guts Regan,” is the head of a gang and, more than that, the head of the underworld in New York City, the Public Enemy #1 with a price of $25,000 on his head — well, you must grant me that it becomes dangerously near to being ludicrous. Not only is Mr. Bakewell’s personality unsuited to the part, but he actually looks about eighteen years old. It may not be his real age, but that is the impression he gives on the stage. How a man under twenty could be accepted as an underworld dictator is more than I can understand.

You quote the instance of Miss Nolan and remind me that she, too, was too young for her part. Aside from the fact that this is quite irrelevant and that I shall discuss it later in fuller detail, I would like to remind you at this point that Miss Nolan does not look her age. I have heard people who saw the play voice the opinion that Miss Nolan was thirty. She is a good enough actress to conceal her youth. Unfortunately, Mr. Bakewell looks younger than his probable age, and the juvenile quality of his personality is carried into his voice, his stage manner and his whole performance, which I found thoroughly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, while we could “fake” on Miss Nolan’s age by omitting from the play the fact that she had been employed as a secretary for ten years, there is no possible way to cover up, soften or explain how a boy of eighteen became the leader of the underworld and was entrusted with the responsibility of assisting the foremost world financier in his most dangerous plot.

You said in your letter that you want “a man with some refinement and romance.” I can see absolutely no romantic quality in Mr. Bakewell and he has never, to my knowledge, played romantic characters on the screen. He has played juveniles of the “young brother” or “son” type, not lovers. You claim that Mr. Bakewell’s picture work may be an asset to him on the stage. I find that it will be a detriment, since he has always been associated in the public mind with the type of part I have described above, if we are to suppose that his name is sufficiently known to the public. However, I am inclined to think that any following he may have is hardly prominent enough to be considered as a box office attraction.

I may remind you that the Minimum Basic Agreement calls for “a first class production with a first class cast.” Mr. Bakewell has, evidently, never appeared on the professional stage, since he has just joined the Actors’ Equity Association, as I was informed. Being a beginner, as far as the stage is concerned, he can hardly be considered as a first-class stage actor.

You complain in your letter that I did not notify you of my disapproval for Mr. Bakewell before his seven days try-out period had elapsed. I have had no notice of any kind when Mr. Bakewell started rehearsing. I do not know now the date on which he was engaged. I do hope that this notice was not omitted intentionally to provide for an emergency such as this. The rehearsal which I attended with you and to which you refer in your letter of October 15th, took place not “about a week ago,” as you state, but on Friday, October 11th. I had not been notified even about that rehearsal, but happened to see, by chance, an announcement of it on the wall back stage, at the Ambassador Theater. You left that rehearsal before it was finished and I had no chance to speak you, nor did you ask me for my opinion. However, on the following day, Saturday, October 12th, I telephoned to you at your office and tried to make an appointment to see you. You refused the appointment and asked me what I wanted to see you about. When I stated that I wanted to discuss the cast, you answered that the cast pleased you, which was all that was necessary. I attempted to explain that I wanted to discuss Mr. Bakewell and give you my opinion of his performance. You hung up the receiver in the middle of my sentence without letting me finish my statement. You have yourself mentioned this episode to a person who has since repeated it before witnesses. However, I am sure that you will not attempt to deny this. On Monday, October 14th, I sent you a letter by messenger in order to avoid delay, stating my formal complaint. As you see, I have tried my best to settle the matter as quickly as possible.

May I also remind you that you have repeated persistently and on numerous occasions your claim that I had no say whatever about the casting of my play, that you would cast anyone you wished whether such persons met with my approval or not. On the few occasions when you agreed to discuss the cast with me, it was done after many most unpleasant arguments. May I remind you that, foreseeing a situation such as this, I came to your office at the time when you were first casting my play, before rehearsals started, and brought to your attention the fact that Mr. Pidgeon had been signed for another play and would not be able to remain with our company longer than the first few weeks. I suggested then that we agree on an actor to replace Mr. Pidgeon, in order not to hold up the play later, when Mr. Pidgeon would be forced to leave. Do I have to remind you that your answer was much less than polite and that you gave me to understand I was transgressing my rights as an author? This is in spite of the fact that our contract states clearly my right to approve of any and all members of the cast.

You have held to the letter of that contract and I have had to comply, no matter how difficult it has been at times. May I ask how you intend me to be bound by a contract while you do not intend to be bound by it? You must realize that if you allow an actor to appear on the stage in my play, disregarding my formal objection to that actor, you will break the Minimum Basic Agreement which we have both signed.

Quoting from your letter, I find that you make the following statement: “It is strange that you should pick out two people, Mr. Shayne and Mr. Conway, and suggest them for the part. I suppose those are the only two actors you know, owing to the fact that you have seen them both.” I do not see just what can be strange about it nor what does the fact of how many actors I had seen have to do with the case. I suggested Mr. Conway and Mr. Shayne because they are the only two actors I know who are familiar with the part and who could step into the play after one rehearsal. I believe I made this clear in my letter when I suggested them.

You state that you are sure Mr. Bakewell “will give a better performance than either of the two gentlemen you named.” How can you know it when, to my knowledge, you have never given either Mr. Conway or Mr. Shayne a chance to read the part for you? On the other hand, I have seen Mr. Bakewell rehearse the part and I have seen Mr. Conway play it in Hollywood, so I have the grounds necessary to make a comparison. I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say that Mr. Conway’s performance was so superior to Mr. Bakewell’s that there can be no comparison.

As to Mr. Shayne, I have never said that he was the only weak link in our cast, as you claim I have. It is true that I have never been pleased with his performance in the part of the Defense Attorney, for the main reason that I found him too young for that part. If you remember, it was my first objection to him when I first met him as a prospective “Defense Attorney.” During the rehearsals that followed, I expressed my opinion to you and to Mr. Hayden, on several occasions, stating that I feared Mr. Shayne would not be satisfactory in the part. You assured me most emphatically that Mr. Shayne would improve with rehearsing and that he would be excellent in actual performance. You told me that you had seen him in another play and that he had been magnificent. Owing only to the fact that I trusted your judgment, I made no formal, definite objection and allowed Mr. Shayne to remain in the part. You know the consequences. You found it necessary to dismiss Mr. Shayne and replace him with Mr. Tucker, without any suggestion from me.

If you find that Mr. Shayne does not have weight enough for the part of “Guts Regan,” how can you possibly consider that Mr. Bakewell has it? Of the two, doesn’t Mr. Shayne have the infinitely stronger, more forceful, more mature personality? I am still convinced that Mr. Shayne is a good actor in a part to which he is suited, and your own opinion of his performance in another play supports my conviction. I believe that he could be satisfactory in the part of “Guts Regan,” and I do think that it would be worthwhile at least to allow him a reading of that part, if you are sincerely anxious to find an actor to replace Mr. Pidgeon on short notice, an actor who would be acceptable to both of us. The same consideration applies to Mr. Conway.

Coming back to the subject of Miss Nolan, I must state that I was surprised by your presentation of the facts in your letter. You claim that I wanted her out of the cast. I had never wanted that and the best proof of it is that Miss Nolan is in the cast and that I never made any formal complaint against her, as I am doing now against Mr. Bakewell. During the first week of rehearsals, I did feel dubious about Miss Nolan’s ability to handle the part of “Karen Andre,” but I told you, as well as Mr. Hayden, that I was willing to let her go on with the rehearsals, since I felt that she showed great promise and I saw a definite chance of her coming up to our expectations, with proper coaching. This she did accomplish and I was one of the first to express my enthusiasm for her excellent work. As you know, I was not the only one to doubt her ability to handle the part, at first. You yourself have told me that she was not adequate during her first rehearsals; and Mr. Shubert was ready to have her replaced, since he brought several prominent actresses to witness the rehearsals, for the purpose of offering them the part of “Karen Andre.” Had I had a definite objection against Miss Nolan, I could have taken advantage of the situation then and insisted on her dismissal. I did not to do it, because I felt that she would improve, as I had stated repeatedly. While Miss Nolan may be too young for her part in real life, she does not show it on the stage and I have not objected to her stage appearance. I cannot say this of Mr. Bakewell, since he does appear hopelessly boyish.

As to your statement that I can thank Miss Nolan for whatever success my play has had up to the present time, I do not think that you believe this yourself. I have seen no reviews to that effect nor have I heard anyone voice that opinion. Without casting any reflection on Miss Nolan’s excellent work, I must say that all the reviews attributed the possible success of my play to the idea of a jury drawn from the audience. The publicity stories which came from your own office have all stressed that jury angle and publicized it as the main novelty and attraction of the play. So why make unfair statements which lead us nowhere?

Referring to your letter further, I find that you mention and seem to resent my attitude toward Mr. Harland Tucker. I do not see what that can possibly have to do with the case. Furthermore, although I would not have selected Mr. Tucker as my idea of the type needed for the part of the Defense Attorney, I have not objected to his playing the part, since his acting is adequate. I do not recall discussing Mr. Tucker with any actors back stage and I am perfectly certain that I have never suggested him for the part of the “Doctor.”

And, finally, I do not doubt your ability to pick unknown talent nor the fact that you have discovered many great stars in the past. But, as you say in your letter, we can all make mistakes. If the casting of Mr. Shayne as the Defense Attorney was a mistake on your part, I am afraid that you are about commit a much graver mistake by allowing Mr. Bakewell to play “Guts Regan.” Mr. Shayne at his worst has never been as unsuited to the part of the “Defense Attorney” as Mr. Bakewell is to that of “Guts Regan.”

As you see, I have gone to great lengths in order to point out to you all the details of my complaint and to prove to you that this complaint is not unreasonable. I am very anxious to settle this matter in an amicable manner, if you will allow me to do so. However, your attitude on the question of casting has left me no choice but to demand an arbitration. I am sending today an application for arbitration on this question to the Dramatists’ Guild, along with a copy of this letter. You realize that if you allow Mr. Bakewell, over my objection, actually to perform in my play beginning Monday, October 21st, it may entitle me to claim a breach of our contract. I do hope that we can still avoid it.

If you can find another actor for the part of Regan, acceptable to both of us, please let me know so that the arbitration proceedings may be stopped. I hope that we will be able to agree on another actor, for we still have the time.

Sincerely yours,

On the same day as the letter above, Rand wrote to the Dramatists’ Guild requesting arbitration. But the next day, Rand withdrew her application for arbitration, stating that “Mr. Woods and I have reached an agreement.” The terms of that agreement are not known, but Bakewell continued to appear as “Guts” Regan until the play closed in April of 1936. Rand later commented: “I almost had an arbitration with him over a replacement for Walter Pidgeon during the last months or so of the play [during its preview in Philadelphia], when [Pidgeon] went to Hollywood. But it wasn’t worth it.” Because Pidgeon had the role of Regan in out-of-town tryouts and for the first month on Broadway, reviews of the play do not mention Bakewell. Bakewell’s reminiscences, Hollywood Be Thy Name, make no mention of the issue of his casting.

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To Newman Flower (June 3, 1936)

Newman Flower (1879–1964) was the proprietor of the publishing house Cassell & Co., which published We the Living, Anthem and The Fountainhead in the United Kingdom. Flower is best known for publishing Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and The Second World War. After receiving a copy of the U.S. edition of We the Living, Flower wrote to Rand on April 14, 1936: “I think this is a magnificent piece of work, and one of the finest first novels I have ever read in my life . . . . I am looking forward to seeing you one of the best most successful novelists on Cassell’s list.” Rand’s letter below is in response to a May 11, 1936, letter from Flower in which his specific suggestions were preceded by a more general explanation: “I will be very grateful if you will make one or two modifications in the proofs which I enclose, or else allow the penciled alternations to stand. The reason is this: the principal book buyer in this country is Boot’s Library. In America one can be more frank in a book than here because, if there is too much frankness, Boot’s will not take the book. This means the loss of the biggest customer.”

Dear Mr. Flower,

Thank you for your letter and the suggestions of changes in the galleys of my book.

I am perfectly willing to make the changes suggested, for I consider the somewhat too frank love passages as the least important ones in the book and I certainly would not want to let them handicap the novel as a whole or detract any possible buyers from it.

I do approve of the changes made and I have marked them on each galley with my initials.

On gallery 51, I have no objection whatever to substituting “stove” for “Primus” if there is the slightest danger of a libel suit.

In regard to galley 63, your editor was quite correct in saying that a “Primus” is lighted with spirit first. That is the proper way to light it, but spirit was so expensive in Russia at the time that everyone had to use kerosene instead, which added to the discomfort of using a “Primus.” I have inserted a few words of explanation to that effect; if you consider it advisable you may keep the insertion in the text; if not — please omit it.

On galley 42, I made an additional cut of three lines which may be considered objectionable. You may keep the lines in, if you find it safe, or eliminate them if it is preferable.

On galley 39, in the most objectionable scene of the book, I cut out the entire ending of the scene. I think you will agree with me that it is better to do so. The only importance of the scene is the psychology of Kira’s surrender in a cold, tense, matter-of-fact manner, without the usual sentimental love-making. I have kept enough of the scene to suggest this. The rest — the description of physical details — is not really important. Particularly if the strongest lines are cut out of the last paragraphs, the remaining lines have very little meaning, since they do not even create a definite mood. So I think it is best to omit these last paragraphs entirely. It will be safer and the story as such will not suffer from the omission.

If you find any other passages that arouse doubt on the same grounds as the above, please let me know and I shall be glad to adjust them. Of course I will want to see the suggested changes before they are printed and I would appreciate it if you would send them to me in advance, as the ones we have made so far. I would also appreciate it very much if you would send me the galleys when they are ready, for there were a few mistakes in the American galleys, which were corrected later and which the proofreader may not be able to catch.

If I am free in September when the book comes out, I shall be delighted to come to London. Until then, please let me know if you need any further information or pictures of me for publicity. I am collecting all the reviews on my book which are still coming in and I shall send then to you in a few days.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

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To Channing Pollock (December 10, 1941)

Channing Pollock (1880–1946) was a successful Broadway writer, responsible for such shows as the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911, 1915 and 1921 and other plays, many of which were turned into films. In the early 1940s, he and Rand attempted to create what she called “The Individualist Organization” in the wake of the failed Wendell Willkie presidential campaign. In a previous letter to Rand (dated November 27, 1941), Pollock included a copy of his letter of the same date to Mrs. William Henry Hays, president of the Republican Club of New York City. In that letter, Pollock recommended Rand as a speaker, writing: “I have not heard Miss Rand speak in public, but if she can do so with any degree of the conviction and eloquence with which she speaks in private, and with which she writes, she should be one of the greatest orators of all time. I have never met anyone of more remarkable personality and individuality, or with a more burning conviction.”

Dear Mr. Pollock:

Thank you for the letter which you wrote about me to Mrs. Hays. I can only say that I shall try to deserve the recommendation you gave me. I have not heard from the Republican Club as yet, but if I should get that lecture it will not please me more than the things which you said about me.

Please forgive my delay in answering your letter. So many things have happened to me lately that I have been in a sort of whirlwind. The big event in my life is that I have just sold a novel to Bobbs-Merrill Company. It is an unfinished novel on which I have been working for a long time and which I could not finish for lack of funds. Bobbs-Merrill liked it well enough to give me an advance that will permit me to leave my job at Paramount and finish the novel. I cannot say what it means to me — to be able to return to creative writing again. I think you will understand. I am afraid I’m so happy that I’m a little dizzy. I signed the contract yesterday.

When you have the time, I should like very much to hear from you and to see you, if possible.

You asked my husband’s first name. It is Frank O’Connor.

He joins me in sending you our best regards,

Sincerely,

There is no record of Rand speaking to the Republican Club of New York City, but the collection of her daily calendars doesn’t begin until 1943.

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To D. L. Chambers (February 14, 1944)

David Laurence Chambers was president of the publishing company Bobbs-Merrill when The Fountainhead was submitted to it in 1941. Archibald Ogden, one of the company’s editors, recommended the manuscript, but Chambers rejected it. Ogden then threatened to resign, writing: “If this is not the book for you, then I am not the editor for you.” Chambers relented, wiring Ogden: “Far be it from me to dampen such enthusiasm. Sign the contract.” In the letter below, Rand is responding to a letter from Chambers dated February 3, 1944, almost a year after the novel was published, reminding Rand of restrictions on paper quantities implemented by the War Production Board but reassuring her of “our ability to supply all orders.” Chambers’s letter also ties motion picture-induced sales to a projected paperback edition of the novel.

Dear Mr. Chambers:

Thank you for your letter of February 3rd. I am astonished that you did not understand me when I wrote about the effect of a motion picture on the sales of a novel. An important picture with a good publicity campaign gives a great boost to the sales of a novel in its regular edition. I refer you to the case of “King’s Row.”

I was and am interested only in the sale of the regular edition. I am not thinking of a popular reprint. It is much too soon for that. Of course “The Fountainhead” cannot be put out in a 25¢ Pocket Book type of edition. But if the picture helps to sell 100,000 copies of the regular edition, I will call that a big sale. A picture can do that and, in this case, I think it will.

There can be, of course, no question of paper difficulty about printing 100,000 copies of “The Fountainhead” when they become needed. Other publishers have printed 500,000 copies of books longer than mine.

I am concerned over this matter, because “The Fountainhead” was allowed to get out of print twice, last summer and fall, last time (in October) for three weeks. Each time, this happened at a crucial moment, when the demand for the books was growing, and each time the demand was killed. The worry and trouble which I was forced to take over the matter in October prevented me from working on “The Moral Basis of Individualism,” which would have been finished then but for this matter. I did not expect such a disastrous occurrence a second time.

I am counting on you to see that this does not happen again. I realize fully how it happened. It was due to the pessimism of Bobbs-Merrill, who handled the book over-cautiously, played for loss and did not expect good sales. When the sale came, they were caught short. I think we can still make up for it. But please remember the we must make up for it. I do not intend to have “The Fountainhead” as the victim of miscalculation.

War-conditions in the printing industry do not relieve you of the contractual obligation to keep my book in print in step with the demand. Since we know that everything is done slower now, we must make our calculations accordingly. It is merely a matter of ordering new printings earlier and in a larger quantity than would have been necessary in peace-time, when the exact date of delivery could be predicted.

I believe we are almost out of print now, unless you have reordered since I left New York. I am particularly concerned about the Literary Guild campaign which will help our sales. I do not want to see a break like that go to waste again. The same applies to the time when the motion picture will come out. I expect you to have the book in print, in step with and sufficiently ahead of the demand.

Referring to the last paragraph of your letter on January 28th — to the Omnibook¹⁴ matter — I must remind you that what you call a “fait accompli” was an accomplished breach of contract. Please do not expect me to accept any more breaches, of any nature, in the future.

As to “The Moral Basis of Individualism” I shall finish it as soon as I can, but I cannot give you a definite date until I have finished my work for Warner Brothers. Your suggestion that I “do something on the book each day” is entirely out of the question. First, I am not permitted to do it by my contract with Warner Brothers. Second, do you really think that a serious book on so difficult a subject can be written in snatches and in between times?

If you are concerned over the fact that the book will come out too long after the Reader’s Digest article¹⁵ — I believe I will get ten other articles out of it, to help us when the time comes. But we must finish the job on “The Fountainhead” properly, before we undertake the next one.

Sincerely yours,

In a four-page response on February 22, 1944, Chambers addressed Rand’s various points in some detail, showing how seriously they were taken at Bobbs-Merrill. He concluded his letter by assuring Rand that “The Fountainhead has at all times had the devoted interest, the wholehearted support of our entire organization. It deserved it.”

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To Alan Collins (February 15, 1946)

Alan Collins (1904–68) was Rand’s literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. from 1943 until his death in 1968. That agency still handles her books. The letter below was in response to Collins’s letter of February 1, 1946, in which he conveyed the offer of Denver Lindley that “if he liked the new book [Atlas Shrugged], they [Appleton-Century] would be willing to put up an advance of $75,000 and a guarantee of somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000 for advertising.”

Dear Alan:

I am very much impressed by Denver Lindley’s offer and shall keep it in mind. However, it’s entirely premature. I have not started the writing of my next novel and won’t be able to start until I finish my six months at the studio. I merely have the outline of the novel ready in my mind. Wonder where Lindley got the idea that it was nearly finished.

I shall think of this offer whenever I feel like getting conceited about my own value. In the meantime, I’m glad that the novel has already earned two cocktails for you. Drink to it once in a while — I’ll need it.

Sincerely,

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To Ann Watkins (March 29, 1946)

Ann Watkins (1886–1967) was Rand’s literary agent beginning in 1935, although by the time of this letter, Alan Collins of Curtis Brown Ltd. was taking over most of Rand’s works. The Watkins agency still exists under the name Watkins/Loomis. Anthem was first published in 1938, by Cassell in the United Kingdom. The first American edition, a significant revision of the Cassell edition, is the one discussed in the letter below; it first appeared as the Vol. III, no. 1, issue of The Freeman. The Pamphleteers edition was taken over by Caxton Printers in 1953 and then by New American Library in 1961.

Dear Ann:

I have made a deal to have ANTHEM published as a pamphlet by Pamphleteers, Inc., an organization which publishes political booklets and which is run by some prominent California men who are friends of mine.

They sell their publications mainly through private orders and mailing lists — but they will also sell to bookstores, if they get requests for it. I have found out from a lawyer that I can take out a copyright on a revised version of ANTHEM. This will not stop anyone from using the original version as public domain, but it will protect the new version and will serve as a sort of “psychological” protection for the old one.

I am doing this in order to have ANTHEM issued in proper form in America — rather than have it suddenly appear in a pulp magazine. After that, if anyone still wants to print it without permission, it won’t be quite so bad.

Will you draw up a contract for this deal and mail it to me? I will get it signed and send a copy back to you. I presume we will need three copies made.

The name of the organization is: PAMPHLETEERS, INC., 725 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles 15, California.

The terms on which we agreed are as follows:

I grant them the right to publish a revised version of ANTHEM in booklet form.

If there are any second serial rights, such as requests from magazines for reprints, as a result of this publication, the money derived from such rights is to be divided equally between Pamphleteers, Inc. and me. The sale of such second serial rights is entirely up to me. They cannot authorize reprints without my consent.

All other rights are reserved to and by me.

Pamphleteers, Inc. are to pay me ten percent (10%) of all their gross receipts from the sale of this booklet, after the first 5,000 copies.

No changes of any kind whatsoever are to be made in the text of the booklet without my consent.

The copyright is to be taken out in their name (but to be owned by me — in the same manner as when a regular publisher takes out a copyright on a book in his own name.)

All advertising copy which they use for the booklet must have my approval.

(The first 5,000 copies are to be royalty free, because a great part of this number is given away free and the organization gets no profit until after this figure. My royalties are to be computed, not on the retail price of the booklet, but on their gross receipts, because their selling price varies according to the size of the order. We have not discussed the dates when they are to give me an accounting — I suppose it should be twice a year, as with regular publishers. They will send the accounting and the checks to you.)

These are the terms we have agreed upon. I’d like you to draw it up into a regular contract stated in proper legal terms. If there are any points which we have overlooked and which should be covered in the contract, please include them in the same way and on the same terms as they are in a contract with a regular publisher. Please let me know if there is any other important condition which I should discuss with them and include in the contract.

I am now revising the copy — and they will go into print as soon as I am ready. I would appreciate it very much if you would send me these contracts as soon as conveniently possible.

What is happening with Famous Fantastic Mysteries?¹⁶ We don’t, of course, have to inform them about this deal. I’d like to beat them to the publication, if possible.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Ruth Meilandt (July 11, 1946)

Ruth Meilandt, a manager at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, was one of the six “Pamphleteers” (who included Leonard Read) who comprised Pamphleteers, Inc., and handled much of the organization’s business matters.

Dear Miss Meilandt:

Thank you for the sketches of covers for ANTHEM, which you sent me.

The cover I have selected is sketch #6, but with an adaptation of my own which I am enclosing. I think #6 is the best for design, but I object very strongly to the drawing of the Grecian torch; it is much too conventional. What I would like to see in its place is the drawing of a flame, as I have indicated on my attempted version. To get the effect I have in mind (which would be excellent for the story and in keeping with it), I would like it to be the drawing of a stylized wind-blown flame — not a realistic conventional one. If the artist can do that, I think it would be very good. Also, I would urge very strongly that the oval be a single line, not too heavy, and that the letters of that title be drawn sharp and straight, not rounded as the artist has suggested. This makes the appearance of the jacket much stronger.

I do not care for sketch #5, because it is too crowded, because the odd lettering of the word ANTHEM makes it illegible at first glance, and because the torch is too conventional.

In order to have the cover right and not regret it afterwards, I would like very much to see the artist’s sketch of my suggestion before a cut is made from it. I will return it to you promptly.

I would also like to see a proof of the little advertising leaflet which Mr. Ingebretsen sent me.

As to the inquiry you received about purchasing a copy of WE THE LIVING, please tell the gentleman that the book is out of print now, and he can get a copy only by advertising for a second-hand one; or he may still find it in the public library.

Sincerely,

Meilandt responded two days later that Rand would shortly receive a revised sketch. The published edition replaced the drawing of the Grecian torch with a flame, as Rand recommended.

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To Ruth Meilandt (August 5, 1946)

Dear Miss Meilandt:

I am sorry if I seem to be giving you difficulties, but since you wanted the cover of ANTHEM to please me, I must tell you my true opinion, which is: that the change in lettering has practically ruined the appearance of the cover. It has thrown it out of balance, and the narrow lettering does not stand out as the original lettering on the drawing would have.

If changing this now will involve too much trouble and delay, I suppose you will have to let it go as it is. If it is still possible to change it, I would like you to have the lines within the oval hand-lettered in the kind of bold letters you had before. Since we have spent this much time on the cover, I would like very much to have it right and not to spoil it by a detail of this nature. Please charge the cost of the alterations and of the new lettering to me. I will be glad to bear this cost, as I think it is worth it.

Sincerely,

On August 16, 1946, Meilandt responded that she will send Rand “a photostat of the finished sketch for your approval.” And on August 19, 1946, Rand replied that “the revised cover which you sent me . . . looks fine now, and I am looking forward to getting the finished copies of the book.”

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To Alan Collins (August 6, 1946)

This letter is part of extensive correspondence between Rand, Collins and Ross Baker (sales manager of Bobbs-Merrill’s trade book department) regarding royalties.

Dear Alan:

Thank you for your letters of July 24th. I am sorry that you did not corner Ross Baker with the only question I wanted answered, which was: why did they not consult me before they made sales in the open market?¹⁷ They have never answered this, and all the rest of their explanations are completely irrelevant.

At present they are making me lose the open market sales entirely, since they will not even negotiate about this market, and since they take the position that I must not only accept their arbitrary conditions, but also accept their right to have taken this market without permission. Unless I do so, I cannot have the book sold on the open market, and since I will not do so, they are now responsible for a direct financial loss to me, through a method of doing business which comes awfully close to blackmail or high pressure. I will leave it up to you as to whether you will permit this to go on or not. I should think that this much can be settled without going to court. As for the rest, I will consult an attorney about it.

I may come to New York later this fall and settle this in person, but I do wish you could save me some of the trouble.

As to IDEAL, I was shocked to hear that you had submitted it to Shumlin.¹⁸ I am sorry that I did not warn you against doing this. Please make it a matter of irrevocable policy in the future not to send any work of mine to any producer or publisher known as a Communist. Do not send IDEAL to any producer who has an established pink reputation, such as the following: Oscar Serlin, Shepherd Traube, Orson Welles, the Playwrights’ Company or any left-overs of the Group Theatre. I do not know all of the current crop of red producers, but I will leave it up to your judgement to inquire about them and not to submit my play to those whom you find to be pink. Please be as careful about this as you possibly can. You must surely realize that those people will never produce anything of mine — nor would I let them produce it.

Sincerely yours,

On August 14, 1946, Collins responded that he thought Bobbs-Merrill “were doing you a good turn by selling” in the open market. He also told Rand that he had sent the script of “Ideal” to Shumlin “with tongue in cheek, for I wanted to see, in the light of his political prejudice, what his reaction to such a forthright script would be. Unfortunately, he sent it back without comment.”

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To Gerald Loeb (July 31, 1947)

Gerald Loeb (1899–1974) was a founding partner of the stock brokerage firm E.F. Hutton & Co. Rand and Loeb had a lengthy correspondence between 1943 and 1949, during which period her daily calendars list numerous meetings and dinners with him.

Dear Gerald:

Thank you very much for your many notes and letters to which I owe you an answer. I am late as usual, but you know me by now and you will forgive me.

First, I want to tell you how much I enjoyed your last visit here and meeting Rose. I am glad you wrote that she likes me, because I liked her very much and I think you will be very happy together. All my best wishes again for both of you.

I had a very nice letter from your mother in which she mentioned that you were to send us the photographs which she took of us here. This is just a reminder to tell you that we would like very much to have them.

I was interested to see the little pamphlet by Mr. E. F. Hutton and his ad in the New York Herald Tribune. The ad particularly is excellent. Mr. Hutton is obviously sincere about the fight, and I should like to meet him when I come to New York or if he over comes to the West Coast.¹⁹ I am glad you sent him a copy of ANTHEM. Let me know what he thought of it. Do you think I should send him some copies of my articles on Americanism in THE VIGIL, the Motion Picture Alliance magazine? I believe they could be helpful to him.

Now as to the letter from Miss Jean Dalrymple,²⁰ even though she paid some nice compliments to my writing, I wish you had not sent the letter to me, because it is a rather offensive letter, though I am sure she did not intend it as that. She says that she “certainly could be of assistance in having Miss Rand turn out a tremendous theater work.” Gerald, darling, you surely know me well enough by now to know that I do not write with anybody’s assistance. When and if I decide that I want to write a new play, I will write it. I have never undertaken a piece of writing on somebody’s suggestion, advice or prodding. When I come to New York I would be glad to meet Miss Dalrymple, but only on condition that she give up any idea of moulding me like some writer from P M.²¹

I have no special news about myself, except that I am working on my new novel, am enjoying it tremendously and it is going very well. I don’t know as yet when I will have it finished, but I know that I will not be able to come to New York this fall. So I am looking forward to seeing you and Rose here when you come west.

Best regards from both of us to both of you,

Sincerely,

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To John L. B. Williams (December 13, 1947)

John L. B. Williams (1892–1972) was an editor at Bobbs-Merrill.

Dear Mr. Williams:

Thank you ever so much for the copy of WE THE LIVING which you obtained for me. I was delighted to get it. I am enclosing my check for it. If you find that you can get any additional copies, I will be happy to have them.²²

I will not attempt to tell you what a wonderful time I had riding in the engine of the Twentieth Century. It was the greatest experience I ever had.²³ I guess I will save the description of it for my novel. I am back at work on it, and it is going well.

Thank you for the nice luncheons we had in New York. I am looking forward already to my next trip there.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Pincus Berner (April 3, 1948)

Pincus Berner (1899–1961) was Ayn Rand’s attorney, beginning with an arbitration in 1935 against producer Al Woods regarding Night of January 16th. The subject of the letter below is what Rand termed the “Banyai Case.” Shortly after the end of World War II, George and Tommy Banyai, without Rand’s permission, put on a French production of Night of January 16th. The lengthy dispute over royalties had already been going on for more than two years at the time of this letter to Pincus Berner. In 1949, Rand eventually sued George Banyai to recoup royalties. Rand and Berner caught him in various lies and trickery (Rand congratulated Berner “on the skill with which you pinned down the wriggling little liar”), but Banyai actually expanded productions of the play throughout Europe even while being sued for not paying royalties.

Dear Pinkie:

Thank you for your letter of March 18.

I thought I had made it clear that I would not join the French Society of Authors under any circumstances whatever. So please let us omit this from our considerations of the case.

Do you not find a peculiar discrepancy in Banyai’s attitude? You say in your letter, “I can see no point in suing Banyai in a local court. We have no figures on which to predicate the sum due you from him.” You also state that Banyai reported that the French Society has refused to give any statement or computation of the royalties accruing to me to date. Does Banyai mean to imply that he or his brother have no copies of their accounts or bookkeeping statements and no record of how much money they deposited with the French Society in my name? Why did he have to ask the Society for that account? The Society does not owe it to me — he does. Do you propose that we let him get away with that? I think you should demand, not ask, but demand an accounting from him at once.

Besides, I sent you a copy of the letter from Tommy Banyai of January 15, 1948, in which he states that the amount of my royalties at present is approximately 500,000 francs.

As you know, there is a clause in my contract with George Banyai which states that any differences arising between us are to be settled according to the laws of American courts. Therefore, I believe it would be a mistake for me to give Banyai permission to sue the French Society in my name. Such an action would amount to waiving my claim against Banyai and recognizing the jurisdiction of the French Society in this matter, which I do not recognize. My contract is with George Banyai, and my claim is against him. If he says that under French laws he is helpless against the French Society — my stand is that that is his problem, not mine, because our contract states specifically that I am not bound by French laws. Therefore, I think I must undertake a suit against him right now and in New York. It seems to me that the suit should be not merely for royalties, but for breach of contract and bad faith, and that the first demand we must take on him is to subpoena from him an accounting of the sums due me.

George Banyai has a great many activities and business connections in this country, so I believe we could attach whatever he owns or part of his salary to satisfy a judgment against him. It is my impression that he would not let matters go that far and that he would find a way to settle my claim. I don’t believe I mentioned to you that he was the representative of the French Society of Authors in Hollywood, so you can see what the situation really is.

I am not sure of the exact value of the franc by the rate that prevailed at the time my royalties became due; but as far as I can guess, the amount they owe me is probably somewhere between four and five thousand dollars. This is a sum which I believe can be collected from George Banyai in person right here.

On the grounds stated above, I would like you to institute a suit against George Banyai in New York and to ask for damages. Please let me know whether this can be done, what it involves and what would be the exact procedure to follow. Also please let me know whether you will undertake to handle it on a contingency basis or, if not, please tell me the exact sum you would charge me for handling this. You can realize why I cannot undertake this without advance knowledge of how much it will cost me.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

The outcome of Rand’s fight with the Banyais is not known. Papers in the Ayn Rand Archives indicate that Banyai did send some back royalties to Rand, but the last mention of the lawsuit is in an August 31, 1949, letter to Berner in which she implies that a motion for summary judgment was unsuccessful. Then, in the 1950s, Rand refers to Banyai’s “fraud” regarding Scandinavian rights to the play and says that his actions were “more nefarious — if that is possible” than in the French “affair.”

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To Rosemary York (September 4, 1948)

Dear Mrs. York:

Thank you for your letter of August 23rd.

I am enclosing the tipsheet which I have inscribed for Mrs. Bett Anderson.

Please tell Mrs. Anderson for me that I was delighted to hear of her request, and I am complying with real pleasure. I do remember her review of THE FOUNTAINHEAD very well indeed. It was one of the only two reviews which I really liked — the other one was Miss Lorine Pruette’s review in the NEW YORK SUNDAY TIMES. At a time when so much senseless drivel was being written about THE FOUNTAINHEAD by the majority of the reviewers, these two gave me hope that some real intelligence still existed in the world. I shall always be profoundly grateful to Mrs. Anderson for that.²⁴

The motion picture of my book is coming along beautifully, and if all goes as well as it has, I have reason to hope that it will be a great picture.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Jeannie Cornuelle (April 19, 1980)

Jean Cornuelle and her family were friends of Ayn Rand and Frank O’Connor. Rand’s correspondence, primarily with Jean’s husband, Herb, began in 1950. Herb, whose business career included presidencies of Dole Pineapple and United Fruit Company, was one of the founders of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Dear Jeannie,

I was delighted to hear from you — but the reason that I did not answer you sooner is the improper request that your friend, Mr. Danks,²⁵ has imposed on you.

Mr. Danks has committed an illegal action in trying to adapt my book, Anthem. It is legally forbidden to adapt an author’s work without his/her prior permission. I categorically refuse to give such permission to Mr. Danks. I have not read his script, and I am returning it to you under separate cover.

The reason for my disapproval of Mr. Danks is that I cannot stand the thought of someone monkeying around with my material. My work means too much to me. If you remember the climax of The Fountainhead, I am sure you will understand this.

I am sorry that he has attempted to use you in such a manner — and I certainly do not hold it against you, only against Mr. Danks.

I was glad to hear about your family, although I cannot imagine you as a grandmother. I will always think of you as Dagny Taggart.

I am sorry to have to tell you that Frank died last November after a long illness.

I was glad to hear that there are “young Randians” in Hawaii. But you make a mistake in associating the Libertarians with me. They are my enemies and have nothing to do with my philosophy, except for occasional attempts to plagiarize it.

If you ever come to New York, please let me know. I would love to see you again.

With love to you and Herb — and do svidanie.²⁶

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Ayn Rand Letters: Hollywood (1944 – 1949)

This is the first of four installments featuring previously unpublished Ayn Rand letters selected by Michael S. Berliner, editor of Letters of Ayn Rand. A total of forty letters have been divided into four groups for publication, according to general subject matter: Hollywood, fiction, nonfiction (including political activism), and more personal correspondence.

“While recently writing the complete finding aid to the Ayn Rand Papers, I noted some interesting letters that I hadn’t selected for the Letters book,” Berliner says. “Now, more than twenty years later, these letters struck me as meriting a wider audience. These unpublished letters were selected because of their insight into some particular topic or some aspect of Ayn Rand’s life, or, more often, as further evidence of how her mind worked on a variety of matters.

“I’d always been impressed by the care she took with non-philosophical issues and relatively trivial matters, and this mind-set comes across in virtually all of her correspondence. For a variety of reasons, she was not a ‘casual’ letter writer but always took great care to write with great precision on matters that today are usually relegated to a quick, unpunctuated tweet. For an explanation of her non-casual approach, see my preface to Letters of Ayn Rand on page xvi.”

The first group contains eight letters addressed to the following individuals on the dates listed:

• Bill Cole (February 20, 1944)
• Pincus Berner (September 24, 1944)
• Armitage Watkins (May 28, 1946)
• John Gall (November 15, 1946)
• Phil Berg (March 13, 1948)
• Alan Collins (September 18, 1948)
• Mario Profili (September 12, 1948)
• Gerald Loeb (January 8, 1949)

What follows is an introduction by Berliner to this installment, followed by the text of each letter with remarks from Berliner (always in italics) supplying necessary context.²⁷

Please note:

• The letters published in this series are letters and not formal statements of Ayn Rand’s philosophic positions written for publication. Consequently, they should not be taken as definitive, and the reader should not ex­aggerate the importance of (a) possible ambiguities caused by her using informal rather than more precise language or (b) seeming conflicts with her published views. In all cases, her published statements are definitive.
• Photos, images, captions and footnotes are not part of Ayn Rand’s letters unless otherwise noted.
• These letters, owned by Leonard Peikoff, are part of Ayn Rand Papers collection. Their reproduction here is courtesy of the Ayn Rand Archives. The Ayn Rand Institute extends its warm appreciation to Leonard Peikoff and the Ayn Rand Archives, and also to Clarisa M. Randazzo, the volunteer who carefully transcribed all of the newly published Ayn Rand letters from the originals.

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Ayn Rand lived in the Los Angeles area for two eight-year periods (the first from 1926 to 1934, the second from 1943 to 1951) so that she could work in the film industry. In the fall of 1926, she arrived in Hollywood with the hopes of starting a career as a film writer (having recently studied at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in her native Leningrad). After meeting Cecil B. DeMille on her second day in Hollywood, she became a film extra and then a junior writer for DeMille. When his studio closed, she worked at RKO in the wardrobe department, quitting when she sold a story to Universal. Then, with her first novel, We the Living, partially completed, she moved to New York City for the opening of her play, Night of January 16th, which subsequently had a long run on Broadway. She returned to Hollywood in late 1943 when The Fountainhead was sold to Warner Bros. with her as the screenwriter.

To Bill Cole (February 20, 1944)

Bill Cole worked as a reader for Paramount Pictures in New York under Frances Kane (later married to Henry Hazlitt) and Richard Mealand (who was instrumental in getting Rand’s manuscript of The Fountainhead to Bobbs-Merrill, which eventually published it). Rand likely met Cole at Paramount, where she and Cole worked under the same people just before her move back to Hollywood. Cole was also a friend of Rand’s brother-in-law Nick Carter and shared Carter’s sense of humor, writing to Rand that he (Cole) was out of favor at Paramount for demanding a “slight increase of $10,000 per synopsis, a 10-minute working day and a closed shop — closed to everyone but me.”

Dear Bill:

Please forgive me for my delay in answering you. You have no idea how terrible I am on the letter situation — because I come home from the studio utterly exhausted and fall asleep and can do nothing else. I only have weekends to answer mail — and I gave you a priority over letters I owe for several months. I hope this is not too late and that you will excuse me.

First of all — on the question you asked me about employment conditions here. I don’t know very much about the studios yet, except in the writing department, but as far as I can gather, the situation is this: the studios need help desperately only in the technical departments, such as cameramen, sound men, etc. If you know that angle and have had some such technical experience, you would probably have no trouble in getting a job. But in other, non-technical departments, they seem to be about normal and there are no unusual openings, as far as I have been able to learn. You write you’d be interested “in anything else even remotely connected with writing or editorial work.” There are only the two departments in such line — reading and writing. You don’t want the first, I understand they pay even worse than in New York. As to the second — it still seems to be the rule that studios do not like to give a writing break to an employee of their own from another department. I have heard stories of readers who had to leave their own studios and make a big success as writers on another lot. So I don’t think that getting a studio job in another line would get you closer to their scenario department. Except that nothing one can say about Hollywood is ever an iron-clad rule. There are always exceptions. Anything is possible here. It is very possible that you could come here, get some other job and have it lead you to writing. It could work that way. I can only say that, as a general rule, it doesn’t seem to. But it’s up to you — if you want to take the chance. Only it looks like a long chance.

From everything I hear here and from the record of every writer whom I asked how he got into screen writing — the shortest way seems to be outside the studios. That is, most of them came after establishing some sort of reputation in another line — playwrights, novelists and radio writers. They got in in one of two ways: either they had a reputation in some particular specialty, such as sports stories and the studio needed a sports story and hired this particular writer; or they sold something they had written and the studio got them with the property. If you want to try directly for the screen, my advice would be to write originals. They do buy originals from outside authors, not necessarily just from their own staff, and if they like an original enough, they will also hire the author to work on it for them. They don’t do it very often, but it does happen and there are writers who broke in that way. If you try in that way, I can tell you that what they look for in originals is the idea. It must have some new, startling idea in plot or theme — I don’t mean that it must be profoundly original in a literary sense, but new and different within the usual terms of screen stories. As, for instance, Norman Krasna here made a big hit with an original called “Princess O’Rourke.” (He was, of course, an established writer before that — but I am quoting it only as an example of what they go for in originals.) It was the story of a refugee princess marrying an American pilot. Nothing very new — but a good old trite situation given a modern angle they hadn’t used before. I don’t know whether you can write to order, that is, trying to aim at what seems to be wanted. I know I can’t. But if you can, this is the general line that seems to work here. Or — write an original any way that seems good to you, whether it’s the Hollywood way or not, and submit it. That’s what I would do. There is always the chance that it would hit the right person in the right way. And one chance is all you need. But to break in just as a junior writer, without selling them something, seems to be the most difficult of all attempts. It does happen — but it’s the longest shot. I’m afraid they’ll go on promising you a break and postponing it. I know a brilliant young writer here who has been in that position for over a year.

Your plan to go to Oregon and work on a farm seems almost too heroic. If you’re sure that you can stand the work physically and that you’ll have a lot of time for writing, it might be a good idea. If you do have a serious work you want to do — it’s an excellent idea. I wouldn’t be stopped by the mere fact of it being a dull existence — so much the better, you’ll write more. But I wonder about your doing farm work. That might be so hard physically, since you’re not used to it, that you won’t be able to write. I wonder why you picked out a farm. As far as getting a job, any kind, just to make a living and be free to write — there are a lot of openings here in Hollywood. Not in the studios, but every other place seems to be advertising “help wanted.” If you don’t care what work you do, you could probably find something better than farm work here. And then devote most of your time to writing. That is the best plan, I think. If you come here, I’d like to see you. Looks like I’m stuck here for a while — and I do miss the people I knew in New York.

Since this is such a long business letter, I won’t add much about myself, except to say that everything is going very well for me here. I am writing my own screen play — and the studio is very pleased with it so far. I have just signed a contract to stay here longer — until I finish the script. I am about half-way through it now. I love the work — and I do love Warner Brothers, since they’re so nice to me — but I hate Southern California. It is dull and flat, the climate and the very atmosphere — I don’t know about the people, haven’t had time to be very sociable. I hate the place for the very reasons most people like it — the sunshine, the palm trees, the going around in slacks, and all that.²⁸ I love New York, always did and always will. However, if one doesn’t stay here permanently, it’s not too bad a place. I don’t mind it for a while. I’d hate to stay here forever.

Write and let me know if all this advice is of any use. And, of course, come and see me if you do descend upon California. I will be offended if you don’t. Incidentally, never mind your friends in Philadelphia, have you read my book? I think by now you should. However, I’m glad your friends liked it — give them my thanks.

Best regards and good luck to you from both of us,

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To Pincus Berner (September 24, 1944)

Pincus Berner (1899–1961), a New Yorker, was Ayn Rand’s attorney, beginning with arbitration in 1935 against producer Al Woods regarding Night of January 16th.²⁹ She became friends with “Pinkie” and his wife, who once took Rand to a lecture by British socialist Harold Laski, setting Laski in Rand’s mind as the main model for the character of Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead.

Dear Pinkie:

Will you forgive the long silence from a dizzy and overworked writer? So many things have been happening to me so fast that I simply cannot catch up with myself.

To give you the briefest account of my events to-date: I finished the screenplay of “The Fountainhead” at Warners with great success. Henry Blanke, my producer, was very pleased and most complimentary about my script. It will go into production some time early in 1945, as a big special. No cast decided on as yet. Two weeks after I finished at Warners I had to start working on a new job — with Hal Wallis. You may have heard that he was a big producer at Warners and has just left them to form an independent company of his own. I have signed a five-year contract with Hal Wallis (with options, of course.) It is a very unusual contract, the kind that’s very hard to get in Hollywood — but I would not sign any other; this contract gives me six months off each year to work on my own writing; so that I give half a year to movie work and half a year to my own. I have just finished my first assignment for Wallis — an adaptation of a novel — and I rushed on it like all hell, since it’s to be his first production.³⁰ I did a good job — because Wallis and everybody concerned are enthusiastic about it. So, believe it or not, I’m successful in Hollywood. Personally, I can’t quite believe it yet. But miracles will happen.

In the only two weeks I had off since I’m here, I went and bought a house. Or rather, an estate, 13½ acres, in Chatsworth, twenty miles from Hollywood. The house is ultra-modern, by Richard Neutra, all glass, steel and concrete. The house is a small palace, too wonderful to describe. We have ten acres of alfalfa, an orchard, chickens, rabbits, two ponds that go around the house, and a tennis court.³¹ Can you see me as a capitalist? And here I thought I was the poorest (financially) defender capitalism ever had. Frank has become a rancher, spends all his time working on the grounds and loves it. It was he who picked out the house — and everybody marvels at his good business judgment. We had to settle down here, since I will have to stay in California — and apartments here are simply impossible, in both cost and comfort.

This is a brief synopsis of my situation. Now to business matters. I have to become a California resident now and file my income taxes from here. I have not yet made an amended return since the first one you made early this year. I’ve [been] paying the installments according to that — but I suppose now is the time to change it, including my new income since then. I will have to have it done here, to establish California residence, and also because it is too complicated now to do it by mail. Would you send to me your original estimate of my tax for 1944, with all the details, deductions and reasons on how you arrived at the $1,000 I was to pay? I will turn it over to the tax-man of Berg-Allenberg, my agents, who does all the returns for their clients — and he will know how to amend it according to what I have earned since then.

I was told I will have to make out a new will, here, as a resident of California. How will that affect the old one I made, which is in your safe? The new one will be the same in content. Does it simply supersede the first one, or what is the correct legal procedure? Or should I keep both — to be filed in either state if anything should happen to me? All I want to put in the will is still that I´m leaving everything to Frank.

Bobbs-Merrill have sent me the full amount of my royalties for the first six months of this year, which is over $5,000. Apparently they forgot our agreement that they were to pay me only $1,000 this year and the rest on my next statement. Shall I keep the check — or return it and keep only $1,000? I think it will be all right to keep it, because I am told that my work at Warners on the screenplay cannot be considered as income from “The Fountainhead” by any standards. It is new work on salary — not income from a finished property. Besides, while I was at Warners, I worked on three other movies, besides my own, doing editing and rewrites for them. So my time at Warners cannot be charged to any one job. However, I don’t want to accept the Bobbs-Merrill check without your okay.

You asked me in your last letter how I could hate California when I’m successful here. I can still hate it geographically, as a place, and I do. I love New York, always will, and miss it terribly. I will probably go there for a visit, on my own time, just for purposes of morale. I feel like an exile here. A lot of people have been wonderful to me here, and I have actually become a celebrity here, but I miss New York people. And that means the Berners, too.

Best regards from both of us to you, Anne, Rose and Mr. Cane,³²

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To Armitage Watkins (May 28, 1946)

Rand received a May 24, 1946, letter from Armitage (“Mike”) Watkins of the Ann Watkins literary agency, which handled some of Rand’s works, informing Rand that he had “asked one of our authors (Donald Downes) in Italy to do a little research for us with respect to a rumored Italian-made motion picture of We the Living.” In Downes’s May 16, 1946, letter, which Watkins enclosed, Downes reported that Scalera Studios “made not one, but two movies [Noi Vivi and Addio Kira] from the book” and “both were extremely successful during the war years, not only in Italy but had a big box office in Germany and Vichy France.” The partial explanation, continued Downes, was that “both were made in cooperation with the Ministry of Popular Culture as semiofficial, fascist, anti-Russian and anti-leftist propaganda.” The Scalera brothers, he wrote, “were pretty deeply in the fascist stew and are not noted in Italy for their honesty. They are at present the darlings of the Hollywood crowd here and have paid highly to be darlings. They have most important friends at Allied Commission³³ and are said to be fairly expert at buying other people’s lawyers.” Downes went on to recommend that, in any attempt to recoup funds, Watkins and Rand hire “a man so far removed by politics and history from the Scalera crowd that they would not even try to buy him . . . . I repeat I think it highly dangerous to take a lawyer because, before the war, he was the respectable correspondent of your New York attorneys.”

Dear Mr. Watkins:

Your letter of May 24th was certainly a bombshell to me. I am extremely indignant at the piracy of WE THE LIVING by the Italian producers, and at the use which they made of it. Thank you for finding this out for me. I shall now blast them with the kind of lawsuit which they deserve. I am amazed at the whole procedure, and can not understand how a picture company which is still in business could have done such a thing. How did they hope to get away with it?³⁴

I am writing to a very prominent attorney in Washington, who is a friend of mine and whom I would like to have handle the case for me, if he will undertake it. I think this will require the services of an international lawyer who has Washington connections.

I did not quite understand the sentence in Mr. Downes’ letter which reads: “I think it highly dangerous to take a lawyer because, before the war, he was the respectable correspondent of your New York attorneys.” Is this a warning specifically against the correspondent of Ernst, Cane & Berner, or against any representative of American law firms?

Have you any information on whether the Italian publishers of WE THE LIVING, Baldini and Castoldi, were involved in this matter in any way? Is it possible that they cooperated in the piracy or received any financial return from it? Were they in a position to stop the production of the motion picture and yet allowed it to be produced?

I have just received from Miss Nancy Brettner copies of the contract with Baldini and Castoldi for the Italian rights to THE FOUNTAINHEAD. I will have to wait before I sign this contract, to learn what their part was, if any, in the piracy of WE THE LIVING. If they had anything to do with it, I certainly will not sell them another book of mine.³⁵

Do you know whether there are other such cases of American books being stolen during the war? The reference in Mr. Downes’ letter to the piracy of THE LITTLE FOXES would indicate that this sort of thing must have gone on in Europe on a grand scale. Can you find out for me what the other American authors are doing about it?

Please let me know what you think about this case, and I would appreciate any suggestions you and your mother can give me.

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To John Gall (November 15, 1946)

Rand met John Gall (1901–57) in 1941, when Gall was the attorney for the National Association of Manufacturers. In her biographical interviews, she described him as “a violent conservative” (“violent” being her word for “extremely passionate”). She hired him in 1946 to handle her piracy claim regarding the 1942 Italian films of We the Living, and later he handled her lengthy and successful effort to bring Marie Strachov, her old Russian family friend and teacher, to America from a war refugee internment camp in Austria.³⁶ This letter is indicative of the care Rand took with the details of non-intellectual issues affecting her career.

Dear John:

Thank you for your letter of October 31. Excuse me if I have taken so long to answer, but I am stopped by the necessity to make a choice of the Italian attorneys whose letters you sent me.

I have read these three letters very carefully and I don’t think I can really judge them clearly enough to make a decision. Do you want me to be the one to decide? Since I don’t know Italian legal procedure, I have no way of estimating these attorneys’ attitude or knowledge.

I think you can judge their competence from the letters much better than I can. Also, perhaps you may have reliable sources to check up on them in greater detail. I can tell you my impressions of the letters, but I would like you to take the responsibility of selecting the attorney you prefer yourself. I would only urge you not to make a decision until you are certain, and not to take anyone if you have any doubts or reservations against him. Please check as thoroughly as possible, or have someone, whom you can trust, check on them in Europe before you make a decision.

Now as to my impression of these three letters, I have noted a few doubts against all three.

1. Mr. Luciani. He seems to suggest that he wants to be your permanent representative in Italy, as part of his condition for taking our case. I wonder if this is proper on his part. Also, I wonder whether what he calls “a mandate” or “warrant for law suit” (a copy of which you enclosed) is the proper thing for us to sign? This warrant ends on sentence: “He hereby promises to hold their action as firm and binding.” This seems to be a complete power of attorney which would give Mr. Luciani the right to dispose of the case in any manner he wishes. If I understood this correctly, I would certainly object to that. I think our Italian attorney should represent us, but the final decision on any settlement should be ours.
2. Mr. Marghieri. His letter seems to show the greatest interest in the case. But, as you noted, I wonder how he found out that the case involves my book. Unless mine is the only book by an American author that has been pirated by an Italian movie company, this might mean that he has some connection with Scalera. Also, I do not quite like the fact that the Colonel Walton whom he gives as reference is not in Washington, but in Italy, which makes a personal check-up impossible.
3. Mr. Graziadei. The fact that he is the attorney for a long list of American picture companies is both in his favor and against him. What disturbs me is the fact that in his first letter to the Ann Watkins office, Mr. Downes warned us that the Scalera Company has connections with the Hollywood crowd in Italy. Also, Scalera are making all kinds of deals with American picture companies here. So there is a possibility that the interests of one of the companies which Mr. Graziadei represents might clash with ours. If so, he would be in a difficult position, and I would rather not have an attorney with divided allegiance. Also, there is one point in Mr. Graziadei’s letter to which I object very much. He writes that: “No legal action is possible against the Italian film company if same has been authorized by Italian ministry.” Is he legally correct about that? Are we supposed to recognize as legal and binding the decrees of the Fascist government? If this point is open to doubt and interpretation, or is to be settled by the final peace treaty with Italy, yet Mr. Graziadei has already taken the above attitude in favor of Scalera — then he is certainly not the man for us, and I would reject him at once for this reason.

The above are my opinions of the three letters. I will be very interested to know whether my amateur legal judgement is correct. Let me know your own opinion of this — and please let me know the reasons of your decision before you commit yourself to the attorney you choose.

I am sending a letter to the Superfilm Distributing Corporation, in the form you suggested, and I shall let you know as soon as I receive an answer.

The Ann Watkins office has written to me that Baldini & Castoldi are very anxious to have me sign the contract for the Italian publication rights to THE FOUNTAINHEAD. May I sign it or are you still uncertain as to how it will affect our case under Italian law? If it is too early for you to tell, I will not sign it now — there is no reason for me to hurry on this. But if you think that this will not affect WE THE LIVING at all, then let me know.

With best regards.

In his November 27, 1946, response, Gall wrote: “Your very discerning comments will be helpful in ultimately settling upon a suitable Italian attorney.” Gall ultimately recommended Marghieri, and, in 1961, Rand received a settlement of approximately $23,000 from the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

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To Phil Berg (March 13, 1948)

Phil Berg (1902–83) and Bert Allenberg were Rand’s agents “for the motion picture industry,” beginning in 1944 and ending in 1948. In a 1983 obituary for Berg, the New York Times described him as “a pioneer talent agent” who “was considered the originator of the package deal — a concept which changed the basic structure of Hollywood. . . . Berg-Allenberg represented the cream of Hollywood’s movie stars, directors and writers.” In her biographical interviews, Rand commented: “They were my agents only through Alan Collins, because they handled all his clients, and I disliked them enormously. They were top agents, but I don’t know any agents in Hollywood that would be honorable.”

Dear Phil:

Thank you for your letter of March 10 and for the copy of the wire which you sent to Alan Collins.

Mr. Blanke’s attitude, as suggested in your wire, is a very grave matter, of which I was not informed. Since my “argumentative proclivities” is a statement that has extremely serious implications, would you please let me know the full particulars about it? Please tell me exactly what Mr. Blanke said, on what date, and to whom? Was it to you personally?

What “interminable discussions with Ayn Rand” do you refer to in your wire? The last time I saw you was on June 9, 1947, at your offices. The last time I saw Bert Allenberg was on September 23, 1947, in the Hal Wallis office.

In regard to the present matter of THE FOUNTAINHEAD, I have had one discussion with Jimmy Townsend of your staff, in Mr. Coryell’s office, on February 19, which lasted about half-an-hour. Thereafter, I had three telephone conversations with Mr. Townsend. The gist of these discussions was as follows:

In the office, on February 19, I told Mr. Townsend the understanding which I had with Mr. Blanke, as Mr. Blanke had said it to me repeatedly, on numerous occasions since 1944: that he (Blanke) considered that my script of THE FOUNTAINHEAD needed only about one week’s editorial work which he wanted me to do when he had a director and cast assigned to the picture, that he would have no other writer on it, and that the picture would be made in accordance with the spirit and intention of my novel. Mr. Blanke and I had never had a disagreement. I asked Mr. Townsend to inquire about Mr. Blanke’s present plans and particularly whether Mr. Vidor had some writer of his own which he might want to bring into the picture. On this last, Mr. Townsend assured me emphatically that Mr. Vidor had not.

On the next day, I called Mr. Townsend to ask him a question which, in our rushed conversation of the previous day, I had neglected to ask, and which was: why had your office not informed me about the fact that THE FOUNTAINHEAD was going into production, when you had knowledge of it well in advance, yet I was left to learn it from the newspapers? Mr. Townsend said that I was right in feeling that your office should have informed me, but that this was no more than regrettable oversight.

Shortly afterwards (I believe it was the next day, but I did not mark the date on my calendar), Mr. Townsend called me to report on the situation. He told me that he had spoken to Mr. Blanke and that Mr. Blanke had confirmed to him our understanding just exactly as I described it, including the fact that the script needed only one week’s work which I was to do. Mr. Townsend said that the production of the picture was not definitely set, owing to budget difficulties, that Mr. Blanke and Mr. Vidor were now working on the budget and that they could undertake nothing definite until the return of Mr. Jack Warner, which was expected within a week. Then, if they found that they could make the picture now, I would be called. Mr. Townsend also stressed the fact that Mr. Vidor had told him personally that he wanted to discuss the picture with me.

On March 3 or 4, having heard nothing from Mr. Townsend, I telephoned him to ask whether Mr. Warner had returned and what had been decided. Mr. Townsend said that Mr. Warner was back, but no decision had been made, and that the “production office” was still working on the budget. Then Mr. Townsend added that Mr. Vidor had a junior writer working with him on the script, but — these are Mr. Townsend’s words as exactly as I remember them — “I have checked and they assured me that no writing was being done on the script.” When I asked what the writer was doing in such case, Mr. Townsend said: “I don’t know. It’s just somebody for Vidor to talk to, I guess,” Since there were too many contradictions here, I said that it was imperative that I see Blanke or Vidor or both. I stressed that it did not have to be a business appointment about a job for me, but a social appointment so that I would be acquainted with the situation. I said that particularly in the case of Mr. Vidor, your office should have arranged such a meeting long ago, without any request from me — which is the usual practice in Hollywood. Mr. Townsend said that he couldn’t arrange it, because “they weren’t ready to say anything.”

This is the last I heard from your office, until the receipt of your letter of March 10.

Which information in the above discussions do you refer to when you say in your wire to Alan Collins that “Blanke who knows Ayn’s argumentative proclivities refused [to] meet with her. She was tactfully informed.”?

Don’t you think that the matter is much too serious for “tact” and that I am entitled to a full and exact report on the situation?

I will appreciate your personal attention and reply,

Rand’s papers contain no response to this letter. The last letter from Phil Berg, dated September 24, 1962, is a friendly, newsy update of his activities (including his being a subscriber to Rand’s Objectivist Newsletter).

---

To Alan Collins (September 18, 1948)

Alan Collins (1904–68) was Rand’s literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. from 1943 until his death in 1968. That agency still handles her books. The following seventeen-page letter (marked “Confidential” in her handwriting on the first page) was not included in Letters of Ayn Rand because, although it was sent in the mail, it is more of a report than a piece of correspondence. It is, by that token, a unique written account by Rand of detailed events in her life and an indication of the kind of detailed narrative that must have comprised the lengthy letters that she sent to her family in the Soviet Union, letters that were destroyed during the siege of Leningrad and of which she had made no copies.

Dear Alan:

As I promised you in our telephone conversation yesterday, here is a complete account of my dealings with Berg-Allenberg during the writing and production of THE FOUNTAINHEAD at Warner Bros.:

As I wrote to you at the time, I do not believe that it was the efforts of Berg-Allenberg that got me the job at Warners to write the screenplay. I was called by the studio shortly after you had entered the situation and after Mr. Swanson was ready to take me over as a client.³⁷ Also, I had discussed the situation with Mr. Herbert Freston, who is my attorney here and who is also attorney for and Vice-President of Warner Bros. He promised me at that time to look into the situation. It was shortly after this that I was called to go to work. I suppose that I shall never know the exact truth of what happened, but it is my conclusion that I owed this call to Mr. Freston and yourself — not to Berg-Allenberg.

Things went extremely well at the studio from the day I started to work there. I had no trouble or disagreement of any kind with Mr. Blanke, the producer, and King Vidor, the director. During our first interview, on March 23rd, Blanke and Vidor told me that it was their intention to make a faithful adaptation of THE FOUNTAINHEAD, to preserve its theme intact and to produce, in screen terms, an equivalent of the book in literary terms. Blanke said: “I want the people leaving the theater to have the impression that they had seen the whole book, and to get from the picture the same feeling they get from the book.” I said that if that was their intention, we would be in complete agreement from then on — and we were.

When the first fifty pages of my script were mimeographed, the front office was extremely enthusiastic about it. Jack Warner stopped me on the lot several times to tell me so in person. Jimmy Townsend, of the Berg-Allenberg office, told me that Warners had informed him how pleased they were with my work, and he added that it was quite unusual for a studio to express enthusiasm in the middle of an assignment. Then I told him that if things went on as well as this, I would like him to take up with Warners the possibility of their buying my contract from Hal Wallis. I had two reasons for this idea: (1) I was much happier working with Blanke than I had been with Wallis and felt that his taste in pictures was closer to mine. (2) Since Wallis cannot sell my contract without my consent, I thought that if such a deal could be arranged, I would make it a condition that I would take off all the time I needed to finish my novel and would then give to Warners the time I still owe to Wallis on my contract. Jimmy Townsend said that he had had precisely the same idea, and that it would probably be difficult, because Wallis would not agree to sell my contract, but that he, Townsend, would take the matter up with Warners when I finished the script of THE FOUNTAINHEAD.

Sometime during the writing of the script, King Vidor told me that it would be wonderful if I could stand by on the set during the entire shooting of the picture. I had never mentioned the subject, he brought it up himself. He said that we could work out a lot of very interesting things together and that the experience would be valuable for me, that I would learn a lot about picture making. I told him that I would be more than delighted to do it, with or without payment. This was not a business proposition or a commitment on Vidor’s part, it was just a discussion. I did not press him about it, but I reported the conversation to Jimmy Townsend and told him that I was more than anxious to be present during the shooting, so that if any changes were made at the last minute on the set, I would be there to make them. Townsend said it would be a cinch to arrange, particularly if Vidor wanted me on the set, and that he, Townsend, would arrange it as soon as the script was finished.

Things went on very smoothly, and I kept hearing nothing but compliments all over the lot. Everybody was pleased with the script and with the rapidity or our progress.

When we were approaching the completion of the script, I told Jimmy Townsend that the time had come to make an arrangement with the studio for me to remain on the set during the shooting of the picture. I made it clear to Berg-Allenberg that my sole and most crucial interest in the whole business was to protect the integrity of my script, to protect it from hasty or accidental changes, that I needed all the help which they, as my agents, could give me in this respect, and that it was the only thing I wanted. I explained how disastrous careless changes in script could be in a picture which has such a dangerous, controversial theme. Berg’s attitude, in effect, was: “Aw, they always make script changes in Hollywood, and your picture is no different from others.” I am not sure whether he has ever read my book or not.

Jimmy Townsend reported to me, after a while, that he had tried and been unable to arrange for my remaining on the set. He said the studio had a rule against permitting writers on the set. He was somewhat sad and evasive about it. This was one major request of mine, which Berg-Allenberg had promised me to accomplish — and had failed.

After that, I asked Vidor in person how he felt about this matter. He became strangely evasive. Up to that time, I had heard nothing but compliments from him, and he had acted as my enthusiastic friend. Now I began to suspect that he had wanted to get a script from me (he had said that I was the only one who could write that script) — and then get rid of me, in order to have a free hand and to defeat any possible influence I may have on Blanke. Blanke does respect my opinion, and his artistic taste is very similar to mine.

I made no further issue about remaining on the set and did not insist on it. It was not essential to me to be present during the shooting — my sole concern was to be on hand to protect the script from random changes.

By June 12th the script, which was called “Revised Temporary”, was finished, and on Monday, June 14th, we started on the Final script. The work consisted of Blanke, Vidor and me reading the script aloud and discussing every possible cut or change for the final editing. We were working very fast and thought that one week was all we would need to finish. But on Wednesday Mr. Blanke became sick and stayed home that day as well as Thursday and Friday. So we were held up on the editing.

On that Friday, June 18th, at about 12:30, Vidor telephoned me in my office and told me the following: Blanke had just called him from his home and told him that the studio had informed him, Blanke, that I was to be closed, that is, taken off salary, the next day, Saturday, the 19th, that this had come from the front office without any explanations and that Blanke was on his way to the studio, even though he was sick, and that he would be there at 2 o’clock.

I must say at this point that I still don’t know what was the reason for this incident. Blanke assures me that it was merely the usual policy of the studio, that they are always very anxious to take people off salary as soon as an assignment is finished and that they had probably figured that this week was all we needed for the final script. This may be true, but on the other hand, I have a strong suspicion that Vidor’s influence was behind this. I suspect that he was anxious to do the final editing himself.

The moment Vidor called me about this, that is, at 12:30, I telephoned Phil Berg. I told him what had happened and asked him to come to the studio at 2 o’clock, because something had to be done and I needed his help. We were only about halfway through the script — we had edited about 80 pages out of 150 pages, so we could not possibly finish it that afternoon and the next day. Berg got furious at me for asking him to come to the studio. He said he was booked solid for the whole afternoon, had a string of appointments with very important clients, and told me that I was not the only client he had. He said that his presence at the studio was not necessary, since I had not received an official notice that I would be closed off the next day. I repeated that Blanke had received the official notice and that Vidor had just told me so. Berg answered: “Vidor is not an official of the company. Never mind what he says.” (?!) I asked him what I was to do at the conference with Blanke at 2 o’clock. Berg said that I should do nothing, just ignore the whole thing, that he would come to the studio on Monday and straighten everything out, but he could not come that afternoon. You know, of course, that if I had been closed out officially on Saturday, it would have been impossible to get me back into the studio, because they would have considered the script finished and would have left Vidor or whoever to edit it without me.

At 2 o’clock Blanke arrived at the studio and confirmed what Vidor had told me, that is, that the front office wanted to close me next day, because the budget of the picture was very tight and they had expected the script to be finished that week. Blanke and Vidor both seemed to be panicky about this and did not know what to do. Blanke said that we should have my agent here to help him fight for me at the front office. I suggested that he call Mr. Berg himself. Blanke asked Vidor’s secretary (we were in Vidor’s office) to get Berg on the wire. She telephoned and gave us the following report, as nearly verbatim as I can remember it: “Mr. Berg is away on his yacht for the weekend. Mr. Allenberg and Mr. Townsend are away for the weekend. There is nobody at the office except Mr. Coryell.” (Coryell is the business manager at Berg-Allenberg and cannot do any studio negotiations.) We were completely stuck and did not know what to do next. Then I made the following proposal: Since we had about another week of work to finish the script, I said I would finish it without payment — in exchange for an agreement that all future changes in the script during the shooting would be done by me; and, for that purpose, I would remain in the studio, in my office, doing my own work, but would be available any time they needed me and would do the changes for them without salary. Blanke agreed to it. He and Vidor went to see Mr. Trilling, who is Jack Warner’s assistant, to obtain his approval. They came back and told me that Trilling did not know whether they could accept such an unconventional arrangement, but he had agreed to let me remain on salary for another week to finish the script.

On Monday morning Berg telephoned me to ask what had happened. I had barely begun to say: “We called you and were told that you were away on your yacht —” when he literally blew up and started screaming that he’ll be damned if he didn’t have the right to go away on a weekend and wasn’t he entitled to a rest? Mind you, I had not even reproached him yet. I told him that I was not arguing about his right to his weekend, but why had he found it necessary to tell me that he was booked solid with appointments? He kept screaming in self-defense, telling me how difficult I was, and ended up by saying that he would come to the studio.

I was in Vidor’s office when Berg arrived. We told him what had happened. Berg’s whole attitude was one of antagonism toward me. I asked him to make the final arrangements with the front office for me to remain in the studio during the shooting of the picture — though not necessarily on the set. I pointed out to him that if the picture was preserved intact as we had it now, I would give it all my support. If the picture was mangled, I would have to come out against it and tell the public that it was not a movie of THE FOUNTAINHEAD. I said that this was the possibility I wanted to avoid and it would be best for the studio’s interest and mine to protect us against it. At which point, in Vidor’s presence, Berg said: “Oh, if you came out against the picture, it might even be good for it.” (Alan, I will let you judge whether you think as I do, that this was perhaps the most dreadful thing an agent could do to his client.) Then Berg said he had to speak to Vidor, and he would speak to me later, and I went back to my office.

Sometime later Berg came to my office and again started the discussion in a tone of hysterical anger. I cannot understand why every business conversation I have had with Berg has always started with an angry attack on his part. He began by saying that people on the lot were complaining about how difficult I was. I had dealt with no one except Blanke and Vidor, and there had been no quarrels among us. I asked Berg to tell me in what way I had been difficult, to name the specific instances he meant and to name the persons who had complained. He refused to answer. Then, he launched into a long speech exactly as follows: My commission amounted to only a hundred dollars a week. He had to give half of it to you. The income tax of Berg-Allenberg took some huge percentage of their income (he told me the exact figure, but I don’t remember it), he went into minute financial details of their costs, etc., — and ended by saying that they got only something like 33 cents a week out of my commission — and they had clients who were directors making $12,000 a week! I think he caught himself in time, because suddenly and very hastily he added: “But of course, we will work for you just as hard as for anyone else, just the same.” I told him that I quite understood his point, that I did not want anyone to work for me as a favor, that I had never been a charity case in my struggling days and did not intend to be one now; and therefore the best thing to do was for Berg-Allenberg to let me go, as I had asked them before to let me go. At this point, Berg came back to his senses, I think, and became much more calm and almost friendly. He assured me that I had misunderstood him and that they would not let me go. Then he promised to make the arrangement with the studio for me to remain in my office — as I had proposed it to Blanke on Friday.

Later in the afternoon, I was in Vidor’s office, working on the script with Vidor and Blanke, when the door opened and Berg flew in. He seemed to be very cheerful, he said that he had made the arrangements with Mr. Trilling, that Mr. Trilling had okayed it and that after this week I would remain in my office without salary to stand by for possible script changes during the shooting. I said that was fine and would he please draw up the necessary documents in writing. He said something like “sure” and flew out of the office again.

I heard nothing more from him during that week. We finished the script on Friday, June 25th, except for a few minor things which I had to do at home on Saturday. I went home Friday night on the understanding that I would be back at the studio on Monday, but without salary. Blanke told me to write him a letter stating our agreement, and that it would probably be all that was necessary to cover it.

On Saturday I wrote the letter, a copy of which I am enclosing. On that same Saturday, Finley McDermid, the head of the scenario department, called me at home to tell me that the studio had changed their mind about our agreement, that they did not want me to work free nor to remain on the lot; that they would call me back for any script changes, if such came up, and that they would then pay me for the work by the day. I telephoned Phil Berg. He said that he was terribly sorry, but Jack Warner, who was just then leaving for Europe, had cancelled our agreement by reason of it being unprecedented. I said I understood that it was an unwritten law of the studios that one could not cancel a verbal agreement during the period when it was being committed to paper. (Do you remember how you had assured me of this at the time Warners bought the rights to my book?) I asked him [why] hadn’t he arranged to have the agreement in writing. Berg kept saying, “What can I do? There is nothing I can do. They just changed their minds.” This was the second incident where Berg-Allenberg promised to achieve a request of mine — and failed.

I saw Blanke the next week. He gave me his word of honor that there would be no changes made in the script during the shooting, except by me; that if any changes became necessary, he would call me to make them and I would be paid for my work. I said that I would not agree to work by the day and to be on call in this manner, unless it was on the condition that all changes in the script would be made by me. If Blanke were willing to guarantee this condition, I would work in any way he pleased, with or without payment, at the studio or at home, any arrangement he chose would be agreeable to me, so long as this one condition about my making all the changes was observed — the rest did not matter to me. I said that I would not sign any agreement about my future work, if this condition was not included. He said: “Let it go without any signatures and leave it to me. You will see that the script won’t be touched. I give you my word of honor.”

I told my whole story to Mr. Freston. He spoke to Trilling and told me that Trilling assured him he, Trilling, had never made the agreement with Berg, which Berg announced to us as made. However, Trilling assured Freston that I would be called back should any script changes become necessary.

I must mention that King Vidor too, gave me his word of honor that he would make no changes in the script without me. But, by then, it was my impression that Blanke wanted me to remain on the lot, and Vidor did not.

The picture went into production, and everything went smoothly. Blanke telephoned me quite often and very faithfully to consult me about small changes in the script. I did the changes for him right over the telephone. He told me that I could visit the set any time, but I did not want to do it too often, if Vidor was afraid of my presence, as I think he was. I came a few times to see the shooting and did some minor rewrites right on the set. None of this work involved a whole day, and, therefore, I was not paid for it and did not ask for any payment. I am told that the picture was shot verbatim, as I wrote it, with no adlibbing or improvising by anyone on the set. As far as I know, Blanke, Vidor and the studio did keep their word to me. Everything was fine and I felt very happy about it — until Wednesday, September 15.

As you probably know from the book, the most important and crucial part of the story is the speech which Roark makes at his trial. This was the most difficult thing to write in a condensed  form, and the most dangerous, politically and philosophically, if written carelessly. We had many conferences about it. There were all kinds of objections and I rewrote the speech many times until all the objections were met.

Here is a list of the conferences we had about this speech — not counting the numerous conferences among Blanke, Vidor and me while I was writing the script:

June 14 (?)     Mr. Shurlock of the Johnston office,³⁸ Blanke, Vidor and I.

July 2             Judge Jackson, Mr. Shurlock and another gentleman from the Johnston office, Blanke, Vidor and I.

Aug. 31          Mr. Freston, Mr. Williams (his assistant), Gary Cooper, Mr. Prinzmetal (attorney of Gary Cooper), Blanke and I.

Sept. 1           Mr. Freston, Mr. Williams, Blanke and I.

Sept. 2           Gary Cooper, Blanke and I.

Sept. 2           Mr. Trilling, Blanke and I.

Sept. 8           Blanke, Vidor and I.

Sept. 8           Mr. Trilling, Blanke and I.

Except for the first one, all these conferences took place after I had finished the script. Blanke called me back to the studio for these conferences. I had to work for several days on rewriting, at different times, and the studio paid me for these days. I don’t have to tell you how excruciatingly difficult this work was. But I did not object to making changes — so long as I could preserve the theme of the story and the philosophical ideas of the speech. Altogether, from my first temporary script on, I rewrote that speech six times.

The last objection raised to the speech was from Vidor — on September 8. He found that the version which we made after the conferences with the attorneys was less dramatic than our previous versions — and he was right. So I rewrote the speech once more. And this final version was really the best one. Everybody okayed it and everybody was very pleased with it, including Vidor. He did not make a single suggestion or criticism, nor ask for any change in this last version. He said it was fine and just right. He told me this, and later said the same thing to Blanke.

You realize, of course, that this speech had to be written as carefully as a legal document. I had to weigh every word, every thought — in order not to leave any loopholes which would permit anyone to accuse us of some improper ideology. I had to make every idea crystal clear, cover every possible implication, guard against any chance of misunderstanding, avoid any possibility of confusion. I did it — and preserved the dramatic and literary qualities of the speech at the same time. You understand the problems of writing. Try to imagine what sort of effort this took.

Blanke and Vidor asked me to coach Gary Cooper in the reading of the speech for a voice recording. I did. The recording came out excellently. I asked both Blanke and Vidor whether they thought the speech was too long (it ran about six minutes) and told them that there were certain cuts which could be made. They both said, “No,” they did not want it cut and did not find it too long. Blanke said, “Every word of it holds. I want it just as it is.”

It was agreed long ago that the one scene which I would see shot would be the courtroom scene. This was the last scene of the picture. I came to the studio for the first two days, when all the preliminary shots were taken which precede Roark’s speech. Everything went along beautifully, and I can’t quite tell you what a wonderful mood prevailed on that whole set. Everybody was enthusiastic about the picture. It was just coming to an end triumphantly. I was extremely happy and thought that now, at last, I can relax and feel at peace, the picture was safe.

On the third day, which was Wednesday, September 15th, I came on the set a little after 10 o’clock (the set is called for 9, but the first hour is taken up with lighting and setting up the camera, and Blanke had told me to be there by 10.) Just as I came on the stage, the bell rang for the next take, and what I saw being done was this: Vidor was taking a shot of Cooper starting his speech from the middle, cutting out the entire first third of it.

The cut made the whole speech senseless and left glaring holes in the political theory of the speech, making it open to every kind of attack, objection or smear. The speech could be construed as anarchism or fascism or simply plain drivel; with the first third taken out, one could not tell what the character was talking about. Imagine a carefully devised, complex legal contract with the first two pages torn out of it — and visualize what sense or meaning would be left in the remnant.

I waited until they finished the shot and then asked Vidor what he was doing. (Incidentally, and on my word of honor, I did not raise my voice. I spoke very quietly because I did not want the people on the set to know that there was any trouble.) Vidor said that this was just a protection shot, that he had already shot the first part of the speech as written and that he was taking this in case the speech needed to be cut later. I asked him why he had not told me about this and he answered: “Because you were not here.”

I went to the telephone and called Blanke. He came on the set and told me that Vidor had called him at the last minute, at 9 o’clock that morning, and asked permission to take this “protection shot” which he, Vidor, had apparently devised then and there, on the spur of the moment; Vidor told him that the request came from both himself and Gary Cooper. Blanke told me that he had given Vidor permission to do it, even though he, Blanke, did not intend to use this cut; he had given in only to keep Vidor and Cooper contented and get a good performance out of them for the rest of the day. I told Blanke that this was a cut which we could not make, that if cuts were necessary, I could tell them where to make them, but this one simply blasted all sense out of the speech. Blanke agreed with me, we called Vidor aside. Vidor got very nasty; he had no reasons or explanations to offer except that he had felt (!) he wanted to make this “protection shot.” There was no time to argue on the set, so we left.

I went with Blanke to his office. He kept assuring me that this cut would never be used. I was literally shellshocked. I could not grasp (and still can’t) how they were able to make such a decision (even as an alternate possibility) so lightly and carelessly, after all those conferences, legal discussions and the brainwracking, careful thought we had all given to that speech. I could not understand how it was possible that they had consulted me about every little thing, every small doubt, during the shooting of the picture — and then had done this in the most crucial, most dangerous point, done it on the spur if the moment, knowing that this speech was more important to me (and to the film’s future prestige or disgrace) than all the rest of the picture. Both Blanke and Vidor had thus broken their word of honor to me.

I told Blanke that if this cut were considered, if it remained in existence, I would have to take my name off the screenplay and break off all connection with the picture. I could not sign my name to the speech in that form. I could not let my political reputation be smeared by the kind of attack which that speech would provoke and deserve. Blanke kept assuring me that the cut version would not be used and that he had permitted it to be shot only in order to appease Vidor. I felt certain that this was a deliberate double-cross on Vidor’s part — he had simply high-pressured Blanke to do things his way when there was no time to argue. I found out later from Gary Cooper himself that he, Cooper, had not raised any objection to the length of the speech and had not asked for any cuts that morning. (Incidentally, as just a minor touch of insanity, when Vidor read my last version of the speech, he said, “If there are any more changes, whatever you cut, don’t cut that first part” — because the first part of the speech was the one he seemed to like best.)

I asked Blanke for some form of written guarantee that this cut would not be used. I pointed out that their action had broken our agreement, and they had no legal right to all the work I had done after the completion of the script, because all that work was done on the express condition that I would make all the changes in the script, if and when they wanted changes made. They have no signature from me giving them the right to use that later, extra work. Blanke was actually very nice to me and very upset. He realized that he had been high-pressured and that he should not have given in. But he said that he could not give me a written guarantee about that shot, because it would upset all studio precedents.

He took me in to see Mr. Trilling. We had a long conversation. Trilling was very friendly and kept telling me, in effect, the same thing — they cannot give me anything in writing, but he gives me his word of honor that I would be consulted about the final form of the speech and about cuts in it, if cuts were made. I kept insisting I wanted a guarantee in writing and only in relation to this particular shot. They did not know what to do. They did not want me to leave, but they would not give me the thing in writing. I wanted to go home then, but Blanke asked me to wait and he went in to see Jack Warner. He came back and said that Warner sends me his love and tells me not to worry, that he gives me his word of honor that I will be in on the final film editing of the speech. Then I asked Blanke to let me see the rushes of the whole speech tomorrow, and said that I would hold my decision until then. We parted on this, with everybody in the studio expressing their regrets to me about the whole incident.

The next morning Phil Berg called me and started by bawling me out. He told me that Blanke, Trilling and Warner were furious at me and went on and in this manner, telling me the exact opposite of what I had seen the day before in the attitude of those to whom I had spoken. Berg accused me of coming on the set, screaming and ordering the shooting stopped. (?) He said that he had spent two hours at the studio yesterday “fighting for me” and that it was all settled: everybody had promised that I would be called in on the final editing and we didn’t have to discuss it any further. I asked him how it could be “all settled” without my consent, who had called him to the studio when I hadn’t, and if he was at the studio, why hadn’t he come to hear my side of it before he discussed anything? He said he had been told that I had already left — while I had been at the studio, in my office, until 6 o’clock. I told him that the matter was not settled, as far as I was concerned.

Blanke called me a little later to tell me about some retakes he had ordered Vidor to make (not in connection with the speech), and I asked him for an appointment to see him together with Phil Berg. I thought that I had better bring Berg’s part in this out into the open. Blanke gave me the appointment very nicely, almost eagerly, for 2 o’clock that afternoon. I called Berg and told him this. He refused to come. He said the he had other appointments and told me again that I was not his only client. He said that he would send Jimmy Townsend, if I wanted him. Then added that “Townsend is a very high-priced executive and I don´t see why we should waste his time on this.” I did not argue or insist. I said that I did not want Townsend to come and that I would go to the studio alone.

You realize, of course, that I had needed an agent very badly the day before, to fight for me, because my whole screen career hung in the balance. If I had had an agent whom I could trust, the first thing I would have done would have been to call him. But I knew that I could not count on Berg’s help, so I preferred to avoid another nasty fight with him and leave him out of the case entirely. Yet now, he had entered the case and, apparently, not for me, but against me. I had not once seen him do any negotiations on my behalf. Now I had offered him a chance to do it, to stand by me openly and in my presence. This would have been the best way to prove to me that my suspicions were unjustified. (I did not tell him this, but that was my purpose in asking him to come.) He refused to do it.

I went to the studio alone. I spent most of the afternoon talking to Blanke. I promised him finally that I would not break with the studio now, but would first discuss the matter with Mr. Herbert Freston who was then out of town. That afternoon, Jack Warner saw the rushes and called Blanke while I was in the office to tell him that he liked my version of the speech, both in content and photography, and that mine was the version he wanted to be used. I felt a great deal better. Then Blanke took me to see the rushes. My full version of the speech was so superior in every way, not only in content, but in the quality of the shot and in Gary Cooper’s acting, that there could be no question as to which of the two versions was better. Blanke promised me that I would see the whole rough cut of the picture by the end of this coming week. I told him that I will wait until then, that I would make no trouble and no demands if the picture remains true to my script and most particularly if they preserve Roark’s speech. This is how its stands at present. I have not heard from or called Berg since.

It is my impression that the studio will keep their word, because they actually do agree with me and also because they do think that my name on the picture and my endorsement of it are valuable and important to them. The studio publicity has been featuring me in all their publicity, and one of the men there told me the following: “We have nothing to sell in this picture except Gary Cooper and your book — and for our purposes, the name of your book is even more important at the box office than Gary Cooper’s, because your book is so famous.” If this is the studio’s attitude, I am certainly more than delighted to cooperate, and it is certainly to our mutual advantage, both for me and the studio. But you can imagine what kind of pressure will be brought upon the studio heads when a few people see the picture and begin to express opinions. All the opinions, of course, will be contradictory, because the story is so controversial. I think that Blanke and Jack Warner will carry it through in the proper way, that is, will leave the script untouched — but this is the time when I need the help of an agent to argue for my view point, if necessary, and to stress to the studio the value of my name and support, should the studio heads be tempted to weaken and give in to some pressure such as Vidor’s. (Vidor had seemed to be in complete agreement with us — but now, after this double cross, I do not know what his real opinion is and what to expect of him). I told Berg, in our last telephone conversation, that he should stress my value to the studio and I quoted the remark of the publicity man. Berg answered: “Aw, Ayn, you’re crazy. Who told you this? Probably some $40.00 a week publicity guy.” Dear Alan, please tell me whether this is an agent who is working for me, who is making proper use of my professional value and protecting my interests.

This is another matter where I needed Berg-Allenberg’s help — and they failed me. As to my request to Jimmy Townsend that he discuss with Warners the matter of their buying my contract from Hal Wallis, I have never heard a word about it. I don’t know whether Berg-Allenberg have bothered to do anything about it. I have not reminded them of it. I think they have simply forgotten. It is my impression that they don’t give a damn about my career.

Well, this is the whole story. I have spoken to Mr. Swanson on the telephone and he told me that he would be glad to take over any moment I say, and that he would sign with me any kind of contract that you decide on. He was very nice and quite frankly enthusiastic about getting me as client. That, of course, is what I want — I have no desire at all to be a poor relative, or the client of an agent who handles “$12,000 a week directors.”

Swanson told me that according to a recent ruling, a client does not have to prove that an agent has failed to give satisfactory service in order to terminate his contract. It seems that I have the right simply to notify Berg-Allenberg that I wish to terminate it and then it will be up to them to appeal to a labor board for a decision, if they wish. It would then be up to them to prove that they had given me valuable services and advanced my career. If they can prove it, I would have to pay them their commissions for the remainder of the contract. If they cannot prove it, I do not have to pay. In either case, I have the right to dismiss them and be represented by someone else.

I am enclosing a copy of my contract with them. After you have studied all this, will you let me know what action you decide is best — whether you will notify Berg-Allenberg that I am through with them entirely and let them appeal to a labor board if they wish, or whether I should merely dismiss them but continue to pay them commissions for another year, when our contract expires, and for the remainder of the Hal Wallis contract, if I continue with the Hal Wallis contract. Whichever you decide, it will be agreeable to me. I am quite willing to pay Swanson an additional 5 per cent, if necessary.

I need your help particularly in the following problem: It is my impression that Phil Berg has not merely remained neutral during the whole period of my work at Warner Bros., that is, did not merely neglect to do anything for me, but has been working actively against me. I have no complete factual proof of that, but it is an impression and a very uncomfortable one. Therefore, when I leave Berg-Allenberg, he may attempt some form of malicious action against me or against my interests in the picture, such as creating antagonism toward me in the minds of Jack Warner or other studio executives with whom he may have influence. So I would like to ask you to use your influence on Berg and Allenberg, in whatever way you find it possible, to prevent such actions. I know that such matters as personal malice are beyond anyone’s control, but I think that Berg-Allenberg would be afraid to antagonize you and would be more considerate or cautious in their attitude toward me, if they knew that you are watching the situation personally and intend to protect me.

I would like the notice to Berg-Allenberg to come from you for two reasons: First, to impress upon them the fact that I am primarily your client, not theirs. Second, because they might agree to relinquish the contract without any further nastiness. Also, I would like to have your moral support in this. I feel very indignant at their attitude, and I feel very hurt.

Please let me know what procedure you decide is best to set me free of them, before you notify them officially. If you ask them for their side of the story, as of course you should, please ask them to be as specific as I was.

Forgive me if this is so long, but I wanted to tell you everything, and I wanted to have a complete record of the whole matter for the future. It has taken me a week to write this letter. If it makes hard reading, you can imagine how hard it was for me to live through all this.

On October 1, 1948, Collins responded to Rand with a basically non-committal letter regarding her dispute with Berg-Allenberg. He confirmed that she had no legal right to a final say, adding that “it comes down to what commitment, moral or otherwise, may have been made to you in the course of the past few months. I have every confidence that your estimate of what has happened is factually correct. On the other hand, when Allenberg was recently in New York he insisted to me that they had done a very fine job for you at the studio. At this point, however, it doesn’t seem to me to matter at all who is right and who is wrong. You are dissatisfied and want to quit. Therefore, the sole question is how best to do it.” On October 20, Rand wrote to Collins, asking him to cancel her contract with Berg-Allenberg. (The courtroom scene was shot exactly as Rand wrote it, and it appeared that it would be released as she wrote it, but as it happened one line was cut from the end of Roark’s speech: “I came here to say that I am a man who does not exist for others.”³⁹)

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To Mario Profili (September 12, 1948)

Profili, vice consul of Italy, was a representative of the Federated Italo-Americans, an umbrella organization that united many clubs and societies supporting the Italian heritage in Southern California.

My dear Mr. Profili:

This is in response to your request for my permission to show the Scalera film based upon my book — WE THE LIVING in connection with the Columbus Day celebration.

I am very happy, of course, to cooperate in this celebration in every way possible; however, the picture contains certain dialogue which is not contained in my book and to which I cannot subscribe. In fact it is my position that these particular parts of the picture reflect unfavorably upon my book and injure my professional reputation.

However, for the sole purpose of assisting in the patriotic celebration on Columbus Day I shall make no objection to the showing of the Scalera picture provided it is clearly understood that I am not responsible for such dialogue as deviates from my book. Accordingly, I shall be glad to grant your request on the following conditions: that you engage a film cutter who will, under my direction, cut out of the picture the passages of dialogue which I find most objectionable; and further — in order to cover such lesser lines of dialogue as may be hard to eliminate — that before the picture is shown an announcement be made to the audience to the effect that the film was made in Italy during the war under conditions which did not permit me to consult with the producer or approve certain dialogue of which I am not the author; that by giving my permission for the showing I do not necessarily adopt or approve any lines which do not appear in the book entitled WE THE LIVING and that I reserve all legal rights which arise out of the use of the book by the producer of the picture.

I regret that I cannot release this picture without these stipulations and I trust that the required announcement can be made without great inconvenience.

Of course, you understand that I do not own the film itself and that it will be necessary for you to obtain authorization from the owner before it can be screened.

Although the event was planned as part of a Columbus Day celebration, Rand wrote to Profili almost five months later regarding changes in the statement to be read to the audience “at both performances.” If the screenings actually took place, Rand apparently did not attend, as there is no relevant entry in her daily calendars for 1948 or 1949.

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To Gerald Loeb (January 8, 1949)

Gerald Loeb (1899–1974) was a founding partner of E.F. Hutton and Co. and a friend of Frank Lloyd Wright. Rand and Loeb had a lengthy correspondence between 1943 and 1949, during which period her daily calendars list numerous meetings and dinners with Loeb.

Dear Gerald:

This is just a brief note to let you know the big news: We had a preview of THE FOUNTAINHEAD day before yesterday, January 6 — and it was a triumph. Everybody present told me that it was the most sensational preview they had ever attended. The picture went over so well that Jack Warner did not make a single cut or change — and the final negative is being made right now. I don’t want to boast about all the details — I hope you will hear it from Warners themselves. As far as my opinion is concerned, the picture is magnificent.

With the best regards from both of us to both of you,

That was Rand at her most enthusiastic about the film. By the next year, her high opinion had waned: in a letter to a friend, she allowed that neither the casting or direction was “ideal,” but having her script shot verbatim was “a miracle.” Ten years later, in her biographical interviews, she said that although she liked the script, she “disliked the picture enormously, disliked everything about it,” criticizing the acting, the pacing and particularly the directing — she described director King Vidor as “a cheap, naturalistic mediocrity, and totally wrong for this job.”

“Reading [Ayn] Rand seriously,” writes Gregory Salmieri, “as opposed to merely reacting passively to her writings, is demanding intellectual work.” In this essay, which is chapter 1 of A Companion to Ayn Rand (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) (2015), co-authored with Allan Gotthelf, Salmieri notes the stark contrast between the extent of Rand’s cultural prominence and the dearth of serious scholarly attention to her philosophy, Objectivism. Acknowledging the obstacles to understanding a radical thinker who challenged conventional wisdom in every branch of philosophy, Salmieri describes the rewards that await readers willing to consider Rand’s systematic philosophy on its own terms. Besides summarizing Rand’s works, this wide-ranging essay also discusses the essentials of Objectivism, its Aristotelian influences, its relation to Rand’s novels and its influence to date in the field of philosophy.

“An Introduction to the Study of Ayn Rand” is available from the publisher by clicking here.