Ayn Rand and the World She Made
Page 62
“against the worst madman”: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
preferred to let Hitler march: Reported by LP in a 1982 philosophy course, according to a student’s detailed notes.
“the old reliance”: 1933 radio speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (cited in Redeeming the Time, p. 449).
“only the strong can be free”: Quoted in Ellsworth Bernard, Wendell Willkie: Fighter for Freedom (Marquette, Mich.: Northern Michigan University Press, 1966), p. 207.
“to strike a balance”: Foundation Day address by Wendell Willkie, May 4, 1938, at Indiana University; quoted in Wendell Wilkie, p. 145.
working out an agreement: Unpublished letter from Blanche Knopf to Ann Watkins, October 25, 1940 (A. Watkins Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 80).
National Willkie Clubs headquarters: Letter to Gerald Loeb, August 5, 1944 (LOAR, p. 154).
“pure selfishness”: TPOAR, p. 160.
spoke out against the New Deal: AR:SOL, DVD.
“I was a marvelous propagandist”: “Ayn Rand as a Public Speaker.”
she mesmerized her audiences: “Of all the guest speakers who came to talk there and share the podium with me,” Swanson wrote, “the most notable by far was AR, who had a fascinating mind and held audiences hypnotized” (Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson [New York: Random House, 1980], p. 462). In April 1943, AR sent Swanson a copy of TF, inscribed, “To Gloria Swanson, from your fellow fighter of Fourteenth Street” (Gloria Swanson Collection, Library Books, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin).
especially good when challenged: Letter to DeWitt Emery, August 14, 1941 (LOAR, p. 57).
“I chose to be an American”: TPOAR, p. 161.
a larger number of interesting men and women: Letter to Gerald Loeb, August 15, 1944 (LOAR, p. 154).
Channing Pollock: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
several of the key ideas: From Nock, AR learned to distinguish between political man and economic man, i.e., between those who live by imposing taxes on what other people produce and those who do the producing. This concept appears explicitly in AR’s “The Individualist Manifesto,” written in the spring of 1941; its psychological correlative permeates TF.
“America’s Joan of Arc”: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
“barbarism and poverty to affluence and culture”: Jennifer Burns, “Godless Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservative Movement,” Modern Intellectual History, 2004 (vol. 1, no. 3), p. 367.
“violent” indignation: TPOAR, p. 162.
perceived him as having knuckled under: Until January 1940, Willkie had been a lifelong Democrat, so the fact that he shared FDR’s opinions on some issues should not have come as a surprise to his supporters.
“Willkie was the guiltiest man”: TPOAR, p. 161.
men and women of strong convictions: Letter to Gerald Loeb, August 5, 1944 (LOAR, p. 155).
wrote broadsides and letters: One of these appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Wendell Willkie, pp. 384–85 and p. 577, note 18; see also “Ex-Willkie Aids Assail Him for G.O.P. ‘Betrayal,’” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1942, p. 22).
organization of conservative intellectuals: Letter to Channing Pollock, May 27, 1941 (LOAR, p. 47).
apartment on East Thirty-fifth Street: From October 1940 through September 1941, the O’Connors lived at 349 East Forty-ninth Street; from October 1941 until December 1943, they lived in apartment 1N of the Bromley apartment house at 139 East Thirty-fifth Street (Binswanger, dinner lecture, April 24, 2005).
down to less than nine hundred dollars: BBTBI; in TPOAR, p. 160, BB mistakenly quotes the figure as seven hundred dollars.
quirkily Christian fifty-four-year-old: IP was born on January 22, 1886, on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario.
the older woman didn’t remember the encounter: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 219.
hardships could be instructive: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 219; Isabel Paterson, “Turns with a Bookworm,” New York Herald Tribune, May 31, 1935, p. 15.
most outspoken critic: Stephen Cox, “Atlas and the Bible: Ayn Rand’s Debt to Isabel Paterson,” in Edward W. Younkins, ed., Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: A Philosophical and Literary Companion (Aldershot: Ash-gate, 2007), pp. 351–60.
had been asking for Rand’s phone number: BBTBI.
liked her “enormously”: BBTBI.
gathered to proofread: Author interview with Muriel Hall, IP’s friend and executor, July 7, 2004.
a conservative Round Table: A Life with the Printed Word, p. 55.
remarking later: BBTBI.
Paterson had a theory about capitalism: The Woman and the Dynamo, pp. 254–55.
a “marvelous mind”: BBTBI.
was a genius: TPOAR, p. 165, based on an interview with Muriel Hall.
“sat at the master’s feet”: Samuel Gardner Welles, Jr., was IP’s literary executor and Muriel Hall’s older brother; quoted by Muriel Hall; see also The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 220, quoting Welles.
“guru and teacher”: TPOAR, p. 166.
her opinion of a riddle: BBTBI; The Woman and the Dynamo, pp. 310–11 and p. 401, note 46. Cox speculates that AR had not read Boswell and misremembered the ethical dilemma IP presented. In Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the biographer asks the man of letters what he would do if he were shut up with a child in a castle. Dr. Johnson imagines that he wouldn’t much enjoy the company but would probably feed and bathe the child; this appears under the date Thursday, October 26, 1769, on p. 420 of the Oxford University Press edition. Perhaps IP misconstrued the passage from Boswell. Thanks to Stephen Cox, author correspondence, March 9, 2006.
preponderance of evidence is on her side: In The Woman and the Dynamo, Cox argues this persuasively, pp. 310–14.
“an ungulfable bridge”: Isabel Paterson, “Turns with a Bookworm,” New York Herald Tribune, August 25, 1946; undated note by IP, cited in The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 391, note 58.
“Will you write my autobiography?”: TPOAR, p. 165, based on an interview with Muriel Hall.
“She is afraid of traffic”: Isabel Paterson, “Turns with a Bookworm,” New York Herald Tribune, September 23, 1945.
“To All Innocent Fifth Columnists”: “Fifth columnist” was coined during the Spanish civil war to mean a turncoat or traitor within the ranks.
“Of such as you is the Kingdom of Hitler and Stalin”: Ayn Rand, “To All Innocent Fifth Columnists,” circa 1940 (JOAR, p. 345).
wanted to do for free-market capitalism: Letter to Channing Pollock, April 28, 1941 (LOAR, p. 45).
Think Twice: Three Plays, pp. 196–291. The play seems never to have been professionally produced.
written in three weeks: Author correspondence with Michael Berliner, December 20, 2005.
the month of January 1941: Unpublished letter from AR to H. N. Swanson, a film-industry agent, October 10, 1948 (H. N. Swanson Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 56).
“I had not heard or dreamed of the atom bomb”: Unpublished letter to H. H. Swanson (H. N. Swanson Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, box 56).
Two months later, in April: Unless otherwise stated, all quotations and other information about the unpublished essay “The Individualist Manifesto” come from Jeff Britting, “Anthem and ‘The Individualist Manifesto,’” in EOA, pp. 70–80. For date of composition, see p. 79, note 2; for essay length, see p. 72.
citizens owe the government nothing: “Government Financing in a Free Society,” TVOS, pp. 135–40.
“mud to be ground underfoot”: 1936 edition; original WTL manuscript, Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, box 18, quoted in EOWTL, p. 211.
“Man, each single, solitary, individual man”: “To All Innocent Fifth Columnists,” circa 1940 (JOAR, p. 350).
sent the author’s outline: BBTBI.
“bad” disappointment: Perhaps it is no coincidence that she named the malevolent milquetoa
st of a U.S. president in AS Mr. Thompson.
found this episode funny: TPOAR, p. 156.
book might sell: BBTBI.
ran out of money: BBTBI.
criticizing her to others: BBTBI.
making it impossible to sell: BBTBI.
resigned in protest: “You did not want to handle TF further because you told me that I made it impossible to sell it,” AR reportedly wrote; “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
or because Rand abruptly broke off with her: TPOAR, p. 156.
“Even instincts have reasons”: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
lost a champion: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.” Of course, Ann Watkins lived to regret her loss of confidence in TF, just as Macmillan and Knopf may have regretted not investing $1,200 and $1,000, respectively.
She was a slow reader: Author interview with Robert Hessen, October 17, 2007.
took her under their wing: TPOAR, pp. 168–69.
placid definitions: “The Only Path to Tomorrow,” pp. 88–90; the essay was condensed from “The Moral Basis of Individualism,” written in 1943 but not published (August 18, 1943 to March 22, 1946 [JOAR, pp. 243–310]), which in turn was based on “The Individualist Manifesto.” AR’s definitions of individualism and collectivism did not change from the 1930s on.
proved surprisingly controversial: Letters to Channing Pollock, March—August 1941 (LOAR, pp. 44–56).
struck her as anti-intellectual and smug: TPOAR, p. 163.
Nazis occupied Kiev: Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), p. 202.
“If I were a defender of Communism”: Letter to DeWitt Emery (executive of the Small Businessmen’s Association), September 10, 1941 (LOAR, p. 58).
Mostly, she yearned for the resources: TPOAR, p. 168.
gathering dust on her desktop: BBTBI.
Park Avenue and Thirty-first Street: In the early 1940s, Bobbs-Merrill’s New York offices were located at 468 Fourth Avenue; thanks to Becky Cape at the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana.
reminded her of Peter Keating: BBTBI.
“Pat had contacts there”: Author interview with Muriel Hall, July 7, 2004. Hall provided the same account to Stephen Cox, IP’s biographer, who wrote, “I don’t doubt Muriel’s account” (author correspondence with Cox, May 17, 2006).
“Far be it from me to dampen such enthusiasm”: TPOAR, p. 171.
second congratulatory phone call: BBTBI.
famously frugal boss: Words & Faces, p. 33.
“Marionettes at Midnight”: According to ARI, AR said that Kurt Noack’s “Marionetten um Mitternacht” was her favorite piece of music in the early 1940s (“Ayn Rand’s Musical Biography”).
whenever she was happy: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, March 23, 2004.
Oscar and Oswald: TPOAR, p. 185.
promised to deliver The Fountainhead: EOTF, p. 6.
now began the happiest year: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
excuse for backing out: BBTBI.
easily available in pill form: TPOAR, p. 173; interviews with the Blumenthals, the Brandens, Roger Callahan; unpublished correspondence with IP (Isabel Paterson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, box 23).
“clean and respectable”: Letter to Archibald Ogden, February 19, 1942 (LOAR, p. 62).
worked for thirty hours straight: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
type her new pages: Author interviews with June Kurisu (May 19, 2004) and Daryn Kent-Duncan (April 25, 2005).
“You are really writing about collectivism”: The Art of Fiction, p. 163.
Nick claimed that he had even written: Taped interview with Millicent Patton, conducted by BB on December 15, 1982.
on file at the U.S. Library of Congress: Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, boxes 18–20.
averaged a chapter a week: Hand-dated manuscript chapters, first draft (Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, boxes 18–19).
On July 4, 1942: Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, box 19, folder 10.
“The year at Monadnock Valley”: TF, p. 532.
see who could finish first: TPOAR, p. 171.
won by a week or two: Author correspondence with Stephen Cox, who writes: “[Pat] worked on [The God of the Machine] during 1942. … During January and early February 1943, her correspondence shows her fixing some details. Page proofs were sent by [the publisher] to Pat’s friend Col. Robert Henry on March 17, 1943.” AR finished correcting the page proofs of her book on or about March 30, 1943, as she noted in a letter on that date to D. L. Chambers (LOAR, p. 66).
“Whoever is fortunate enough”: Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (Palo Alto, Calif.: Palo Alto Book Service reissue, 1983), p. 306.
“breaks through the clay”: TF, pp. 726-27.
SEVEN: MONEY: 1943
“Many words have been granted Me”: Anthem, p. 95.
delivered to bookstores on May 7, 1943: “Books Published Today,” NYT, May 7, 1943, p. 17.
copies remained unsold: BBTBI. In 1960-61, AR told BB that there was no second printing of TF until late summer 1943, but in a letter written to Archibald Ogden on July 29, 1943, she seems to make reference to a recent third printing of the book (LOAR, p. 86). Sales figures come from secondary sources. The Bobbs-Merrill Archives at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, contain no contracts or sales reports, and ARI denied the author access to the Curtis Brown literary agency archives at Columbia University, where copies of AR’s contracts and royalty statements can presumably be found.
new and better novels about architecture: Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times,” NYT, May 12, 1943, p. 23.
prepublication buzz: BBTBI.
endorsed the novel: Kenneth Horan, “Three Unusual Novels with Widely Different Settings,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 30, 1943, p. E10.
Irita Van Doren assigned the book: Albert Guerard, “Novel on Architectural Genius,” New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, May 30, 1943, p. 2.
as she colorfully put it: BBTBI.
“Anyone who is taken in”: Diana Trilling, “Fiction in Review,” The Nation, June 12, 1943, p. 843.
If the book contract had been delayed: BBTBI.
To save paper: The deleted section of the novel can be read as a reconstructed narrative in TEAR (pp. 440–76) or in its original context in AR’s first-draft manuscript on file at the LOC.
Rand always thought: BBTBI.
The Fountainhead was her book: BBTBI.
hinted that she might sue: Letter to Ralph E. Lewis, of Prescott & Files, March 22, 1944 (LOAR, p. 128); also, Bobbs-Merrill Collection, Lilly Library.
The single most perceptive review: Lorine Pruette, “Battle Against Evil: The Fountainhead,” NYT, May 16, 1943, BR7.
she would be happy to hear this: TPOAR, p. 179.
“my kind of readers”: BBTBI.
at best to commit a social gaffe: BBTBI.
chronicles of the period bear her out: An especially interesting view is provided by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin in American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Random House, 2005).
“practically in every line”: Letter to DeWitt Emery, May 17, 1943 (LOAR, pp. 72–77).
other publications gradually took it up: For example, Mansfield [Ohio] News-Journal, July 8, 1943, p. 8.
“individualism” would re-enter the language: BBTBI.
Ogden lacked the power: BBTBI.
The public mood “is going our way”: Letter to DeWitt Emory, May 17, 1943 (LOAR, pp. 72–77); letter to Lorine Pruette, May 18, 1943 (LOAR, p. 75).
wait to collect any royalties: BBTBI.
she estimated the ten thousand dollars she needed: Letter to Monroe Shakespeare, November 16, 1943 (LOAR, p. 100).
approach to the du Pont family: BBTBI. The intermediary may have been Rose Wilder Lane, a libertari
an and the author of another individualist book in 1943, The Discovery of Freedom. She apparently knew the du Ponts (The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 287).
only prospective donor: Letter to Monroe Shakespeare, October 10, 1943 (LOAR, p. 94).
minimum wage of thirty cents an hour: U.S. Department of Labor, “History of Federal Minimum Wage Rates Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938–1996.”
another job selling shoes: BBTBI.
who asked him to stay on as a manager: BBTBI.
“a gray desert”: Introduction to the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of TF.
the author of eight moderately successful novels: The Woman and the Dynamo, p. 326.
she considered The Fountainhead to be so good: BBTBI.
those two weeks were the only formal vacation: BBTBI.
reached the right minds in the country: BBTBI.
Albert Jay Nock’s famous concept: “Isaiah’s Job,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 1936, p. 641. Nock explained that it is Isaiah’s job, like John Galt’s, to preach to and encourage the conservative Remnant to hang on until Judgment Day. In real life, AR and others accepted this task as their own. She never acknowledged her intellectual debt to Nock, and it has never before been pointed out, as far as I know. In biographical interviews, she referred to Nock as cynical and weary.
One hundred thousand copies: BBTBI.
designated each other “sisters”: Unpublished letter from IP to AR, October 7, 1943 (Isabel Paterson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, box 4); AR’s reply to IP, October 10, 1943 (LOAR, p. 174).
“Really, those women”: Author interview with Muriel Welles Hall, July 7, 2004.
“little sister [from] St. Petersburg”: Author interview with Muriel Welles Hall, July 7, 2004.
Council on Books in Wartime: Council on Books in Wartime Archives, 1942–47, Princeton University Library Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton, N.J.
“It takes a book to save or destroy the world”: Letter to Earle H. Balch, November 28, 1943 (LOAR, p. 101).
as her own publisher was beginning to be inclined: In interoffice correspondence contained in the Bobbs-Merrill Archive, AR is often spoken of as unpredictable and volatile after Ogden’s departure.