The Early Ayn Rand

by Ayn Rand

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Preface to the Revised Edition

  Introduction

  Part I - THE TWENTIES

  The Husband I Bought

  The Night King

  Good Copy

  Escort

  Her Second Career

  Part II - THE EARLY THIRTIES

  Red Pawn

  We the Living (unpublished excerpts)

  Ideal

  Part III, - THE LATE THIRTIES

  Think Twice

  The Fountainhead (unpublished excerpts)

  The Simplest Thing in the World

  “Writers are made, not born,” Ayn Rand wrote in another context. “To be exact, writers are self-made.” In this fascinating collection of Ayn Rand’s earliest work—including a previously unpublished piece, “The Night King”—her own career proves her point. We see here not only the budding of the philosophy that would seal her reputation as a champion of the individual, but also the emergence of a great narrative stylist whose fiction would place her among the most towering figures in the history of American literature.

  Dr. Leonard Peikoff worked with Ayn Rand for thirty years; he is her legal heir and the executor of her estate.

  SIGNET

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  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. This edition of The Early Ayn Rand contains a new preface and two new selections, “The Night King,” which is being published for the first time in this volume, and “The Simplest Thing in the World,” which appeared in Ayn Rand’s The Romantic Manifesto.

  First Printing (revised edition), April 2005

  Copyright © Leonard Peikoff, Paul Gitlin, Eugene Winick, Executors of the Estate of Ayn Rand, 1983, 1984

  Introduction and Editor’s Note copyright © Leonard Peikoff, 1984 Copyright © The Estate of Ayn Rand, 2005

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-13767-3

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  Preface to the Revised Edition

  This revision adds two short stories to the collection, thereby placing all six short stories by Ayn Rand in one volume. The previously unpublished story, “The Night King,” has been included, as well as the story “The Simplest Thing in the World,” reprinted from The Romantic Manifesto. The first of these, most likely written in 1926, seems to be her first attempt at fiction in English. The second, written in 1940, demonstrates the command of the English language she achieved over this fourteen-year period.

  Nearly a decade of organizing and cataloging her papers by the Ayn Rand Archives has allowed some refinement in dating the original manuscripts, which is reflected in this edition. References to the sales figures of her novels have been updated to the present day. Other than that, Leonard Peikoff’s Introduction and prefaces are exactly duplicated from the previous editions of The Early Ayn Rand.

  —Richard E. Ralston

  Revision Editor

  August 2004

  Introduction

  In 1926, Ayn Rand was a twenty-one-year-old Russian immigrant to America struggling with her first short story in English; she was barely able to speak the language, let alone handle complex ideas or project a convincing hero. In 1938, a mere twelve years later, she was writing The Fountainhead, in full command of her distinctive philosophy, aesthetic approach, and literary style. A progression such as this represents an astonishing intellectual and artistic growth.

  The present book is an anthology of Ayn Rand’s fiction from this early period, arranged chronologically. I have decided to publish this material because I believe that admirers of Miss Rand will be interested to learn by what steps she developed her literary abilities. They can now see the steps for themselves.

  Only one of the pieces (Think Twice) can be considered finished, mature work. The others are offered not as finished ends-in-themselves, but primarily for the light they shed on Ayn Rand’s development during her most critical formative decade as a writer. None of the pieces has been published before, nor did Miss Rand intend to publish them.

  The novels of the mature Ayn Rand contain superlative values that are unique in our age. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged offer profound and original philosophic themes, expressed in logical, dramatic plot structures. They portray an uplifted vision of man, in the form of protagonists characterized by strength, purposefulness, integrity—heroes who are not only idealists, but happy idealists, self-confident, serene, at home on earth. The books are written in a highly calculated literary style intent on achieving precision and luminous clarity, yet that style is at the same time brilliantly colorful, sensuously evocative, and passionate. Just as Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, rejects the mind-body dichotomy, so her art sweeps aside the false alternatives this dichotomy has spawned: her novels prove that one can unite philosophy and suspense thrillers, art and entertainment, morality and practicality, reason and emotion.

  She could not do all of the above, however, at the beginning. She had to create her own abilities gradually, by a prodigious effort.

  What kinds of themes concerned her as a young woman, before she could deal with the deeper issues of ethics or epistemology? What kinds of stories did she tell before she could invent complex plots involving an entire society or even the whole world? What kinds of characters did she write about before she was able to project Howard Roark or John Galt? How did she write in these years, when she was first learning the craft?

  The eleven selections in this book answer such questions. They exhibit Ayn Rand’s continuous growth in every area: depth of theme, ingenuity of plot structure, stature of hero. Most of all, they exhibit the maturation of her style, from the broken English o
f “The Husband I Bought” to the power and poetry of The Fountainhead.

  Miss Rand’s development seems to fall into three rough stages, reflected in the three parts of this anthology.

  Part I covers the 1920s and includes her earliest fiction in English. The short stories from this period are a beginner’s exercises written as literary practice, and never meant for any audience.

  Part II covers the early 1930s and represents Miss Rand’s first professional work. It includes a lengthy synopsis of a movie original (Red Pawn); two excerpts from the manuscript of We the Living that were cut before publication; and an early stage play (Ideal) which, though finished work, is not fully consonant with Miss Rand’s later viewpoint.

  Part III covers the late 1930s and represents Ayn Rand’s first mature work. It includes an intriguing stage play, the philosophical murder mystery Think Twice; and two sets of excerpts from The Fountainhead manuscript that were cut before publication. One of these tells the story of Roark’s first love affair, before he met Dominique.

  An early short story has been omitted from this collection, along with several screenplays (adapting other authors’ stories) from her days in Hollywood, some scenarios for the silent screen, and a version of We the Living written for the stage. Aside from these items, there is no more of Ayn Rand’s fiction that remains unpublished. (There are no excerpts from the Atlas Shrugged manuscript long enough to warrant publication.)

  By the nature of this anthology, most of the material is imperfect, unedited and/or undeveloped Ayn Rand. But it is still Ayn Rand—and that is the second reason for publishing it. Despite all the flaws, despite everything she has still to learn, her vision of man and of life, and even some of her power to convey that vision in words, are there at the beginning. They are real, they are able to break through, to be felt, to haunt us. For those who admire her work, as I do, this is reason enough to grasp at these early pieces.

  I first met Ayn Rand in 1951 at her home in California. She was writing Atlas Shrugged at the time; I was a pre-medical student who loved The Fountainhead and was brimming over with philosophical questions to ask her about it. That meeting changed my life.

  Ayn Rand was unlike anyone I had ever imagined. Her mind was utterly firsthanded. On intellectual issues, she said what no one else said or perhaps had ever even thought, but she said these things so logically—so simply, factually, persuasively—that they seemed to be self-evident. And she was passionate about ideas; she radiated the kind of intensity that one could imagine changing the course of history. Her brilliantly perceptive eyes looked straight at you and missed nothing; neither did her methodical, painstaking, virtually scientific replies to my questions miss anything. She convinced me that night that philosophy is a science, with objective, provable answers to its questions; it is the science that moves the world, she argued, whether men acknowledge the fact or not. It did not take me long to give up medicine and decide on philosophy as a career.

  As the years passed, I came to work closely with Miss Rand, first as an informal student of hers, then as a writer and lecturer on her ideas. The two of us regularly talked ideas, not infrequently for twelve hours (or more) at a stretch. I learned more about philosophy listening to her than I did from ten years in graduate school getting a Ph.D. in the subject.

  Not long after I met Miss Rand, she let me read the two plays in the present collection, Ideal and Think Twice; she was pleased with both and hoped to see them produced one day. (This, I think, is why she never tried to have them published.) I also came to read the short story “Good Copy” and to hear Miss Rand’s analysis of it; she regarded this piece as a worthy, though flawed, attempt by a beginning writer. Of the rest of this collection, I read nothing at all during Miss Rand’s lifetime (though I heard from her in passing about a few items, which she regarded as ancient history). I was astonished, after her death, to find so much fiction that was new to me in her “trunk.”

  Out of this new material, I have three personal favorites: “Vesta Dunning,” for the quality of the writing; “Kira’s Viking,” for its fairy-tale romanticism; and “The Husband I Bought,” because it is a rare window on Ayn Rand’s soul at the beginning, before she knew much about philosophy, art, or English—a window that reveals eloquently her own intense dedication to values. Along with the material I already knew, these pieces are what convinced me, as her literary executor, to publish the total.

  To those unfamiliar with Ayn Rand, however, I want to say that this book is not the place to begin. Read her novels first. If their ideas interest you, you might then turn to her nonfiction works, such as The Virtue of Selfishness (on ethics), or Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (politics), or The Romantic Manifesto (aesthetics). Then, if you wish, pick up the present collection.

  If any reader wants more information—about Miss Rand’s other published essays; about courses, schools, and publications that carry on her philosophy; or about further material of hers yet to be brought out (journals, letters, lectures)—I suggest that he write to Objectivism EA, P.O. Box 177, Murray Hill Station, New York, NY 10157. I regret that owing to the volume of mail, personal replies to such letters are not possible; but in due course inquirers will receive literature from several sources indicating the direction to pursue if they want to investigate Ayn Rand’s ideas further, or to support them.

  Ayn Rand has long been beloved by a broad public. Here then for all to read is her early fiction: the first of her stories, and also the last—the last, that is, for us to discover and to experience. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

  —Leonard Peikoff

  New York City

  Part I

  THE TWENTIES

  The Husband I Bought

  c. 1926

  Editor’s Preface

  Ayn Rand arrived in the United States from Russia in February 1926, at the age of twenty-one, and spent several months with relatives in Chicago before leaving for Hollywood. Although she had studied some English in Russia, she did not know the language well, and she devoted herself at first to writing scenarios for the silent screen. “The Husband I Bought” seems to be the only writing other than scenarios from these early months. It is the first story she wrote in English.

  Miss Rand was aware that this story (like all her work in the 1920s) was a beginner’s exercise, written in effect in a foreign language, and she never dreamed of publishing it. She did not even sign her name to it privately (although she had chosen the name “Ayn Rand” before she left Russia). She signed it with a pseudonym invented for this one case and never used again: Allen Raynor.

  Many years later, Ayn Rand was asked to give a lecture defining the goal of her work. “The motive and purpose of my writing,” she said, “is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself . . .” (The Romantic Manifesto).

  Prior to The Fountainhead, however, she did not consider herself ready for this task; she knew that she had too much still to learn, both as a philosopher and as a writer. What she did regard as possible to her in these early years was the depiction of a woman’s feeling for the ideal man, a feeling which she later called “manworship.” She herself had experienced this feeling as a driving passion since childhood, primarily in response to the projections of heroes she discovered in Romantic literature.

  Concepts such as “worship,” “reverence,” “exaltation,” and the like are usually taken as naming emotions oriented to the supernatural, transcending this world. In Ayn Rand’s view, however, this concedes to religion or mysticism what are actuallythe highest moral concepts of our language. . . . [S]uch concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without the self-abasement required by religious definitions. What, then, is their source or referent in reality? It is the entire emotional realm of man’s dedication to a moral ideal. . . . It is this highest level of man’s emotions that has to be redeemed from the murk
of mysticism and redirected at its proper object: man.1

  “Man-worship” means the enraptured dedication to values—and to man, man the individual, as their only achiever, beneficiary, and ultimate embodiment. This is basically a metaphysical-ethical feeling, open to either sex, a feeling uniting all those “who see man’s highest potential and strive to actualize it”—those “dedicated to the exaltation of man’s self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth.”2

  When a woman with this kind of character sees her deepest values actualized and embodied in a specific man, man-worship becomes (other things being equal) romantic love. Thus the special quality of the Ayn Rand romantic love: it is the union of the abstract and the concrete, of ideal and reality, of mind and body, of uplifted spirituality and violent passion, of reverence and sexuality.

  Throughout the early years, female protagonists predominate in Ayn Rand’s fiction; and one of their essential traits is this kind of man-worship. The early heroes are merely suggested; they are not fully realized until Roark. But whatever the language and literary problems still unresolved, the motif of the woman’s feeling for a hero is realized. Even in this first story, Ayn Rand can write eloquent scenes on this theme (especially the moving farewell scene). Even this early, she can make effective use of the dramatic, short-sentence style that became famous with The Fountainhead.

  Henry, in the present story, is the earliest ancestor of Leo (in We the Living), of Roark, of Francisco or Rearden (in Atlas Shrugged). Those who know the later heroes can see the first faint glimmer of them here. The focus, however, lies in Irene’s response to him, which may be symbolized by a single line: “When I am tired, I kneel before the table [on which Henry’s picture stands] and I look at him.”