by Ayn Rand
Roark stood before him and opened his mouth and said nothing.
“Well?” asked Cameron. “What are you staring at?”
Roark couldn’t answer.
“Now you’re not going to say anything,” Cameron snapped. “Why the hell did you have to come here today? I didn’t want you to know.”
“How . . . how could Miss Cameron let you . . .”
“She didn’t let me,” said Cameron triumphantly. “I escaped.” His eyes twinkled slyly, with the boasting of a boy playing hookey. “I just sneaked out of the house when she went to church. I can hire taxis and get on trains just like anybody else. I’ll slap your face if you go on standing there with that stupid look proclaiming to the world that it’s so unusual for me to crawl out of the grave. Really, you know, you’re more of a fool than I thought you were. You should have expected me here someday.” The cane staggered and he caught at Roark’s arm for support. He added softly: “Do you know what Victor Hugo said? Victor Hugo said that there may be indifferent fathers, but there can’t be indifferent grandfathers. Help me up the hill.”
“No!” said Roark. “You can’t!”
“I said help me up the hill,” Cameron pronounced slowly, icily, with the tone of addressing an insolent draftsman.
Roark had to obey. His hands closed about Cameron’s elbows, and he pulled the old body gently, tightly against his own, and they went forward slowly. Cameron’s feet stepped with long, deliberate precision, each step—a purpose begun and carried on and completed consciously, his mind concentrated upon each step. The cane left a long, zigzagging string of dots stamped on the earth behind them. Cameron barely felt the pressure of Roark’s hands on his elbows, but the hands led him, held him in tight safety, as if some fluid energy of motion flowed from these hands through his body, as if Cameron were carried forward not by his feet, but by Roark’s hands. They stopped frequently, upon each ledge they reached, and stood silently, Cameron trying to hide the gasps of his breath, and looked up. Then they went on.
When they reached the top, they sat down on the steps of the entrance and rested for a long time. Then they walked slowly through all the rooms of the house. The workers looked with indifferent curiosity upon the old cripple whom it pleased the architect to drag through the building. No one knew Cameron. Cameron made no comments, beyond snapping briefly, once in a while: “That’s a bum job of plastering here. Don’t let them get away with it. Have it done over. . . . Watch out for air currents in this hall. Adjust the ventilation. . . . You’ll want another electric outlet on these stairs. . . .” Then they came out again and Cameron stood, without help, leaning on his cane, his back to the house, looking over the vast spread of the countryside for a long time. When he turned his head to Roark, he said nothing, but nodded slowly in a great, silent affirmation.
After a while, Roark said: “I’ll drive you back now.”
“No,” said Cameron. “I’ll stay here till evening—while I’m here. You go ahead with whatever you have to do. I’ll just sit here. Don’t make such a fuss about me.”
Roark brought the leather seats from his car, and spread them on the ground in the shade of a tree, and helped Cameron to settle down comfortably upon them. Then he went back to his work in the house. Cameron sat looking at the sea and at the walls before him. His cane, stretched limply forward between his hands, tapped softly against a stone, once in a while, two brief little thumps, then two more a long time later, as if punctuating the course of his thoughts.
At noon, they shared the box lunch Roark had brought with him; they ate, Roark sitting on the ground beside him, and they spoke of the various qualities of Connecticut granite as compared with the stone from other quarries. And later, when Roark had nothing further to do for the day, he stretched down beside Cameron, and they sat through many hours, unconscious of their long silences and of the few sentences they spoke, vague, unfinished, half-answered sentences, unconscious of the time that passed and of the necessity for any aim in sitting there.
Long after the workers had left, when the sea became a soft purple and the windows of the empty, silent house flared up in unmoving yellow fire, Roark said: “We’re going now,” and Cameron nodded silently.
When they had reached the car below, Cameron leaned suddenly against its door, his face white from an exhaustion he could not hide. He pushed Roark’s hands away. “In a moment . . .” he whispered humbly. “All right in a moment. . . .” Then he raised his head and said: “Okay.” Roark helped him into the car.
They had driven for half a mile, before Roark asked: “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m not,” said Cameron. “To hell with that. I’ll have to go back to the wheelchair for a month, I suppose. . . . Keep still. You know better than to regret it.”
The Simplest Thing in the World
1940
Editor’s Preface
This 1940 story, with Ayn Rand’s prefatory note, is reprinted from The Romantic Manifesto.
She wrote it about a creative writer, while she was deep in the writing of The Fountainhead. By that time, The Fountainhead had been rejected by some twelve publishers.
—R.E.R.
The Simplest Thing in the World
(This story was written in 1940. It did not appear in print until the November 1967 issue of THE OBJECTIVIST, where it was published in its original form, as written.
The story illustrates the nature of the creative process—the way in which an artist’s sense of life directs the integrating functions of his subconscious and controls his creative imagination.—A. R.)
Henry Dorn sat at his desk and looked at a sheet of blank paper. Through a feeling of numb panic, he said to himself: this is going to be the easiest thing you’ve ever done.
Just be stupid, he said to himself. That’s all. Just relax and be as stupid as you can be. Easy, isn’t it? What are you scared of, you damn fool? You don’t think you can be stupid, is that it? You’re conceited, he said to himself angrily. That’s the whole trouble with you. You’re conceited as hell. So you can’t be stupid, can you? You’re being stupid right now. You’ve been stupid about this thing all your life. Why can’t you be stupid on order?
I’ll start in a minute, he said. Just one minute more and then I’ll start. I will, this time. I’ll just rest for a minute, that’s all right, isn’t it? I’m very tired. You’ve done nothing today, he said. You’ve done nothing for months. What are you tired of? That’s why I’m tired—because I’ve done nothing. I wish I could . . . I’d give anything if I could again . . . Stop that. Stop it quick. That’s the one thing you mustn’t think about. You’re to start in a minute and you were almost ready. You won’t be ready if you think of that.
Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it. Don’t look at . . . He had turned. He was looking at a thick book in a ragged blue jacket, lying on a shelf, under old magazines. He could see, on its spine, the white letters merging with the faded blue: Triumph by Henry Dorn.
He got up and pushed the magazines down to hide the book. It’s better if you don’t see it while you’re doing it, he said. No. It’s better if it doesn’t see you doing it. You’re a sentimental fool, he said.
It was not a good book. How do you know it was a good book? No, that won’t work. All right, it was a good book. It’s a great book. There’s nothing you can do about that. It would be much easier if you could. It would be much easier if you could make yourself believe that it was a lousy book and that it had deserved what had happened to it. Then you could look people straight in the face and write a better one. But you didn’t believe it. And you had tried very hard to believe that. But you didn’t.
All right, he said. Drop that. You’ve gone over that, over and over again, for two years. So drop it. Not now . . . It wasn’t the bad reviews that I minded. It was the good ones. Particularly the one by Fleurette Lumm who said it was the best book she’d ever read—because it had such a touching love story.
He had not even known that there was
a love story in his book, and he had not known that what there was of it was touching. And the things that were there, in his book, the things he had spent five years thinking of and writing, writing as carefully, as scrupulously, as delicately as he knew how—these things Fleurette Lumm had not mentioned at all. At first, after he had read the reviews, he had thought that these things were not in his book at all; he had only imagined they were; or else the printer had left them out—only the book seemed very thick, and if the printer had left them out, what filled all those pages? And it wasn’t possible that he had not written the book in English, and it wasn’t possible that so many bright people couldn’t read English, and it wasn’t possible that he was insane. So he read his book over again, very carefully, and he was happy when he found a bad sentence in it, or a muddled paragraph, or a thought that did not seem clear; he said, they’re right, it isn’t there, it isn’t clear at all, it was perfectly fair of them to miss it and the world is a human place to live in. But after he had read all of his book, to the end, he knew that it was there, that it was clear and beautiful and very important, that he could not have done it any better—and that he’ll never understand the answer. That he had better not try to understand it, if he wished to remain alive.
All right, he said. That’s about enough now, isn’t it? You’ve been at it longer than a minute. And you said you would start.
The door was open and he looked into the bedroom. Kitty sat there at a table, playing solitaire. Her face looked as if she were very successful at making it look as if everything were all right. She had a lovely mouth. You could always tell things about people by their mouth. Hers looked as if she wanted to smile at the world, and if she didn’t it was her own fault, and she really would in a moment, because she was all right and so was the world. In the lamplight her neck looked white and very thin, bent attentively over the cards. It didn’t cost any money to play solitaire. He heard the cards thumping down gently, and the steam crackling in the pipe in the corner.
The doorbell rang, and Kitty came in quickly to open the door, not looking at him, her body tight and purposeful under the childish, wide-skirted, print dress, a very lovely dress, only it had been bought two years ago and for summer wear. He could have opened the door, but he knew why she wanted to open it.
He stood, his feet planted wide apart, his stomach drawn, not looking at the door, listening. He heard a voice and then he heard Kitty saying: “No, I’m sorry, but we really don’t need an Electrolux.” Kitty’s voice was almost a song of release; as if she were making an effort not to sound too foolish; as if she loved the Electrolux man and wished she could ask him in to visit. He knew why Kitty’s voice sounded like that. She had thought it was the landlord.
Kitty closed the door, and looked at him, crossing the room, and smiled as if she were apologizing—humbly and happily—for her existence, and said: “I don’t want to interrupt you, dear,” and went back to her solitaire.
All you have to do, he said to himself, is think of Fleurette Lumm and try to imagine what she likes. Just imagine that and then write it down. That’s all there is to it. And you’ll have a good commercial story that will sell immediately and make you a lot of money. It’s the simplest thing in the world.
You can’t be the only one who’s right and everybody else wrong, he said. Everybody’s told you that that’s what you must do. You’ve asked for a job and nobody would give you one. Nobody would help you find one. Nobody had even seemed interested or serious about it. They said, a brilliant young man like you! Look at Paul Pattison, they said. Eighty thousand a year and not half your brain. But Paul knows what the public likes to read and gives it to them. If you’d just stop being so stubborn, they said. You don’t have to be intellectual all the time. Why not be practical for a while, and then, after you’ve made your first fifty thousand dollars, you can sit back and indulge yourself in some more high literature which will never sell. They said, why waste your time on a job? What can you do? You’ll be lucky if you get twenty-five a week. It’s foolish, when you’ve got a great talent for words, you know you have, if you’d only be sensible about it. It ought to be easy for you. If you can write fancy, difficult stuff like that, it ought to be a cinch to toss off a popular serial or two. Any fool can do it. They said, stop dramatizing yourself. Do you enjoy being a martyr? They said, look at your wife. They said, if Paul Pattison can do it, why can’t you?
Think of Fleurette Lumm, he said to himself, sitting down at his desk. You imagine that you can’t understand her, but you can, if you want to. Don’t try to be so complicated. Be simple. She’s simple to understand. That’s it. Be simple about everything. Just write a simple story. The simplest, most unimportant story you can imagine. For God’s sake, can’t you think of anything that’s not important, not important at all, not of the slightest possible importance? Can’t you? Are you as good as that, you conceited fool? Do you really think you’re as good as that? That you can’t do anything unless it’s great, profound, important? Do you have to be a world-saver all the time? Do you have to be a damn Joan d’Arc?
Stop kidding yourself, he said. You can. You’re no better than anyone else. He chuckled. That’s the kind of rotter you are. People tell themselves they’re no worse than anyone else when they need courage. You tell yourself you’re no better. I wish you’d tell me where you got that infernal conceit of yours. That’s all it is. Not any great talent, not any brilliant mind—just conceit. You’re not a noble martyr to your art. You’re an inflated egotist—and you’re getting just what you deserve.
Good, are you? What makes you think you’re good? What right have you to hate what you’re going to do? You haven’t written anything for months. You couldn’t. You can’t write any more. You never will again. And if you can’t write what you want to write—what business have you to despise the things people want you to write? That’s all you’re good for anyway, not for any great epics with immortal messages, and you ought to be damn glad to try and do it, not sit here like a convict in a death cell waiting for his picture to be taken for the front pages.
Now that’s better. I think you have the right spirit now. Now you can start.
How does one start those things? . . . Well, let’s see . . . It must be a simple, human story. Try to think of something human . . . How does one make one’s mind work? How does one invent a story? How can people ever be writers? Come on, you’ve written before. How did you start then? No, you can’t think of that. Not of that. If you do—you’ll go completely blank again, or worse. Think that you’ve never written before. It’s a new start. You’re turning over a new leaf. There! That was good. If you can think in lousy bromides like that, you’ll do it. You’re beginning to get it . . .
Think of something human . . . Oh, come on, think hard . . . Well, try it this way: think of the word “human,” think of what it means—you’ll get an idea somewhere . . . Human . . . What’s the most human thing there is? What’s the quality that all the people you know have got, the outstanding quality in all of them? Their motive power? Fear. Not fear of anyone in particular, just fear. Just a great, blind force without object. Malicious fear. The kind that makes them want to see you suffer. Because they know that they, too, will have to suffer and it makes it easier, to know that you do also. The kind that makes them want to see you being small and funny and smutty. Small people are safe. It’s not really fear, it’s more than that. Like Mr. Crawford, for instance, who’s a lawyer and who’s glad when a client of his loses a suit. He’s glad, even though he loses money on it; even though it hurts his reputation. He’s glad, and he doesn’t even know that he’s glad. God, what a story there is in Mr. Crawford! If you could put him down on paper as he is, and explain just why he is like that, and . . .
Yeah, he said to himself. In three volumes which no one would ever publish, because they’d say it was not true and call me a hater of humanity. Stop it. Stop it fast. That’s not at all what they mean when they say a story is human. But it’s human. But it’s
not what they mean. What do they mean? You’ll never know. Oh yes, you do. You know it. You know it very well—without knowing. Oh, stop this! . . .
Why must you always know the meaning of everything? There’s your first mistake—right there. Do it without thinking. It mustn’t have any meaning. It must be written as if you’d never tried to find any meaning in anything, not ever in your life. It must sound as if that’s the kind of person you are. Why do people resent people who look for a meaning? What’s the real reason that . . .
STOP IT! . . .
All right. Let’s try to go at it in a different way entirely. Don’t start with an abstraction. Start with something definite. Anything. Think of something simple, obvious and bad. So bad that you won’t care, one way or the other. Say the first thing you can think of.
For instance, a story about a middle-aged millionaire who tries to seduce a poor young working girl. That’s good. That’s very good. Now go on with it. Quick. Don’t think. Go on with it.
Well, he’s a man of about fifty. He’s made a fortune, unscrupulously, because he’s ruthless. She’s only twenty-two, and very beautiful, and very sweet, and she works in the five-and-ten. Yes, in the five-and-ten. And he owns it. That’s what he is—a big tycoon who owns a whole slew of five-and-ten’s. This is good.
One day he comes to this particular store, and he sees this girl and he falls in love with her. Why would he fall in love with her? Well, he’s lonely. He’s very terribly lonely. He hasn’t got a friend in the world. People don’t like him. People never like a man who’s made a success of himself. Also, he’s ruthless. You can’t make a success of yourself unless you hold onto your one goal and drop everything else. When you have a great devotion to a goal—people call you ruthless. And when you work harder than anyone else, when you work like a freight engine while others take it easy, and so you beat them at it—people call you unscrupulous. That’s human also.