by Ayn Rand
You don’t work like that just to make money. It’s something else. It’s a great, driving energy—a creative energy?—no, it’s the principle of creation itself. It’s what makes everything in the world. Dams and skyscrapers and transatlantic cables. Everything we’ve got. It comes from men like that. When he started the shipyards—oh, he’s a five-and-ten tycoon—no, he isn’t, to hell with the five-and-ten!—when he started the shipyards that he made his fortune from, there was nothing there but a few shacks and a lot of clam shells. He made the town, he made the harbor, he gave jobs to hundreds of people, they’d still be digging for clams if he hadn’t come along. And now they hate him. And he’s not bitter about it. He’s accepted that long ago. He just doesn’t understand. Now he’s fifty years old, and circumstances have forced him to retire. He’s got millions—and he’s the most miserable man in the world. Because he wants to work—not to make money, just to work, just to fight and take chances—because that great energy cannot be kept still.
Now when he meets the girl—what girl?—oh, the one in the five-and-ten . . . Oh, to hell with her! What do you need her for? He’s married long ago—and that’s not the story at all. What he meets is a poor, struggling young man. And he envies this boy—because the boy’s great struggle is still ahead of him. But this boy—now that’s the point—this boy doesn’t want to struggle at all. He’s a nice, able, likeable kid, but he has no real, driving desire for anything. He’s been adequate at several different jobs and he’s dropped them all. There’s no passion to him, no goal. What he wants above all is security. He doesn’t care what he does or how or who tells him to do it. He’s never created anything. He’s given nothing to the world and he never will. But he wants security from the world. And he’s liked by everybody. And he has everybody’s sympathy. And there they are—the two men. Which one is right? Which one is good? Which one’s got the truth? What happens when life brings them face to face?
Oh, what a story! Don’t you see? It’s not just the two of them. It’s more, much more. It’s the whole tragedy of the world today. It’s our greatest problem. It’s the most important . . .
Oh, God!
Do you think you can? Do you think you’ll get away with it maybe, if you’re very clever, if you disguise it, so they’ll think it’s just a story about an old man, nothing very serious, I don’t mind if they miss it, I hope they miss it, let them think they’re reading trash, if they’ll only let me write it. I don’t have to stress it, I don’t have to have much of it, of what’s good, I can hide it, I can apologize for it with a lot of human stuff about boats and women and swimming pools. They won’t know. They’ll let me.
No, he said, they won’t. Don’t fool yourself. They’re as good at it as you are. They know their kind of story just like you do yours. They might not even be able to explain it, what it is or where, but they’ll know. They always know what’s theirs and what isn’t. Besides, it’s a controversial issue. The leftists won’t like it. It will antagonize a lot of people. What do you want a controversial issue for—in a popular magazine story?
No, go back to the beginning, where he’s a five-and-ten tycoon . . . No. I can’t. I can’t waste it. I’ve got to use that story. I’ll write it. But not now. I’ll write it after I’ve written this one commercial piece. That will be the first thing I’ll write after I have money. That’s worth waiting for.
Now start all over again. On something else. Come on, it isn’t so bad now, is it? You see, it wasn’t difficult at all, thinking. It came by itself. Just start on something else.
Get an interesting beginning, something good and startling, even if you don’t know what it’s all about and where to go from there. Suppose you open with a young girl who lives on a rooftop, in one of those storerooms above a loft-building, and she’s sitting there on the roof, all alone, it’s a beautiful summer evening, and suddenly there’s a shot and a window in the next building cracks open, glass flying all over the place, and a man jumps out of the window onto her roof.
There! You can’t possibly go wrong on that. It’s so bad that it’s sure to be right.
Well . . . Why would a girl live in a loft-building? Because it’s cheap. No, the Y.W.C.A. would be cheaper. Or sharing a furnished room with a girlfriend. That’s what a girl would do. No, not this girl. She can’t get along with people. She doesn’t know why. But she can’t. So she’d rather be alone. She’s been very much alone all her life. She works in a huge, busy, noisy, stupid office. She likes her rooftop because when she’s there alone at night, she has the whole city to herself, and she sees it, not as it is, but as it could have been. As it should have been. That’s her trouble—always wanting things to be what they should be, and never are. She looks at the city and she thinks of what’s going on in the penthouses, little islands of light in the sky, and she thinks of great, mysterious, breath-stopping things, not of cocktail parties, and drunks in bathrooms, and kept women with dogs.
And the building next door—it’s a smart hotel, and there’s this one large window right over her roof, and the window is of frosted glass, because the view is so ugly. She can’t see anything in that window—only the silhouettes of people against the light. Only the shadows. And she sees this one man there—he’s tall and slender and he holds his shoulders as if he were giving orders to the whole world. And he moves as if that were a light and easy job for him to do. And she falls in love with him. With his shadow. She’s never seen him and she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t know anything about him and she never tries to learn. She doesn’t care. It’s not what he is. It’s what she thinks of him as being. It’s a love without future, without hope or the need of hope, a love great enough to find happiness in nothing but its own greatness, unreal, inexpressible, undemanding—and more real than anything around her. And . . .
Henry Dorn sat at his desk, seeing what men cannot see except when they do not know they are seeing it, seeing his own thoughts in a way of sight brighter than any perception of the things around him, seeing them, not pushing them forward, but seeing them as a detached observer without control of their shape, each thought a corner, and a bright astonishment meeting him behind each corner, not creating anything, but being carried along, not helping and not resisting, through minutes of a feeling like a payment for all the agony he would ever bear, a feeling continuing only while you do not know that you feel it . . .
And then, that evening, she is sitting alone on the roof, and there’s a shot, and that window is shattered, and that man leaps out onto her roof. She sees him for the first time—and this is the miracle: for once in her life, he is what she had wanted him to be, he looks as she had wanted him to look. But he has just committed a murder. I suppose it will have to be some kind of justifiable murder . . . No! No! No! It’s not a justifiable murder at all. We don’t even know what it is—and she doesn’t know. But here is the dream, the impossible, the ideal—against the laws of the whole world. Her own truth—against all mankind. She has to . . .
Oh, stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
Well . . . ?
Pull yourself together, man. Pull yourself together . . .
Well? For whom is it you’re writing that story? For the Women’s Kitchen Friend?
No, you’re not tired. You’re all right. It’s all right. You’ll write this story later. You’ll write it after you have money. It’s all right. It won’t be taken away from you. Now sit quiet. Count ten.
No! I tell you, you can. You can. You haven’t tried hard enough. You let it get away with you. You begin to think. Can’t you think without thinking?
Listen, can’t you understand a different way of doing it? Don’t think of the fantastic, don’t think of the unusual, don’t think of the opposite of what anyone else’d want to think, but go after the obvious, the easy. Easy—for whom? Come on now. It’s this: it’s because you ask yourself “what if . . . ?” That starts the whole trouble. “What if it’s not what it seems to be at all . . . Wouldn’t it be interesting if . . .” That’s what
you do, and you mustn’t. You mustn’t think of what would be interesting. But how can I do anything if I know it isn’t interesting? But it will be—to them. That’s just why it will be to them—because it isn’t to you. That’s the whole secret. But then how do I know what, or where, or why?
Listen, can’t you stop it for a little while? Can’t you turn it off—that brain of yours? Can’t you make it work without letting it work? Can’t you be stupid? Can’t you be consciously, deliberately, cold-bloodedly stupid? Can’t that be done in some way? Everybody is stupid about some things, the best of us and the brightest. Everybody has blind spots, they say. Can’t you make it be this?
Dear God, let me be stupid! Let me be dishonest! Let me be contemptible! Just once. Because I must.
Don’t you see? It’s a matter of one reversal. Just make one single reversal: instead of believing that one must try to be intelligent, different, honest, challenging, that one must do the best possible to the best of one’s ability and then stretch it some more to do still better—believe that one must be dull, stale, sweet, dishonest and safe. That’s all. Is that the way other people do it? No, I don’t think so. They’d end up in an insane asylum in six months. Then what is it? I don’t know. It isn’t that—but it works out like that. Maybe if we were told from the beginning to reverse it . . . But we aren’t. But some of us get wise to it early—and then they’re all right. But why should it be like that? Why should we . . .
Drop it. You’re not settling world problems. You’re writing a commercial story.
All right. Quick and cold now. Hold yourself tight and don’t let yourself like the story. Above all, don’t let yourself like it.
Let’s make it a detective story. A murder mystery. You can’t possibly have a murder mystery with any serious meaning. Come on. Quick, cold and simple.
There must be two villains in a mystery story: the victim and the murderer—so nobody would feel too sorry for either of them. That’s the way it’s always done. Well, you can have some leeway on the victim, but the murderer’s got to be a villain . . . Now the murderer must have a motive. It must be a contemptible motive . . . Let’s see . . . I’ve got it: the murderer is a professional blackmailer who’s holding a lot of people in his clutches, and the victim is the man who’s about to expose him, so the blackmailer kills this man. That’s as low a motive as you could imagine. There’s no excuse for that . . . Or is there? What if . . . Wouldn’t it be interesting if you could prove that the murderer was justified?
What if all those people he blackmails are utter lice? The kind that do horrible things, but just manage to remain within the law, so there’s no way of defending yourself against them. And this man chooses deliberately to become a crusading blackmailer. He gets things on all those people and he forces them to do justice. A lot of men make careers for themselves by knowing where some body or other is buried. Well, this man goes out after such “bodies,” only he doesn’t use them for personal advancement, he uses them to undo the harm these people are doing. He’s a Robin Hood of blackmail. He gets them in the only way they can be gotten. For instance, one of them is a corrupt politician, and the hero—no, the murderer—no, the hero gets the dope on him and forces him to vote right on a certain measure. Another one is a big Hollywood producer who’s ruined a lot of lives—and the hero makes him give a talented actress a break without forcing her to become his mistress. Another one is a crooked businessman—and the hero forces him to play straight. And when the worst one of the lot—what’s the worst one of the lot? a hypocritical reformer, I think—no, that’s dangerous to touch, too controversial—oh, what the hell!—when this reformer traps the hero and is about to expose him, the hero kills him. Why shouldn’t he? And the interesting thing about the story is that all those people will be presented just as they appear in real life. Nice people, pillars of society, liked, admired and respected. And the hero is just a hard, lonely kind of outcast.
Oh, what a story! Prove that! Prove what some of our popular people are really like! Blow the lid off society! Show it for what it’s worth! Prove that the lone wolf is not always a wolf! Prove honesty and courage and strength and dedication! Prove it through a blackmailer and a murderer! Have a story with a murderer for a hero and let him get away with it! A great story! An important story which . . .
Henry Dorn sat very still, his hands folded in his lap, hunched, seeing nothing, thinking of nothing.
Then he pushed the sheet of blank paper aside and reached for the Times’ “Help Wanted” ads.
1 The Fountainhead, 25th Anniversary Edition, Introduction.
2 Ibid.
3 The manuscript is illegible at this point.