Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (14 page)

Rand’s encounter with Paterson constituted a virtual graduate school in American history, politics, and economics. She soaked up Paterson’s opinions, using them to buttress, expand, and shape her already established individualism. Paterson helped shift Rand onto new intellectual territory, where Nietzsche’s voice was one among many. Now Rand could draw from and react against the British classical liberal tradition and its American variants. Conversations with Paterson made Rand well versed in the major and minor arguments against the New Deal state.

Rand’s relationship with Paterson also reinforced her growing preoccupation with reason. Both women shared a belief that with the world in political free fall, reason was their only hope and guide. In an episode that eerily mirrored Rand’s break with her agent, Paterson described an argument she had with Rose Wilder Lane, another conservative writer. When Lane told Paterson she sometimes formed a conclusion by a feeling or a hunch, “. . .Isabel Paterson screamed at her over the phone, practically called her a murderess, explaining to her: how dare she go by feelings and hunches when the lives of other people are involved, and freedom and dictatorship. How can she go by anything but reason in politics, and what disastrous irresponsibility it is.” To Rand, Paterson’s arguments in favor of reason were “marvelous and unanswerable” and her anger in the face of disagreement understandable, even honorable.
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As her friendship with Paterson developed, Rand continued to work closely with Pollock and Emery. In October she drew up an “organization plan” and traded ideas with Emery on a potential name. He proposed American Neighbors, a name Rand rejected as too vague and meaningless. At one point the trio considered merging their efforts with the Independent Clubs of America, the group that had grown out of the Willkie Clubs. Rand drafted a fund-raising letter, noting that their
Declaration of Principles had been submitted as a possible declaration for the national group under the aegis of the New York Division. In another draft letter there is no mention of the Independent Clubs; instead recipients are invited to join the Educational Committee of the “ ‘Intellectual Aristocrats’ of our country, who will formulate a new credo of freedom, a faith for living, as complete, definite and consistent as the ideologies of our totalitarian enemies.”
²⁵

Although the name and structure of the group remained inchoate, Rand grew increasingly clear on its purposes. Her group would offer a positive counterpoint to the New Deal, on an intellectual and philosophical level. They would be “the new teachers of a new Individualism.” She consciously modeled her ideas on the methods of the left: “The New Deal has not won by bread alone. Nor by hams and baby blankets. The New Deal won by eight years of beautifully organized, consistent, systemic collectivist propaganda.”
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Her organization would counter this tide of leftism with its own publications, speeches, intellectuals, and ideas, making the case for individual rights and limited government. All Rand needed to make it happen was money, which had yet to materialize. After months of appeals the organizers had received faint interest but no committed financial backers.

The problem was that in the political climate of mid-1941 Rand, Pollock, and Emery’s efforts were doubly marginal. As opponents of Roosevelt they fell clearly outside the liberal order. Yet because Pollock was adamant that the group steer clear of “any crowd opposed to our aiding Britain” they were also cut off from the sources that were pumping funds into isolationist organizations. What Rand wanted to do would have been difficult at any time: create a group that was ideological yet practical, principled yet political. Her task was all the harder because her group cut across established lines of party politics.
²⁷

Around this time Rand’s employer, Richard Mealand, once again inquired about her book. Always hesitant to accept favors, Rand had not considered asking Mealand for further help after Little, Brown turned down the book. A firm believer in her talent, Mealand was insistent and pressed Rand for the name of another publisher to approach. This time Rand suggested Bobbs-Merrill, which had recently published Eugene Lyon’s
The Red Decade,
an exposé of Stalinist penetration in America. She guessed the firm might be favorable to a novel about individualism.

After Mealand made a few phone calls Rand walked her enormous manuscript, already several hundred pages and slightly more than one-fourth finished, over to Bobbs-Merrill. At first she didn’t like the editor who would appraise her work, Archie Ogden. He had been hired only a few weeks earlier and was young, overly friendly, and insincere, Rand thought. Although he seemed to be a glad-hander, Ogden immediately recognized the potential in Rand’s unfinished manuscript. He recommended publication of the book. His immediate supervisor was less impressed and vetoed the proposal. Fresh from reading Rand’s heady tribute to individualism, Ogden sent a simple wire in response: “If this is not the book for you, then I am not the editor for you.”
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It was a bold, foolhardy, and ultimately brilliant move. Faced with mutiny, Ogden’s supervisor relented and the press drew up a contract for Rand. She signed it on December 10, 1941, three days after Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor.

The outbreak of war put an immediate end to Rand’s organizing efforts. Emery sent Rand an excited letter sharing his intention to join the armed forces. The president’s critics muzzled themselves as the dangers of the New Deal paled beside the combined onslaught of Japan and Germany, which declared war on the United States only days after Pearl Harbor. Even America First disbanded, signifying the bankruptcy of isolationism as a political issue. Domestic concerns took a backseat to foreign affairs, and as the wartime economy shifted into high gear unemployment plummeted. World War II thrust the United States into a new international role, forever altering the dynamics of American politics. By the time the war was over a new set of concerns would structure the political landscape.

The ink on her contract had barely dried when Rand began writing again. She had only completed the first of four projected parts of the novel, entitled “Peter Keating,” and six additional chapters. These sections served to introduce the major characters and foreshadow important later plot developments. She had described the early years of Howard Roark and Peter Keating, laying out their very different approaches to the world. In the book’s opening scene Roark is expelled from the architecture school where Keating is about to graduate with
honors. The next chapters describe Keating’s easy rise through a big-name architecture firm, contrasting his experience to Roark’s low-paying job with a washed-up master whose buildings he admires. Rand carefully interwove the careers of Roark and Keating, showing that Keating must rely on Roark to help complete his major commissions. She also laid out the explosive sexual dynamics between Dominique and Roark. The bulk of the novel, however, remained unwritten.

In the next twelve months Rand raced through the rest of the story. Bobbs-Merrill gave her a year to complete the manuscript, and this time Rand wasn’t taking any chances. She had exhausted the reputable New York publishers and knew that if this contract fell through the book would never be published. Adding additional pressure was the fact that Rand still bore the primary financial burden in her marriage. Like so many men during the Depression era, Frank had been unable to find steady employment. He took the occasional odd job, at one point working as a clerk in a cigar store, but his income was never enough to support a household. Nor was Rand’s thousand-dollar advance enough for her and Frank to live on, so she arranged to continue working on weekends for Paramount. The stress was considerable. Between writing and reading for Paramount, she was working virtually nonstop.

Rand now lived in two universes. Within
The Fountainhead
Roark continued his uneven career and his refusal to compromise for clients, while Keating’s dizzying rise was topped by his marriage to Dominique, the daughter of his firm’s founder. Rand’s archvillain, Ellsworth Toohey, the focus of the book’s second section, slowly wrapped his collectivist tentacles around the Wynand papers. Gail Wynand himself became disillusioned with his media empire, stole Dominique away from Peter, and befriended Roark. Back in the real world Rand kept impossible hours to meet her imminent deadline. The record, she told Ogden, was a mad burst of inspiration that lasted from 4
P.M.
to 1
P.M.
the next day.
²⁹
On Sunday nights she did permit herself a rare indulgence, regularly stopping by Isabel Paterson’s office at the
New York Herald Tribune
to help her proofread “Turns with a Bookworm.” Paterson too was trying to finish a book,
God of the Machine
. She and Rand spurred each other on in a friendly contest, each hoping to finish first. Their jokes about competition made light of how deeply intertwined their creative processes truly were. Writing in tandem the two women shared ideas and inspiration freely.

Burning with ideas as she composed her novel, Rand stepped out of her passive, listening role and began to share her ideas about ethics. Paterson jousted back, during one conversation challenging Rand’s view that self-interest must always be the first principle of action. Family was a sticking point for Paterson. Wasn’t it true, she asked Rand, that parents must take care of their children before themselves? Rand countered swiftly, “If the child has no one but the parent, and the situation is such that the parent has to sacrifice himself and die, how long would the child survive thereafter?” Rand remembered, “[Paterson] gasped, in a pleased way, like an electric bulb going off. And she told me, ‘of course that’s the answer.’ Now that’s the last brick falling into place and she is convinced.”
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Paterson asked if she could draw on this conversation in her book, permission Rand gladly granted.

As 1943 approached Rand closed in on the final scenes of her novel. Here she made the first major changes that reflected her recent intellectual development. The final section of the book, named after her hero, was intended to celebrate Roark. Fleshing out the solution she had hit upon so many years earlier, Rand described Roark’s design of a housing project, Cortland Homes, for Keating. It is a straightforward trade. Roark is intrigued by the problem of low-cost housing but knows he would never be chosen to design the project. He agrees to let Keating use his design, asking only one thing in return: the building must be built exactly as designed. But Cortland Homes is a government project, and everyone has a say. When built it blends Roark’s design with the additions and amendments of several other architects. Appalled at the resulting compromise Roark dynamites the building late one night. Dominique is by his side in the storm of controversy that erupts, finally ready to love him openly.

From there Rand fell back on her trusty device of a trial, with a critical twist. Originally, an esteemed trial lawyer, roused from retirement by the Cortland case, was slotted to deliver a climactic defense of Roark. Now, as she neared completion of the novel, she decided that Roark would represent himself and deliver his own plea to the jury. It was a Hollywood-style scenario that injected a rare note of implausibility into an otherwise largely realistic novel. Having Roark deliver the speech, however, proved critical to expressing Rand’s newfound appreciation for the average American. Roark’s hand-selected jury
mixed brawn and intellect: “two executives of industrial concerns, two engineers, a mathematician, a truck driver, a brick layer, an electrician, a gardener and three factory workers.” Although several of the jurors are recognizable as men of exceptional achievement, the majority are manual workers of little distinction. Rand makes clear that they are hard-working types who have seen much of life, writing that Roark chose those with “the hardest faces.”
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If the jury understood Roark’s argument, they would demonstrate their ability to recognize and reward individual genius.

First, though, the jury had to hear Rand’s philosophy of life. Roark begins with a history lesson, arguing that all important achievements have come from creators who stood opposed to their time. Just as Rand emphasized in her “Manifesto,” Roark explains to the jury that creativity is inextricably linked to individualism: “This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men” (679). He situates the government’s alteration of his design within the global struggle of collectivism versus individualism and repeats Rand’s idea that good stems from independence and evil from dependence. Within this framework Roark’s individual decision trumps the rights of government, future tenants, or any other involved parties, because “the integrity of a man’s creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor” (684).

Though it closely followed the “Manifesto,” Roark’s speech introduced a new theme that was to become one of Rand’s signature ideas: the evil of altruism. In her first notes for the novel Rand had attacked Christian ethics, but now she attacked altruism. In the speech Roark identifies second-handers as preachers of altruism, which he defines as “the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self” (680). The origins of Rand’s shift from Christianity to altruism are unclear, but her conversations with the philosophically literate Paterson most likely played a role. Regardless of where she picked up the term, Rand’s use of altruism reflected her refinement and abstraction of the concepts that had underlain the novel from the very start. At first she had understood the second-hander as a kind of glorified social climber. The frame of altruism significantly broadened this idea, allowing Rand to situate her characters within a larger philosophical and ethical universe. Identifying altruism as evil mirrored Rand’s celebration
of selfishness and completed the ethical revolution at the heart of
The Fountainhead
.