The Journals of Ayn Rand (36 page)

Summer, 1929. Escape of contractor for Unfinished Symphony. Toohey-Dominique. She prints the libel.

Lawsuit and love affair. Roark-Dominique.

Fall, 1929. Roark wins the suit. That night. Next day—Symphony stopped. A few days later—Dominique marries Peter. Her wedding night with Roark. Next morning—she tells him. Their break. [...]

Fall, 1930. Roark loses [the Stoddard Temple] lawsuit and everything. Sculptor’s [Steven Mallory‘s] suicide—“for Roark’s sake.” Roark goes to live in Unfinished Symphony. Toohey and the Wynand Settlement project. Plans for Peter, and for Dominique to meet Wynand. Temple altered by Peter. Scene of Roark on steps of Temple, at night, in the snow, his hat off, his hands patting the steps. Scene: Roark-Toohey.

Roark’s [commission for] the nightclub. Roark living in Symphony. Meeting with young writer. [...]

Spring, 1931. Young writer’s death. Roark leaves for summer [resort] project. Peter and the Wynand Settlement. Peter-Toohey. [...]

Dominique’s reactions to Roark’s mistresses. Dominique-Wynand.

Spring, 1933. Opening of summer resort. Great success. Panic of promoters. Roark and mistress at opening. Dominique there alone.

The flood. Night. Next morning.
[AR’s original idea was that Monadnock Valley was subject to periodic flooding, and the promoters had counted on the summer resort being destroyed by a flood. Their plan fails because Roark designs the resort such that it can withstand the floods.] [...]

Peter marries blonde. Scene: Toohey-niece.

Summer. On the construction site. Roark-Dominique. Roark-Wynand encounter. One furious spurt of Wynand’s hatred for Roark. Wynand cancels the construction. [...]

[The events after Roark dynamites Cortlandt Homes are the same as those described in her “Plan for the Last Part” written on April 4.
]

 

 

Francon’s office. Keating arrives for work—a little before 9 a.m. The entrance lobby of the office. The reception clerk. The employment manager. The drafting rooms. The head draftsman. Keating shown his locker, told a few brief instructions, put to work.

Keating tracing blue-prints. First nervousness. Then looking about, loses all fear of the men, knows he is better.

The great activity. Looks at the city. “It comes from here.”

Keating and the drawing. “Francon? No, so-and-so did it.”

The afternoon. Keating sent to Francon. Francon with a slight hangover. His brief talk with Keating about his, Francon‘s, duties. Leaving, Keating sees woman client in reception room.

Cameron’s past.

Roark comes to Cameron’s office. The office (overlooking one of Cameron’s buildings).

The interview. Roark ordered to come to work tomorrow.

Cameron’s reaction.

Roark looking at the streets.

Roark comes home. Vesta doing Joan D‘Arc. Roark-Vesta. His interest. Her reverent enthusiasm. Peter comes home. She changes, does a fool imitation. The dinner she has prepared.

Cameron—the austerity, the devotion, the tragedy.

Francon—big business (show, pompousness, kowtowing to clients, utter indifference to the
reality
of the work).

 

 

Roark in the mountains—his body, the earth around him, the complete ecstasy of the complete man, his thoughts on architecture and the material around him (nature as his clay to mold as he pleases). The swim. The fact that he has been expelled.

Roark on his way home: the interreaction of Roark and others around him.

Roark home. Mrs. Keating. First reference to Peter. Mrs. Keating’s quite obvious joy at Roark’s expulsion and her pride in Peter, her “sweetness” and her ferocious ambition, her hatred for Roark (and for every other student at the Institute). She tells Roark of Dean’s call.

Roark on his way up. Incident with Vesta’s closed door and her rebuff to him.

Roark in his room—his drawings. He forgets call. Mrs. Keating reminds him. He goes.

Interview between Roark-Dean. Establish why he’s been expelled. Lay a brief and clear foundation for the two basic opinions on architecture—Roark’s and the eclectics‘. The Dean’s mention of Cameron; Roark’s reaction. Roark’s background—where he came from, that he has worked as building constructor during his way through Institute. No friends, no fraternities. Roark’s utter, shattering indifference. “Your opinion, Mr. Roark, is not the most important thing that counts.” “It is the only thing.”

As Roark leaves, he is distracted by the stone in the Institute building—his thought as to what he would do with it.

[AR elaborates the above in the following notes.
]

Rocks like a fortress wall, enclosing everything, a circle, a planet or world of its own. Rocks like a frozen explosion—a struggle, the harmony of conflict, the hard unity not of peaceful balance, but of opposite forces holding one another in check. Sharp angles, like clenched muscles, deep gashes like wounds worn as decorations, a million sparks in the granite, the rock flaming, a hard luster, the polish of heat, as if the air were a liquid, so dry that the stones seem wet with sunrays.

A few tufts of green—a luminous green tumbling in the wind, like green bonfires burning on the fuel of granite. One tree—as a banner, victorious over the rock, rising to proclaim its place in this world of stone.
[This last sentence was crossed out.]

The lake—an enclosed canyon, quiet, guarded, mysterious. Cold, obviously cold even in its fire; in spite of it or because of it. Subterranean spring. No bottom.
[The preceding three sentences were crossed out.]

A thin silver film cutting, midway, the walls of granite. A luminous bowl—lighting the sky. The sky—clear, blue with nothing, not a single cloud to give it limit or reality—as a mirror for the lake. The rocks continue into the depth and then there is the sky. So that the whole place seems suspended in space, with the sky below and above it, an island floating on nothing, a circle, a coral reef of the sky, anchored only by the two feet of the man on the rock.

The place is wild, untouched, no trace of the existence of men.

His laughter as the meaning of the earth around him, as its song, as the release of its tension. Triumphant, the complete ecstasy. (See Nietzsche about laughter.)
[Elsewhere in her notes, AR copied the following from
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “
O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter
—
and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed. My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present! ”]

It’s the lines of his body that give meaning to the struggle around him, it’s the struggle known and possible to his muscles, to his veins, to the thin lines beating under his skin.

The township of Stanton began with a dump. Billboards advertising soap and gasoline. A church—carpenter Gothic with spire à la Wren. Streets—all alike and all awful. Consumptive, public, tight little houses, “fancy” architecture with the paint peeling. Garbage can. Diapers on a line. A pampered dog on a cushion. A man’s behind—planting nasturtiums. A woman sprawled, legs spread apart, on a porch. A woman pushing a perambulator and wiping the sweat off with the back of her hand.

Roark amidst it. Everyone looks at his hair. Most people turn away too quickly. Some stare with a blind, nameless, instinctive hatred. All uncomfortable. The alien. What had been joy in him is now arrogance, what had been strength is now a challenge, what had been freedom is a nameless threat. As to him—he sees no one. He walks, as he swam, straight to a given point. For him the street is empty. He could have walked there naked without concern.

Main square—shops about a lawn, a movie theater in competition with the stock theater. Signs in shop windows welcoming the “Class of ‘22,” which is graduating today. He turns off into a side street at the end of which, on a knoll, stands the house of Mrs. Keating over a green ravine.

Roark versus the eclectics. (“Have you thought of clients?” “Yes, I have thought of clients. I do not presume to consider myself the only man of good taste in the world.”) Mention of Cameron.

Lead up to his utter selfishness. Dean mentions that he has no friends, has refused to join fraternities. “Won’t you reconsider? You have worked hard for your education.” (Sketch his past.) “No, I won’t reconsider.” Whom to notify? No one. No parents. No guardians. Who was his father? He has no one now.

 

 

“We have decided. I believe, as was stated at this morning’s meeting, that the profession is not for you. You’re giving it up, aren’t you?”