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Ayn Rand’s early unpublished fiction

by paisleyandplaid on April 18, 2008

I picked up an old, yellowed copy of The Early Rand (Signet, ed. Leonard Peikoff, 1984) and have thoroughly enjoyed reading from her early unpublished fiction. Peikoff and Rand were friends. In fact, she was influential in his move from studying medicine to philosophy.  He was one of those invited into the salon circle of disciples where Rand discussed her views.

For one thing, what the unpublished writings offer is her early struggle with the English language. She had emigrated to America from Russia in 1926 at 21 and had to learn everything from scratch. But the stories show the maturing of a great writer. In “The Husband I Bought” the language usage is rough, and the diction is imprecise.  The plotting is immature with more telling than showing. But the men and women, her characters, are predictive of the giants of fiction that Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden are today—people of strength and integrity and self reliance.

Having read Buckley’s Getting it Right, an enjoyable and fairly accurate fictional account of the formation of the conservative movement, I know that Rand didn’t support Buckley or The National Review. She thought it “the most dangerous” publlication in America since she felt that Buckley wanted to merge conservatism with religion. He didn’t favor some of her views, which were conservative, but Godless. The novel is just plain good reading.

I reject Rand’s views of religion and some of her views on man. I thoroughly relish her postulations that show man as heroic, purposeful, determined, the ruler of the world, capable of anything for his own self interest and thereby the good of others. It’s a vision that lauds man’s creativity and ability to produce and to derive from his efforts a deeply abiding satisfaction, confidence, and love of life—capitalism. (Some of the works in this anthology are vehemently anti-Communist.)

In her fiction, the evil characters are the lazy, inferior men who resent and envy those who do produce and are successful. Her fictional situations show people who are despised for their want of vision and talent—characters who function best in at atmosphere of regulation and bureacracy enforcing status quo operations and considering anyone who is not content with that and cannot abide mediocrity a threat. The bad guy is a jealous, petty man.

Peikoff recommends reading the novels first and then trying the early work. I agree that this makes a fascinating study.

You might enjoy these articles:

From The Atlasphere, bio and some good articles on social and political topics, mostly conservative

On Rand —http://txpayervoice.blogspot.com/2008/01/ayn-rands-birthday.html

Manybooks.net has only Anthem available free online and as an audiobook here.

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