Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [134]
She phoned the Hollywood apartment the young man was sharing with his older sister Elayne, a nurse, one night in February 1950, waking him from an early sleep. A week or so later, on March 2, he drove out to the ranch at her invitation and they met. Dapper, genial O’Connor answered the door and escorted him into the double-height living room, where he watched as the forty-five-year-old novelist crossed the room to greet him. She was wearing a plain skirt and blouse, her dark-brown hair arranged in her usual 1920s forward-slanting bob. Branden, well scrubbed, with sharp, strong features and on his best behavior, was good-looking. He was immensely in awe of her, though, as he recalled, not intimidated by the aura of power she most definitely projected. She took his hand in greeting. Before they spoke, she gazed into his eyes. He later described the sensation as one of standing in the direct path of the beam of a searchlight. He liked being the object of such scrutiny, and she saw he liked it. She interpreted his lack of fear as a sign of strength of character—and a mark of the arrogance that was a stamp of heroes.
Once they had introduced themselves and taken seats, he noticed that the room was peacock blue and filled with objects in green-blue, Dominique’s favorite color in The Fountainhead. (Although he didn’t know it then, it was also the color of Hank Rearden’s miracle alloy, Rearden Metal, and Ayn Rand’s favorite color.) He saw that his literary idol was shorter, stockier, and less poised than he had expected, given her descriptions of Dominique and the glamorous photograph that appeared on the back cover of his favorite book. She smoked heavily through a cigarette holder and spoke with a surprisingly thick Russian accent. Still, he felt that he had entered the ennobling world of The Fountainhead. She sensed that she had made a discovery and that this young man would be a significant person in her life.
Many years later, Branden remembered what they talked about. She inquired politely about his background, and he explained that he had grown up as the only son of immigrants in a family of six in Toronto. His Russian-Jewish parents had never fully assimilated themselves into life in Canada, and he, too, had always felt out of place, unpopular, and awkward. For guidance and companionship, he had turned to characters in books, especially to Howard Roark. Was that weak? he asked. “Oh, foolish child!” she answered. “We all need that fuel. That’s what art’s for.” She mentioned Aristotle’s distinction between history and fiction: history represents things as they are, whereas fiction presents things as they might be and ought to be. That’s the reason people turn to novels for inspiration, she told him. Her agreement with Aristotle was why she called her form of writing “romantic realism.” By “realism” she meant that her plot and characters were not fantasy but a projection of what might be, and by “romantic” she meant that she infused her writing with a moral vision of what ought to be and wasn’t yet. In Roark, she had created an ideal man in a stylized version of the world. Her view of man as the achiever of heroic deeds through the use of his own judgment in creative work and in life—this was what she had brought to life in Howard Roark. This was what Branden loved about the novel.
She asked him a series of philosophical questions, which she had also asked Ashby and other young admirers. What did he think of the faculty of reason? What did he think of man? Did he imagine the universe as a malevolent place where men were doomed to be defeated or a benevolent place where, by means of reason, they could accomplish