Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [287]
Park Avenue and Thirty-first Street: In the early 1940s, Bobbs-Merrill’s New York offices were located at 468 Fourth Avenue; thanks to Becky Cape at the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana.
reminded her of Peter Keating: BBTBI.
“Pat had contacts there”: Author interview with Muriel Hall, July 7, 2004. Hall provided the same account to Stephen Cox, IP’s biographer, who wrote, “I don’t doubt Muriel’s account” (author correspondence with Cox, May 17, 2006).
“Far be it from me to dampen such enthusiasm”: TPOAR, p. 171.
second congratulatory phone call: BBTBI.
famously frugal boss: Words & Faces, p. 33.
“Marionettes at Midnight”: According to ARI, AR said that Kurt Noack’s “Marionetten um Mitternacht” was her favorite piece of music in the early 1940s (“Ayn Rand’s Musical Biography”).
whenever she was happy: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, March 23, 2004.
Oscar and Oswald: TPOAR, p. 185.
promised to deliver The Fountainhead: EOTF, p. 6.
now began the happiest year: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
excuse for backing out: BBTBI.
easily available in pill form: TPOAR, p. 173; interviews with the Blumenthals, the Brandens, Roger Callahan; unpublished correspondence with IP (Isabel Paterson Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, box 23).
“clean and respectable”: Letter to Archibald Ogden, February 19, 1942 (LOAR, p. 62).
worked for thirty hours straight: “The Hero in the Soul Manifested in the World.”
type her new pages: Author interviews with June Kurisu (May 19, 2004) and Daryn Kent-Duncan (April 25, 2005).
“You are really writing about collectivism”: The Art of Fiction, p. 163.
Nick claimed that he had even written: Taped interview with Millicent Patton, conducted by BB on December 15, 1982.
on file at the U.S. Library of Congress: Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, boxes 18–20.
averaged a chapter a week: Hand-dated manuscript chapters, first draft (Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, boxes 18–19).
On July 4, 1942: Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, box 19, folder 10.
“The year at Monadnock Valley”: TF, p. 532.
see who could finish first: TPOAR, p. 171.
won by a week or two: Author correspondence with Stephen Cox, who writes: “[Pat] worked on [The God of the Machine] during 1942. … During January and early February 1943, her correspondence shows her fixing some details. Page proofs were sent by [the publisher] to Pat’s friend Col. Robert Henry on March 17, 1943.” AR finished correcting the page proofs of her book on or about March 30, 1943, as she noted in a letter on that date to D. L. Chambers (LOAR, p. 66).
“Whoever is fortunate enough”: Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (Palo Alto, Calif.: Palo Alto Book Service reissue, 1983), p. 306.
“breaks through the clay”: TF, pp. 726-27.
SEVEN: MONEY: 1943
“Many words have been granted Me”: Anthem, p. 95.
delivered to bookstores on May 7, 1943: “Books Published Today,” NYT, May 7, 1943, p. 17.
copies remained unsold: BBTBI. In 1960-61, AR told BB that there was no second printing of TF until late summer 1943, but in a letter written to Archibald Ogden on July 29, 1943, she seems to make reference to a recent third printing of the book (LOAR, p. 86). Sales figures come from secondary sources. The Bobbs-Merrill Archives at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, contain no contracts or sales reports, and ARI denied the author access to the Curtis Brown literary agency archives at Columbia University, where copies of AR’s contracts and royalty statements can presumably be found.
new and better novels about architecture: Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times,” NYT, May 12, 1943, p. 23.
prepublication buzz: BBTBI.
endorsed the novel: Kenneth Horan, “Three Unusual Novels with Widely Different Settings,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 30, 1943, p. E10.
Irita Van Doren assigned the book: Albert Guerard, “Novel on Architectural Genius,” New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, May 30, 1943, p. 2.
as she colorfully put it: BBTBI.
“Anyone who is taken in”: Diana Trilling, “Fiction in Review,”