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pill form with a doctor’s prescription. In mild doses, amphetamines improve temper and self-confidence, enhance energy and mental acuity, reduce appetite, and stave off sleep. Over time or in larger doses, they can lead to mood swings, irritability, uncontrolled emotional outbursts, impaired judgment, and paranoia, all of which Rand was susceptible to without chemical assistance. During the final months of composing her breakthrough novel, the drug seems to have worked well for her; allied with an indomitable will to succeed and renewed hope, amphetamines made it possible for her to write both day and night. She sometimes didn’t go to bed at all; for two or three days running she would take catnaps on the couch in her clothes, then get up and resume writing. For appointments outside the apartment, she would make herself “clean and respectable.” Once she worked for thirty hours straight, pausing only to eat the meals that Nick and Frank prepared.

Rand continued to write in longhand and to read aloud to the O’Connor brothers, who would sometimes suggest American expressions or idiomatic bits of dialogue. Then she would expertly type her new pages, making alterations based on how they sounded. She regularly consulted Paterson, too, particularly about her characters’ speeches. Among other suggestions the older woman made was one to eliminate explicit references to Hitler, Stalin, Fascism, Nazism—to all contemporary history. “The theme of your book is wider than the politics of the moment,” Paterson told her. “You are really writing about collectivism—any past, present, or future form of it.” This was excellent advice, and Rand took it, not only in The Fountainhead but also in Atlas Shrugged. The novels’ timeless, almost mythical atmosphere is surely one of the reasons for their enduring popularity.

Rand depended on Nick to help proofread pages as they rolled from her typewriter. When working hours ended, he sat into the night and discussed the day’s progress with her. Although she cherished Frank’s intuitive and sympathetic grasp of her viewpoint and intentions, she valued Nick’s more nuanced reaction to developments of plot, character, literary technique, and, most importantly, style. Rand’s grasp of the American idiom was still spotty. According to the O’Connors’ friend Millicent Patton, Nick claimed that he had even written some of the novel’s dialogue— the light party banter and repartee; Patton added that Nick would occasionally stop by and show her draft pages with his contributions. What seems at least equally likely is that Frank and Nick suggested or corrected her dialogue and pointed out opportunities for humor.

In the first draft of The Fountainhead on file at the U.S. Library of Congress, her handwriting changed in 1942; as the year progressed, where it had been fairly large, loopy, and legible it became rushed and cramped, possibly as an effect of the amphetamines. She stayed in, chain-smoked cigarettes, and sped through complex scenes illuminating Roark’s setbacks and victories, his friendships and betrayals, his contorted love affair, and finally his acquittal at trial. She dated her chapters, and her velocity and precision seem almost unbelievable. Whereas it had taken her years to plan and compose the first third of the novel, over the twelve months of 1942 she averaged a chapter a week. When her scrawled sentences were typed, the pacing flew and there were few corrections.

On July 4, 1942, she began part 4, the final section of The Fountainhead. It opens with a boy who has recently finished college and wants to compose music happening upon a beautiful summer resort in the grassy Monadnock Valley of Pennsylvania. The resort has not yet opened and is uninhabited and lovely. Roark has designed and built it. The boy, gazing at the small, gemlike glass houses and gardens falling over natural field-stone ledges, sees that architecture can be a kind of music in stone and gains courage from its perfection to pursue his own vocation, much as Rand had once found inspiration in Victor Hugo. Of the months Roark and