The Journals of Ayn Rand Page 8

  [The depravity of] the pastors who try to convert convicted murderers to their religion. Hickman has been baptized into the Catholic faith. So has Ruth Snyder. The horrible idea of “saving” a murderer’s “soul,” adding to the “glory” of their religion by demonstrating its power over fear-crazed convicts. The hypocrisy of “saving a soul,” of turning a man to a religion of charity and forgiveness like Christianity—and then executing him. The mob tyranny I mentioned, shown in the desire to make a new slave, add a new follower to the herd, break an independent man into submission.

  The fact that right after his sentence Hickman was given a Bible by the jailer. I don’t know of anything more loathsome, hypocritical, low, and diabolical than giving Bibles to men sentenced to death. It’s one of those things that’s comical in its stupidity and horrid because of this lugubrious, gruesome comedy.

  The newsboy I saw on a crowded downtown corner, a heavy, unshaven young fellow, with a [sickly] complexion, fat lips, narrow forehead and spectacles, who was yelling: “They’re gonna hang him!” when the first extras with the sentence appeared. Other adult newsboys, yelling with a bloodthirsty delight: “Hickman to hang! Hickman to hang by the neck!”

  The drunken man who murdered his wife for no particular reason, and then regretted it, was Hickman’s cell-mate in jail—and beat Hickman up, thinking himself superior.

  The twelve-year-old little girl, who wrote a letter to Hickman, asking him “to get religion so that little girls everywhere would stop being afraid of him.”

  Dale Budlong and other prisoners who “don’t want to be mixed” with Hickman, considering themselves so much better.

  The woman who wrote a letter to the authorities asking for permission to be present at Hickman’s hanging. A great number of other letters making the same request. (!) (The bloodthirsty, blind, carnivorous beast that is hidden beneath the polished surface of our “civilized,” religious, respectable citizens!)

  All the dirty stories about Hickman. In this case they are probably true, but how easily they could have been manufactured to throw dirt at the object of the public’s hatred (which will be the case in my book).

  Other examples of the “little street”

  Gertrude Stein, when she stupidly said “It’s the little things that count!” This is the perfect expression of that despicable attitude of some people—the glorification of mediocrity, the mediocrity that not only doesn’t make any effort to rise toward something high, but idealizes its own smallness, glorifies it, makes it the highest thing in life, the only thing “that counts.” The purposeful denial of high [ideals], the shameless, insolent sneering of the plebian who says: “I’m small, sure, but that’s the main thing—to be small. You big ones, you don’t mean anything, you don’t count!”

  That most repulsive of all things—the pride and vanity of the mediocre.

  V. M., when she said: “Original thoughts are dangerous.... If an original thinker is anti-social, the more brilliant he is—the more dangerous he is, and therefore original thinkers are to be condemned!” Doesn’t need any comment.

  She speaks also of being useful to posterity, to the whole human race and so on. This gives me the thought that fear of death may govern those who think too much of the “future” and of “humanity.” It is as if they know that their own life will not be enough and they want to have something eternal to believe in outside of it.

  Where can I find a man who knows that his own life will be so great and he will fill it with so much, that he doesn’t need any “high ideal” outside of it? Eternity itself doesn’t matter—to exist is glorious enough!

  Arthur Brisbane, who does not sympathize with Voronoff’s desire to produce a Superman through heredity. He declares that this is just what humanity doesn’t need; we don’t want Supermen, we want average, equal creatures, for Nature always strives towards equality and balance. He proves [this latter claim] by deep, significant examples such as tall men liking short girls and fat women liking thin men. (And all the results of this poisonous, rotten, sewer-philosophy!)

  The thing I heard about Gilbert Roland (too horrid to write down).

  The parties at the studios with naked Negro girls dancing.

  The way stars make their careers. (The middle-aged woman with pull who can make the careers of young men, or refuse to, telling them sincerely: “I’m sorry, you’re not my type!”)

  The different kinds of mind: the abstract and the “social” mind, the latter being considered the most important for success. And what is it but the art of “getting along” with human beings? (Men like Danny Renahan don’t get along.)

  I. L. [Ivan Lebedeff, a Russian-born actor whom AR knew in Hollywood], who says that he does things he despises just to lower himself, to feel he is doing something nasty, to get to the level of the mob, and mix into that mob. He is afraid to be above [the mob]; he cannot stand the tragedy of being alone on top, and the horror of what he sees under him and has to live with and tolerate.

  I don’t know if it’s quite so in his case, but the idea is very profound—that those who could be above willingly lower themselves, because “the little street” makes it super-humanly hard for a man to remain alone and keep his ideals. Another instance of how the little street works.

  The rotten swamp that sucks everything into it. And so it goes: a man has the possibility to be high; he cannot stand it—other men and “society” are too much for him to fight against; he sinks down, to the mob’s level; and thus he becomes one of those who stops some other man who could be high. [...]

  Incidents in the story

  College-life, the mob-reign par excellence. Danny—the most unpopular figure in college. He doesn’t belong to any clubs, societies, or fraternities. He doesn’t allow any crazy tricks to be played on him when entering college. He doesn’t take part in any sports, that is, any teamwork.

  Hetty is expelled from college for her attitude in the “Renahan case.”

  Hetty is one of the defense’s star witnesses at the trial; she tries to save Danny.

  Hetty implores the Governor to [pardon] Danny. She climbs into his house through a window when he refuses to see her. She pleads with real, human words against the stiff, official, blind answers of the Governor. She falls on her knees: “You can save him! Don’t destroy something you can never create again!” He orders her thrown out and advises her to be careful of the reputation she has already soiled, or he may have to send her to a penitentiary to reform her “unnatural, degenerate tendencies!” [This scene is a precursor of one in We the Living, when Leo is dying of tuberculosis and Kira pleads to Soviet officials to save him.]

  Danny’s death. The little man who recognizes him and attracts the mob to him. The mob appears from everywhere, from every dark comer and alley, like swarming cockroaches crawling out of their holes. The big drunken brute who strikes his heavy, nail-soled foot into Danny’s breast, cracking the ribs. The quarter that rolls out of Danny’s pocket into the pool of blood and is picked up by one of the men, who wipes it and takes it. The police find Danny’s body near the sidewalk, a horribly torn mass. Only his beautiful face is left untouched, now immobile, pale, with eyes closed and long shadows of the eyelashes on the white cheeks; a head of marble, with one thin red stream, like a crack in the marble, on his temple; and only his hair moving slightly around the immobile face, moved by the water in the gutter that streams red.

  Danny in jail. His perfect indifference to everything—visitors, family, everybody—except Hetty. He does not love her, but he sees, understands, and respects her feeling for him.

  The only moment when Danny is afraid of death and wants to live. One night, when he looks out of his cell window and sees nothing but a dark, clear sky and stars, and one luminous spire from a tall building far away; when he does not see the city and it seems to him that he is in some other world, on another planet, where life is clear, pure and luminous like the sky he looks into. And he wants that life, he loves it with all the passion of his life-hungry soul. That is the only moment when he weakens, when he is horrified at the thought: “They are going to kill me! They have no right to kill me!”

  This episode will probably end with a guard passing by and seeing Danny’s emotion instead of his usual calm, and snickering something about his being broken and yellow. Danny turns to him and answers with a horrible swear-word, something as obscene and contrasting with his former mood as the reality he faces is filthy and contrasting with the world he saw for a moment. With that one word, all his regrets are gone, he is back again in the life that makes him indifferent to death, he is again the hard, sneering, cynical convict, indifferent and disdainful of everything.

  When Danny kills the pastor, he shoots him straight in the face, mad with loathing and the desire to destroy him. He then shoots the rest of the bullets into the body, in his hatred and fury to kill. After that—no regrets, no remorse whatsoever. A clever and calm scheme to escape. He is found and arrested only through the betrayal of a friend.

  Danny becomes a criminal while he is scheming his vengeance. In one scene, another criminal dies in his arms while hiding from the police. The young man is unable to get help, preferring to die than to be discovered; he dies from bullet wounds, choking with blood. His beautiful last moments and words. The impression it makes on Danny.

  Danny’s “fan mail” in jail. The disgusting letters of hatred and the even more disgusting letters of sympathy. Among the latter: declarations of love from half-witted, hysterical old maids; religious preaching and propaganda; the consolations and sympathy of “good Christians” for a “poor, erring sinner,” and so on. Danny orders the jailers to stop bringing him the mail and to instead “use it in the toilet.”

  [The Little Street ends here. The booklet closes with the following
personal notes.]

  From now on—no thought whatever about yourself, only about your work. You don’t exist. You are only a writing engine. Don’t stop, until you really and honestly know that you cannot go on.

  Concentration!

  Learn to enjoy action, and effort.

  Learn that your work is a certain kind of work and that the state of your mind should be different from that which you have when doing nothing. You can’t write and do something else.

  Do you live for action or for rest?

  Stop admiring yourself—you are nothing yet.

  You must know how to control your moods and your mind. Be absolute master of yourself and your mind. How can you rule anybody or anything, if you can’t rule your own mind?

  The secret of life: You must be nothing but will. Know what you want and do it. Know what you are doing and why you are doing it, every minute of the day. All will and all control. Send everything else to hell!

  Be a tyrant—no compromises with yourself. Do everything absolutely.

  Try to forget yourself—to forget all high ideas, ambitions, supermen and so on. Try to put yourself into the psychology of ordinary people, when you think of stories. Try to be calm, balanced, indifferent, normal, and not enthusiastic, passionate, excited, ecstatic, flaming, tense.

  Learn to be calm, for goodness sake!

  Look at everything through the eyes of a very skeptical, very prosaic businessman.

  Think more of the psychology of your heroes, according to their characters.

  Not so straight and crude. The same things can be more complicated and different, as they usually are in life.

  2

  WE THE LIVING

  AR’s working title for We the Living was Airtight. In 1930, at the age of twenty-five, she began making notes for the novel in a bound composition notebook. The notebook, presented below in its entirety, contains descriptions of the characters and the unbearable conditions of life in a totalitarian state.

  The remaining notes on the novel are unbound, undated, mostly unnumbered, handwritten pages; some are paper-clipped together, and all are collected in a folder. About one-third of this material is offered here. I have omitted her chapter-by-chapter outline because it does not depart in any significant way from the novel. I have also omitted several pages listing known facts of Russian history in the 1920s. The only other material omitted was too cryptic to be of general interest.

  It may be surprising that AR made so few notes for her first novel. There are two main reasons. First no research was required for We the Living, since she already knew the background. Second, AR chose this novel as her first partly because of its relative simplicity. She was not ready to attempt a complex theme or to present her ideal man, but she was ready to write about young people being crushed by a dictatorship.

  Since she had little difficulty with the plot, characters, or theme, she did not need to make extensive notes.

  Circa 1930

  Airtight

  The Characters

  Kira Argounova

  Dominant trait: an intense, passionate hunger for life. Beautifully sensitive to the real meaning and value of life—and crushed under the senseless, morbid, suffocating conditions of a miserable existence. Proud and definite. Unbreakable. One of the very few—and the only one in the book—who, as a person, is not in the least affected by the new conditions; who denies them and does not quite understand their right or reason for existence. She fights them—externally; and the fight is the more tragic because, internally, she is left absolutely untouched and unaffected. A sane, healthy individual thrown into the very depths of abnormal, inhuman conditions.

  Independent. Self-assured. Educated in a wealthy family by a mother who let her grow up as she pleased, without any restraints or influences, and with plenty of everything she needed. As a result, she has a calm poise and the full, free strength of her own unusual personality that has not accumulated any useless, alien inhibitions from any outside source. No religion whatsoever. Brilliant mind. Lots of courage and daring. Only her calm exterior poise hides her tempestuous emotional nature. A sort of graceful restraint under which one can feel the storming fire.

  Rather cold and indifferent to everything that does not interest her deeply. Absolutely proof against all influences. Always alone and, to most people, aloof. Disliked by women. No girlfriends. No “beaux.” Indifferent to men. Dimly conscious of her tremendous sexual power—if she wanted to use it. Men are attracted to her and afraid. Nothing flirting or “come hither” in her. The more powerful, then, is her attraction for men with whom she condescended to be a woman, and who saw the woman in her: Andrei and Leo.

  Honest and straightforward—the honesty of pride and of superiority. Misunderstood. Hurt by it, sometimes, yet used to her loneliness, intelligent enough to realize that it is unavoidable. A strong determination and disdainful pride—and sometimes, beneath it, an indefinable, charming, feminine weakness and helplessness—something of the frightened child, which she is to a great extent. Always feminine in the best sense of that word, that is, graceful, aloof, charming. Never the masculine, “intellectual,” “rough and ready” type of woman [common] in politics, or the alleged “woman of brains.” Capable of being cruel. Sometimes conceited—at the feeling of her power.

  Her love for Leo—the concentrated strength of all her will to live. He is, to her, the symbol of everything she wants and the meaning of life as she sees it. Therefore, her indifference to others, the clarity of her mind that leaves her cool to many useless emotions and affections, her straightforwardness—these lead her to an all-absorbing passion, almost unbearable for a human being.

  Andrei Taganov

  Dominant trait: a born individualist and leader who never discovered it. A great mind and a profound honesty. An iron will and unconquerable strength. A great calm and deliberation—the calm of a man who knows he is master of himself and has learned long ago to have complete self-control. Occasional, very rare flashes of temper that show the real fire in him—a fire, however, that never gets the best of the man.

  His father: a factory worker, mixed in politics and sent to Siberia during the Revolution of 1905; died in exile. His mother: died shortly afterwards of poverty and overwork. He, the only son, made his way through the hardest work [with an] iron determination, and a long toil that did not break him, but only taught him patience and hardened him. No school education; self-educated and self-made. Always lonely and aloof, aloof without realizing it. Never a good mixer. Never a popular fellow. In his political career, he advanced through his brilliant ability and unquestionable honesty more than through popularity in the Party, where he is far from being popular. His comrades in the Party are always his political friends, never his personal chums; this is not the result of any deliberate attitude taken by him, but the natural behavior of a man who has devoted his entire life to his political ideals and sees only that.

  As to those ideals: they are the result of his early hatred of the existing system of society—not so much hatred, but rather a calm and cool determination of long ago: to do away, someday, somehow, with the inhuman conditions that he went through and in which he started his life. The people whose champion he is stand before his eyes as individuals, as men like himself, whose life is crushed by the senseless power of a society that has no right to a man’s life. In that, and more unconsciously than hers, his tragedy is the same as Kira’s. Both are superior individuals. Both have in their souls the sensitivity, the understanding, the hunger for the real life, as few men see it. Both rise to fight for their rights to that life; and both face the same enemy: society, the state, the mass. She is stronger, in that she realizes the fight and the enemy. He is more tragic, because his fight is unconscious: the fight against society of a man who stands as a champion of the most sociable ideals.