Previously Unpublished Letters of Ayn Rand Going Online

Ayn Rand

Forty previously unpublished letters of Ayn Rand are now going online, selected by Michael Berliner, editor of the 1995 volume, Letters of Ayn Rand.

A snippet is below where Rand discussed the filming of The Fountainhead:

I came on the set a little after 10 o’clock (the set is called for 9, but the first hour is taken up with lighting and setting up the camera, and Blanke had told me to be there by 10.) Just as I came on the stage, the bell rang for the next take, and what I saw being done was this: Vidor was taking a shot of Cooper starting his speech from the middle, cutting out the entire first third of it.

The cut made the whole speech senseless and left glaring holes in the political theory of the speech, making it open to every kind of attack, objection or smear. The speech could be construed as anarchism or fascism or simply plain drivel; with the first third taken out, one could not tell what the character was talking about. Imagine a carefully devised, complex legal contract with the first two pages torn out of it — and visualize what sense or meaning would be left in the remnant.

The first released group of letters is here.

-RW