jbgotmar

More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.com
INDIVIDUALISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! 45
own, but could be granted or withheld by the masses whom he served.
In her novel Wynand would illustrate this principle, with his failings
contrasted starkly to Roark’s independence and agency.
Her villain, Ellsworth Toohey, promised to transform Rand’s supposedly
nonpolitical novel into a sharp satire on the leftist literary culture
of 1930s New York. One evening she and Frank reluctantly accompanied
two friends to a talk by the British socialist Harold Laski at the leftist
New School for Social Research. When Laski took the stage Rand was
thrilled. Here was Ellsworth Toohey himself! She scribbled frantically in
her notebook, sketching out a brief picture of Laski’s face and noting his
every tic and mannerism. She and Frank went back twice more in the
following evenings.
Most of Rand’s notes on Laski’s lecture, and her resultant description
of Toohey, showcased her distaste for all things feminine. Rand was
repelled by the women in the New School audience, whom she characterized
as sexless, unfashionable, and unfeminine. She and Frank scoffed
at their dowdy lisle stockings, trading snide notes back and forth. Rand
was infuriated most by the “intellectual vulgarity” of the audience,
who seemed to her half-wits unable to comprehend the evil of Laski’s
socialism. What could be done about such a “horrible, horrible, horrible”
spectacle, besides “perhaps restricting higher education, particularly
for women?” she asked in her notes on the lecture. This misogyny
rubbed off on Rand’s portrait of Toohey, who was insipidly feminine,
prone to gossip, and maliciously catty “in the manner of a woman or
a nance.” Through Toohey, Rand would code leftism as fey, effeminate,
and unnatural, as opposed to the rough-hewn masculinity of Roark’s
individualism. 19
Before she saw Laski, Toohey was an abstracted antithesis of Roark.
But a socialist intellectual fi t her purposes just as well, even as the characterization
shifted the novel ever closer to a commentary on current
events. Laski was not the sole inspiration, for Rand also used bits of
the American critics Heywood Broun, Lewis Mumford, and Clifton
Fadiman to round out Toohey’s persona. Fitting Toohey so squarely
into the leftist literary culture signaled Rand’s emerging dual purposes
for the book and ensured that when it was fi nally published, the
novel would be understood as a political event as much as a literary
achievement.
Fore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com