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A NEW CREDO OF FREEDOM 93
exercise,” and a book reviewer from Boston recounted, “My husband and
I lived in [The Fountainhead] for several weeks, discussed it frontwards
and backwards, in and out, the ‘what’ the ‘why’ the ‘wherefore.’ ” Even
those who disagreed with Rand enjoyed thinking through the questions
she raised. This intellectual excitement was engendered by Rand’s careful
encoding of ideas in a fi ctional plot. Many who would never have
read a treatise on ethics or politics found the novel drew them quickly
into the world of ideas. 47
From the start Rand hoped to twin the emotional and intellectual
parts of the novel. Ideally readers would experience strong feelings of
identifi cation with both her characters and her political views. She told
DeWitt Emery, “When you read it, you’ll see what an indictment of the
New Deal it is, what it does to the ‘humanitarians’ and what effect it
could have on the next election—although I never mentioned the New
Deal by name.” 48 Rand’s belief that fi ction could have important political
consequences sprang from her Russian background and her careful
observations of the New York left. As anti-Communists were hustled
out of Leningrad State University, Rand had realized that the most
innocuous of literary works could have political meaning. She kept this
in mind during her fi rst years in the United States, when she sent her
family American novels to translate into Russian. These books were an
important source of income for the Rosenbaums, but they had to pass
the Soviet censors. Rand became an expert in picking out which type of
story would gain the approval of the Communists. These same works,
she believed, were slowly poisoning the American system and had contributed
to Willkie’s defeat. “The people are so saturated with the collectivism
of New Deal propaganda that they cannot even grasp what
Mr. Willkie really stood for,” she wrote in a fund-raising letter. “That
propaganda has gone much deeper than mere politics. And it has to
be fought in a sphere deeper than politics.” 49 The Fountainhead would
expose Americans to values and ideals that supported individualism
rather than collectivism.
Plenty of readers understood and embraced The Fountainhead’s
deeper meaning. In a letter to Rand one woman attacked the Offi ce of
Price Administration, a federal government agency established to regulate
commodity prices and rents after the war broke out: “I am assuming
that you view with growing horror the government’s paternal treatment
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