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A NEW CREDO OF FREEDOM 95
known for his mildly socialist leanings, but in the postwar era he would
emerge as a high-profi le voice of libertarianism, writing for the Wall
Street Journal, Life, and Time. 51
The Fountainhead offered renewed energy to libertarianism at a critical
time. Somnolent for years, anti–New Deal groups such as the Committee
for Constitutional Government and the American Economic Foundation
began to reawaken in the early 1940s. These groups immediately recognized
Rand as a kindred spirit. In the fall of 1943 she partook in a published
debate sponsored by the American Economic Foundation. Her
opponent was Oswald Garrison Villard, former editor of The Nation, and
the question at hand, “Collectivism or Individualism—which promises
postwar progress?” She sold a very condensed version of her “Manifesto”
to the Committee for Constitutional Government, which placed it in
Reader’s Digest as “The Only Road to Tomorrow.” Soon to become a
font of popular anti-Communism, Reader’s Digest helped Rand become
identifi ed as an overtly political author. 52
Still, Rand feared she wasn’t reaching her kind of readers. Most distressing
were the ads for The Fountainhead, which presented the book as
an epic romance rather than a serious treatment of ideas. She fi red off an
angry letter to Archie Ogden, detailing her dissatisfaction. Before long
she took action herself, resurrecting her earlier political crusade, but now
tying it directly to the fortunes of her novel. As she explained to Emery,
she wanted to become the right-wing equivalent of John Steinbeck: “Let
our side now build me into a ‘name’—then let me address meetings,
head drives, and endorse committees. . . . I can be a real asset to our ‘reactionaries.’
” The key would be promoting The Fountainhead as an ideological
and political novel, something Bobbs-Merrill would never do. 53
Rand was careful to explain that her ambitions were not merely
personal. The problem, she explained to Emery and several other correspondents,
was that the intellectual fi eld was dominated by a “Pink-
New-Deal-Collectivist blockade” that prevented other views from being
heard. This was why books like The Fountainhead were so important: If
it went “over big, it will break the way for other writers of our side.” Rand
was convinced “the people are with us”; it was leftist intellectuals who
stood in the way. 54 She set up meetings with executives at DuPont and the
National Association of Manufacturers and pressed Monroe Shakespeare
to pass her book along to Fulton Lewis Jr., a right-wing radio host.
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