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CHAPTER TWO
Individualists of the World, Unite!
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once she spotted the fi rst pink, Rand began to see them everywhere.
They had even infi ltrated the movie studios, she soon discovered.
Despite her success as a novelist and playwright, Rand could fi nd
no work in the lucrative fi lm industry, a failure she blamed on her outspoken
opposition to Soviet Russia. She turned instead to the novel that
would become The Fountainhead. Politics soon emerged as a welcome
distraction. As Roosevelt launched his historic program of government
reforms Rand watched closely. She read the New York newspapers regularly
and began dipping into the work of authors critical of the president.
By 1940 her interest in politics had become all-consuming. Fired
to action by the presidential campaign of Wendell Willkie she stopped
work on her novel and began volunteering full time for the New York
City Willkie Club.
The Willkie campaign helped Rand crystallize the political nature of
her work and resolve unarticulated tensions about American democracy
and capitalism that surfaced during her early work on The Fountainhead.
At fi rst Rand was hesitant to ascribe political meaning to the novel. She
wanted her new book to be philosophical and abstract, not rooted in
historic circumstance, as was We the Living. Nor was she certain of what
her political ideas were, beyond principled anti-Communism. Rand was
suspicious of both democracy and capitalism, unsure if either system
could be trusted to safeguard individual rights against the dangers of
the mob.
A few months’ immersion in the hurly-burly of American politics
washed away this cynicism. The campaign was an unexpected window
into her adopted country, spurring new understandings of American
history and culture. Afterward Rand began to praise America in terms
that would have been utterly alien to her only months before. Like any
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