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More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.comFore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.comINDIVIDUALISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! 45own, but could be granted or withheld by the masses whom he served.In her novel Wynand would illustrate this principle, with his failingscontrasted starkly to Roark’s independence and agency.Her villain, Ellsworth Toohey, promised to transform Rand’s supposedlynonpolitical novel into a sharp satire on the leftist literary cultureof 1930s New York. One evening she and Frank reluctantly accompaniedtwo friends to a talk by the British socialist Harold Laski at the leftistNew School for Social Research. When Laski took the stage Rand wasthrilled. Here was Ellsworth Toohey himself! She scribbled frantically inher notebook, sketching out a brief picture of Laski’s face and noting hisevery tic and mannerism. She and Frank went back twice more in thefollowing evenings.Most of Rand’s notes on Laski’s lecture, and her resultant descriptionof Toohey, showcased her distaste for all things feminine. Rand wasrepelled by the women in the New School audience, whom she characterizedas sexless, unfashionable, and unfeminine. She and Frank scoffedat their dowdy lisle stockings, trading snide notes back and forth. Randwas infuriated most by the “intellectual vulgarity” of the audience,who seemed to her half-wits unable to comprehend the evil of Laski’ssocialism. What could be done about such a “horrible, horrible, horrible”spectacle, besides “perhaps restricting higher education, particularlyfor women?” she asked in her notes on the lecture. This misogynyrubbed off on Rand’s portrait of Toohey, who was insipidly feminine,prone to gossip, and maliciously catty “in the manner of a woman ora nance.” Through Toohey, Rand would code leftism as fey, effeminate,and unnatural, as opposed to the rough-hewn masculinity of Roark’sindividualism. 19Before she saw Laski, Toohey was an abstracted antithesis of Roark.But a socialist intellectual fit her purposes just as well, even as the characterizationshifted the novel ever closer to a commentary on currentevents. Laski was not the sole inspiration, for Rand also used bits ofthe American critics Heywood Broun, Lewis Mumford, and CliftonFadiman to round out Toohey’s persona. Fitting Toohey so squarelyinto the leftist literary culture signaled Rand’s emerging dual purposesfor the book and ensured that when it was finally published, thenovel would be understood as a political event as much as a literaryachievement.