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More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.comFore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com134FROM NOVELIST TO PHILOSOPHER, 1944–1957created a form response letter with brief biographical information tocope with the inundation. Occasionally, however, a letter impressed herenough that she would reach out to the writer. The first missives thatRand received from Nathaniel Blumenthal, a Canadian high school student,went unanswered. Blumenthal sounded like a confused socialist,and Rand had little time to tutor the ignorant. After entering UCLA as acollege freshman, Blumenthal wrote again. His interest in Rand had notabated. This letter and his persistence impressed Rand, so she requestedhis phone number. After a brief phone conversation, in March 1950 sheinvited him to Chatsworth. It was the start of an eighteen-year relationshipthat would transform Rand’s life and career.When she first met Nathaniel Blumenthal, Rand had made a good starton her third novel. In contrast to The Fountainhead, she planned AtlasShrugged rapidly, laying out the essentials of the plot and characters insix months during 1946, when she had a break from screenwriting. Fromthere it was simply a matter of filling in the details of the scenes she hadsketched out in a sentence or two. Regular cross-country trips helpedher visualize the book’s American setting. While driving back from NewYork, she and Frank visited Ouray, Colorado, a small town tucked in aseam of mountains. Right away Rand knew Ouray would be the modelfor her capitalist Shangri-la, the valley where her strikers would createtheir own utopian society.Over time Rand had developed ingenious methods to combat thesquirms. A visiting cousin was surprised to see Rand pricking her thumbwith a pin, drawing dots of blood. “It keeps my thoughts sharp,” sheexplained. At other times Rand would roam the Chatsworth grounds,picking up small stones along the way. Back in her study she sorted themaccording to color and size, filling the room with more than a hundred smallboxes of them. 3 Perhaps her most effective method was writing to music.She tied specific melodies to different characters, using the music to set theproper mood as she wrote their starring scenes. Rand selected mostly dramaticclassical pieces, so that as the plot thickened the music would reach acrescendo. Sometimes she found herself crying as she wrote.At first Rand thought of the book as a “stunt novel” that would simplyrecapitulate the themes of The Fountainhead, but before long she