Dammit! Why Do They Still Read Her? BBC August 17, 2012


Selene

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Very interesting article...this quote jumped off the "page"

Atlas Shrugged is her magnum opus, set in an undated American future, although it is reminiscent of the 1950s. The strike by millionaire tycoons is orchestrated by the Christ-like figure of John Galt, who towards the end of the novel makes a 60-page speech that took Rand two years to write.


http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19280545

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Speaking of your pulled quote specifically...

I very much know that great work takes time but at the same time I'm also cynical when certain things take months/years to produce when my internal estimator says it should only take weeks /months. For example, artists who say that they need 6-8 months to do a single persons portrait. Come on guy, buckle down and crank that thing out in 1 month tops, more like 2-3 weeks. So when I hear that it took her 2 years to write 60 pages.... that really seems like a lot of time, like she really wasn't focused on that one thing, like she wasn't writing everyday. Stephen King would have written 3000 pages in that same time. Maybe that is an exaggeration but what do you think?

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Speaking of your pulled quote specifically...

I very much know that great work takes time but at the same time I'm also cynical when certain things take months/years to produce when my internal estimator says it should only take weeks /months. For example, artists who say that they need 6-8 months to do a single persons portrait. Come on guy, buckle down and crank that thing out in 1 month tops, more like 2-3 weeks. So when I hear that it took her 2 years to write 60 pages.... that really seems like a lot of time, like she really wasn't focused on that one thing, like she wasn't writing everyday. Stephen King would have written 3000 pages in that same time. Maybe that is an exaggeration but what do you think?

As Hemingway explained,

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

English is not her native language.

Do you think that Dali worked the way you do in terms of time?

A...

:

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Do you think that Dali worked the way you do in terms of time?

A...

Honestly don't know. I have one artist friend who really admired/admires Dali but I never really looked into him. Never bought any books on him, or any inspirational prints for the studio for that matter. But I would think that he was fast... I don't know why I would think that...

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Do you think that Dali worked the way you do in terms of time?

A...

Honestly don't know. I have one artist friend who really admired/admires Dali but I never really looked into him. Never bought any books on him, or any inspirational prints for the studio for that matter. But I would think that he was fast... I don't know why I would think that...

Precisely why I asked you.

We have no clue how a specific genius functions.

A...

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So when I hear that it took her 2 years to write 60 pages.... that really seems like a lot of time, like she really wasn't focused on that one thing, like she wasn't writing everyday. Stephen King would have written 3000 pages in that same time. Maybe that is an exaggeration but what do you think?

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is less than 30 pages. That might have taken longer than two years...

I think the effort of writing AS drained Ayn Rand. She poured her soul into it. It was a heroic effort. Perhaps the easy flow of words onto paper was not her strength.

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It's not the writing that takes the most time. It's the thinking that precedes the writing.

Are you a writer? (just curious)

I found that I could only write 3-4 days a week, usually best in the mornings. The other days and afternoons are rewrite, forward thinking, taking another look at punctuation and spelling, choice of words. Often I sit on a single sentence like a hen hatching an egg. The poetic meter matters. 3000 words a week of original fiction is a lot, working full-time without distractions. Mars Shall Thunder took six months in first draft, then a rewrite and polish years later.

Atlas Shrugged 645,000 words = 215 weeks (over 4 years) first draft = about 6 years with rewrite and polish

-- but that's computer keyboard speed. Rand used a typewriter, probably retyped every page

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Reidy questioned whether Rand wrote in longhand?

New Yorker: "In the mid-fifties, the Collective spent Saturday nights reading the six hundred and forty-five thousand words of Atlas Shrugged slowly rolling out of Rand’s typewriter. " http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/09/possessed-3

But Daryn Kent-Duncan says: "Barbara had been typing the manuscript of Atlas Shrugged but she now had a full time job elsewhere. So it was decided I would take over. Since I was far from a proficient typist, I was to be paid 25 cents a page while learning." http://www.atlassociety.org/atlas-shrugged/how-i-met-ayn-rand

and Mary Ann Sures relates that she typed from handwritten ms., too. [p.121 of Mayhew] http://books.google.com/books?id=KeDMPcqneS8C&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=Atlas+Shrugged+manuscript&source=bl&ots=EfQWsZCdH7&sig=oDXgx6e-O54jFcD9r7rI35x3APM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OsEIVOjGDYW2yATZxoL4DA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=snippet&q=manuscript&f=false

Gak! - 640,000 words handwritten!

The first thing that stuns a modern reader is the fact that, in addition to three epic novels, two plays, three screenplays, and a hundred published essays, Rand also wrote thousands of pages of grammatically correct, logically argued "notes" by hand. Heavens to mergatroid—nobody uses a pen any more! I'm not sure I could write a legible five-item grocery list by hand. No wonder it took her ten years to author Atlas Shrugged. Rand was born in 1905, and a pen and paper were to her familiar means of reasoning and expression. She probably regarded the ballpoint as a leading edge technology in the 1930's. Go ahead--try it—write a couple hundred words with a pen and see what happens. If you can produce five pages of cogent, readable fiction or philosophy by hand, I'll eat a bug. https://web.archive.org/web/20020610150119/http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.46/eggshell.html

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Wolf,

when you mentioned typwriter, I was like "yeah, thats probably a time killer." But when you mentioned long hand, that wasn't a surprise at all because I prefer to write long hand first as well. Its so much more intuitive to cross out sections, write in margins, add words with carots, draw long winding arrows connecting one sentence on one page to another on a different page. Been using that procedure (hand write then type) since high school

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Wolf,

when you mentioned typwriter, I was like "yeah, thats probably a time killer." But when you mentioned long hand, that wasn't a surprise at all because I prefer to write long hand first as well. Its so much more intuitive to cross out sections, write in margins, add words with carots, draw long winding arrows connecting one sentence on one page to another on a different page. Been using that procedure (hand write then type) since high school

Derek:

Were you exposed to the Head Start program?

A...

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Not that I remember but Head Start is prominent in Baltimore and also there isn't much I remember from those elementary and pre elementary days

Ok...I knew it was prevalent in Baltimore if you were brought up there, odds are you would have had the

"opportunity."

Thks

A...

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I think all 3 Rand biographies (and probably Nathan's My Years With Ayn Rand) mention the issue of the time it took Rand to write Atlas Shrugged. Considering its length (which is often brought up as a criticism by both fans and detracters), I find that a rather weak argument. On the side of Rand fans, we have the 10 (or is it 12 now?) volume, "Sword of Truth," novel series, by Terry Goodkind, a self-avowed Objectivist. Somewhere around volume 5, critics noticed an increasing "Randian" theme, including some of the characters launching into lengthy philosophical speeches, with some claiming that "Faith of rhe Fallen" is merely a rewrite of the themes and philosophy of The Fountainhed. I haven't counted rhe pages in this 12 volume novel, but each book appears to be at leasr 500+ pages. Incomparison, the length of Atlas Shrugged looks like a footnote or at least a Cliff's Note! On the Left, many novels also rival or surpass Atlas in lengrh, but few insert as many philosophical digressions..

As for the claim that Galt's speech took her two years to write, some of her biographers claim that it is an expansion (clarification?/distillation?/extrapolation?) of two earlier uncompleted manuscripts from the 1940s, "The Moral Basis of Individualism" and "The Individualist Manifesto" I think those were the proposed titles. You might think that that would make her task easier, but it did not. Both Nathaniel and Barbara mention this time period in their books, as one where Ayn was very hard to get along with (I'm thinking, You mean there was a time when she was easy to get along with?...Sorry!.) .

As forwhy she wrote in longhand, that is a mystery, as she was a typist when in Hollywood!

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Reidy questioned whether Rand wrote in longhand?

The manuscripts exist, the Library of Congress has them. One of the recent biographers infers from the poorer handwriting in the later parts of The Fountainhead manuscript that Rand had started using uppers then. Of course, she may simply have felt rushed, with a deadline approaching, I mean come on. It calls to mind a quote from Leonard Bernstein that to achieve something great you need two things: a plan, and not enough time.

However, we know that she typed her correspondence, since that's how so much of it was preserved (she used carbon paper to make copies).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Reidy questioned whether Rand wrote in longhand?

New Yorker: "In the mid-fifties, the Collective spent Saturday nights reading the six hundred and forty-five thousand words of Atlas Shrugged slowly rolling out of Rand’s typewriter. " http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/09/possessed-3

But Daryn Kent-Duncan says: "Barbara had been typing the manuscript of Atlas Shrugged but she now had a full time job elsewhere. So it was decided I would take over. Since I was far from a proficient typist, I was to be paid 25 cents a page while learning." http://www.atlassociety.org/atlas-shrugged/how-i-met-ayn-rand

and Mary Ann Sures relates that she typed from handwritten ms., too. [p.121 of Mayhew] http://books.google.com/books?id=KeDMPcqneS8C&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=Atlas+Shrugged+manuscript&source=bl&ots=EfQWsZCdH7&sig=oDXgx6e-O54jFcD9r7rI35x3APM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OsEIVOjGDYW2yATZxoL4DA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=snippet&q=manuscript&f=false

Gak! - 640,000 words handwritten!

The first thing that stuns a modern reader is the fact that, in addition to three epic novels, two plays, three screenplays, and a hundred published essays, Rand also wrote thousands of pages of grammatically correct, logically argued "notes" by hand. Heavens to mergatroid—nobody uses a pen any more! I'm not sure I could write a legible five-item grocery list by hand. No wonder it took her ten years to author Atlas Shrugged. Rand was born in 1905, and a pen and paper were to her familiar means of reasoning and expression. She probably regarded the ballpoint as a leading edge technology in the 1930's. Go ahead--try it—write a couple hundred words with a pen and see what happens. If you can produce five pages of cogent, readable fiction or philosophy by hand, I'll eat a bug. https://web.archive.org/web/20020610150119/http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.46/eggshell.html

I think my grandfather wrote out a million or two words on index cards while researching his Madison biography. (I doubt he was privileged to use a typewriter in the Library of Congress even though a US Senator, probably Paul Douglas, gave him leave to use the private room reserved for him.) His wife then typed his cards out on another set of index cards. About 20 years of such work. Then the manuscript was typed out volume by volume for six volumes total. Afterwards they produced a single volume condensed version.

--Brant

I just did a rough calculation: 370 words per page x roughly 2400 pages = 888,000 words (I assume that not all the researched material was used and there might have been duplication in the research [from more than one source])

Doing the same for AS pb I see 500 words per page 1072 pages or 550,000 words max (my previous was 620,000 a long time ago)

Edited by Brant Gaede
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However, we know that she typed her correspondence, since that's how so much of it was preserved (she used carbon paper to make copies).

Apparently she handwrote some of her correspondence - I have no idea what percentage.

See post #12, "The Fountainhead" thread. Brant says, post #13 that he "saw that letter on sale on eBay last year."

100 Voices

2010, New American Library

[pg. 45]

[from the interview with Marcella Rabwin (neé Bennett), the inspiration for Peter Keating]

Do you still have that or other letters?

I had one letter that was sooo marvelous. It was a long letter.

Was that a handwritten one?

Yes. I kept it and I kept it and I kept it and one day I was cleaning out my files. I was going to move and I was throwing everything away and I sold the letter. It broke my heart. I don't know why I did it, because by then she was very, very celebrated.

Another question in the interview, on pg, 43, asks "Did you ever see her write?"

Answer: "She wrote with pen and ink on a pad, a regular eight by ten."

Here's something from Heller's biography about the arrangement for typing Atlas Shrugged:

Ayn Rand and the World She Made

pg. 265

As the manuscript pages piled up, some of the women, including Mary Ann Sures [i think she was still Rukavina then, but I'm not sure], volunteered to work as part-time secretaries. Using Rand's ancient manual typewriter, "like an old tank," on the dining table in the O'Connors' foyer, Sures typed and retyped sections of the novel. The foyer was about ten paces from the study; sometimes, Sures recalled, when she and another helper were reading freshly typed pages to each other as a proofreading technique, they were aware of the author standing half hidden behind the study door, listening for narrative pace and rhythm. Unlike Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, she was scrupulous about paying her assistants for their work. Sures recalled that she gave them the going wage, down to the quarter hour.

Ellen

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I think the effort of writing AS drained Ayn Rand. She poured her soul into it. It was a heroic effort. Perhaps the easy flow of words onto paper was not her strength.

She told Barbara it was like "drips of water in the desert" torture writing Galt's Speech (quoting from memory).

That speech would have been deadly effort to write - the ideational complexity while maintaining the tone. I admit to not actually liking the tone, finding it strident. But as someone with much experience writing and editing, I'm keenly aware of how tormentuously difficult a writing challenge the speech presented.

Ellen

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She had to write it the way she wrote it or it wouldn't have fit the novel literarily.

--Brant

fed up with a spell checker that has less words than I have in my brain, and I don't claim to have that many, and I'm not that good a speller either, but time after time I get flagged for correctly spelled real words (helps with typos)

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Interesting sidelight to the Rabwin discussion: she (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcella_Rabwin) was fairly well-known in her own right. Her husband was the doctor who delivered Judy Garland. According to one biography, he had some months earlier talked her mother out of having an abortion.

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Speaking of Rand's typing (much of) her correspondence (see post #19), here's something puzzling from the Letters volume.

The first letter, dated August 28, 1926 - just before Rand left Chicago for Hollywood - was to Leo, whose last name wasn't known in 1995, when the book was published. The letter is described by the editor as "much-edited," "[hand]written in Russian and presumably recopied and then sent to Leo in Leningrad."

The second entry, dated June 18, 1927, "was written in English on a postcard and probably transcribed into Russian and sent to her family in Leningrad."

The editor then says:

Letters

pg. 3

[bold emphasis added]

Unfortunately, no other letters remain until 1934, when AR purchased a typewriter and began to make carbon copies of her correspondence.

So whose typewriter was Rand typing on when staying with her Chicago relatives and disturbing the family's sleep by typing during the night?

Did the typewriter belong to the family? Was it rented? Was it Rand's and subsequently broke?

Ellen

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