To Barbara Branden With Love


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Since Barbara won't get back to writing "[the] novel which I thought sounded like THE novel which was her personal song," I'll tell the title. I thought it was so perfect for Barbara to write:

One True Chord

Ellen

Ellen,

Did Barbara send you the outline? Or a description?

It would be lovely if you could find it and post it.

Michael

She didn't want to say much about the content, but she might have dropped some hints.

I'm immersed in collecting material for a meeting on Monday, and I have to finish doing that before searching through my old files.

Unfortunately, those files are disorganized, since they're from a time when I had to keep doing hasty dumps of stuff onto external drives to keep ahead of space limitations.

I think that the time Barbara got the book idea was when she went home to Winnipeg for Leonard Peikoff's mother's funeral. (Barbara had remained good friends with Leonard's mother.) Brant - or anyone - would you happen to recall what year this was? A time frame would help with my searching.

Ellen

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Barbara's problem in writing the novel was that she was constantly editing as she wrote, rather than allowing her subconscious to freely generate the first draft. In her talk at the Free Minds summer seminar in Anaheim in July 2011, Barbara also noted that the further into the writing of Atlas Shrugged that Rand got, the task become more and more difficult, for the same reason.

REB

P.S. -- Barbara's talk 2011 talk was entitled "Psycho-Epistemology and Principles of Efficient Thinking Today." I have transcribed this talk and the Q-A session, and I will make it available to her estate for possible inclusion in or adaptation for her Efficient Thinking book.

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Leonard's mother, Bessie Peikoff, died Tuesday June 12, 2001 in Henderson, Nevada at the age of 91.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2001/jun/14/obituaries-for-june-14-2001/

Here's the obituary Roger linked:

Bessie Peikoff

Bessie Peikoff, 91, of Henderson died Tuesday [June 12] in a local care center. She was born Feb. 15, 1910, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A resident for 28 years, she was a homemaker.

She is survived by two sons, Dr. Michael Peikoff of Henderson and Leonard Peikoff of Irvine, Calif.; one sister, Mary Robinson of Winnipeg; and four grandchildren.

Palm Mortuary, 7600 S. Eastern Ave., is handling arrangements.

Much obliged , Roger!

With the help of the date, I found an Atlantis post from Barbara in which she announced that she'd be away for the funeral:

Subject: ATL: I'll be away

Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 15:02:47 EDT

From: BB...

I will be out of town from tomorrow until the following

Sunday, so I won't be responding to Atlantis or other mail.

An aunt of mine has died, and I will be attending the

funeral in Winnipeg. (So will Peikoff.)

For those who think it unwise for me to publicize my

absence, I'll say that someone will be in my home as Cat

Sitter Extraordinary.

Barbara

Back to looking... (The project might take awhile.)

Ellen

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I found some correspondence I had with Barbara from just before she left for her aunt's funeral, then resuming when she returned.

Doesn't look like it was at that time that she got the idea for "One True Chord."

Instead, the main subject upon her return was the mystery dominating attention on ATL - the identity of Roland Pericles.

Ellen

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I found some correspondence I had with Barbara from just before she left for her aunt's funeral, then resuming when she returned.

Doesn't look like it was at that time that she got the idea for "One True Chord."

Instead, the main subject upon her return was the mystery dominating attention on ATL - the identity of Roland Pericles.

Ellen

Mild coincidence that Jeff's birthday is today.

--Brant

I don't think his health is the best

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Many years ago, I wrote a novel called “Price No Object.” It’s theme was loyalty to values, a trait exemplified by the heroine of the novel who continued to fight for her values no matter what price she had to pay, no matter what the odds against her. For her, price was no object. The novel could have been dedicated to Michael Kelly.

Since Barbara won't get back to writing "[the] novel which I thought sounded like THE novel which was her personal song," I'll tell the title. I thought it was so perfect for Barbara to write:

One True Chord

Ellen

Sounds like there's a couple "posthumous" works her heir(s) ought to publish. I know I'd like to give her novel a try, and maybe they could include the incomplete work as an appendix. They could do it via Kindle without much investment, I'm sure it will sell enough to break even (that wouldn't take much), and may even catch on big via word of mouth.

If anyone here is in touch with her estate, kindly pass on the suggestion.

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The title of her unpublished novel was Price No Object.

I didn't like it--the title--back then--really didn't like it--but had no idea of the content behind it. Knowing nothing more today I'd say I'd prefer something like The Price. "No Object" seems to reveal too much from the start. Chop it off and you've much more of a mystery, an invitation to find out the what behind the it. If it had been published, the title might have been changed, but we'll never know. I sorta think of it as California superficiality while acknowledging it's unfair to the author. I still want to be disabused of the notion.

In the mid 1970s Barbara lived for a year or two on New York's east side. I don't know why--she visited my monthly therapy group run by Nathaniel in September 1976 (one of his clients was anti-Semitic ["New York Jew"] which she hated but mostly held her tongue [Nathaniel: You can tell me things here I'd react quite differently to if you were to tell me them on the street--Barbara, I would too])--but it might have at least partially been an attempt to find a NY publisher. Considerably later on I saw her on a popular NY TV show with a gracious host--sorry I forget his name and the name of his show--a small engaging man with a cultural-literary orientation--and I forget the subject of conversation (post Passion)--but Barbara mentioned having trouble with writer's block. Commonly understood--she mentioned this more than once over the years--her big trouble with writing fiction was plot construction and gloried in the way Ayn's life came with a big plot built right into it (along with a great climax).

--Brant

Now I remember why I had such a strong, instantaneous and negative reaction to the title of Barbara's novel when I first heard of it decades ago: I took it to be a common if not everyday cliche. There was no sense of something new and a strong sense of bromide. Understand, I had not the slightest idea of the content. I also had and have a visceral hang up on the very idea. (I probably need to explore this; I just haven't thought about it for 40 years.) Eventually I read that those who were privileged to read it liked the novel very much. To have come up with a better title, though, I would have had to have read it in manuscript and been older and more experienced and educated about this sort of thing. When Frank O'Connor suggested the working title of Rand's novel "The Strike" be changed to "Atlas Shrugged," he pulled it out of a sub-section's title. He knew the work from the inside out. All I have still is the outside in for Barbara's novel and I have not been in.

--Brant

explore "price no object": What does she mean?; about what?; tell me what; why not a question mark with it (Price No Object?)?; I gotta know right now!; I'm pissed off!; if a novel is a passenger train the title should be like a passenger train stopped at the station not roaring through at 80mph with no way to get on board--it's too dynamic; am I a dynamic person?; maybe this is more me than the title; etc. (This is sentence completion with the sentence stems omitted--graduate level)

Edited by Brant Gaede
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Ellen, as to when Barbara worked on her novel, "Price, No Object," I'm pretty sure it was in the early 1970s. I either heard her say this, or saw it in writing somewhere. Darned if I can recall when or where I heard/saw it, though...

[Rummaging through e-files...]

OK, found it. In July 2011, Barbara spoke to the Free Minds summer seminar in Anaheim. Just last week, I transcribed her talk (available on YouTube), which was entitled "Psycho-Epistemology and Principles of Efficient Thinking Today," and she said this:

"In the early 70s, I wrote a novel, which is in my desk drawer, and it will stay there. I had learned, in my years with Ayn Rand, to be very wary of my subconscious, because I couldn’t control it. I could control what I said and what I did, so I was…I didn’t let my subconscious run me at all, even when I was trying to write a novel, and so I was editing at every step. I never did anything so difficult in my life. It was as if I chose each word or each paragraph by conscious thought, which you cannot do. When…and so, the novel…the beginning was very labored, very, very difficult, and it got better as I went along and learned more to trust myself. But it never was what I really wanted."

So, there you have it, from the horse's mouth, so to speak...

REB

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BTW, I just today finished transcribing Barbara's 1996 talk, "To Think or Not to Think" (also available on YouTube). It's a marvelous talk, a nicely compressed 46 minutes of psycho-epistemology and efficient thinking ideas. It is definitely in the "mass market" and "general reader" vein that she said (in 2011) she wanted her Efficient Thinking book to be. I think it would be a great lead-off to the other lectures, or perhaps an appendix. Actually, it could easily be marketed, along with the 2011 manuscript, as an e-book. That might be the best way to whet the appetite of the general reader and create a market for a book containing the 10 lectures.

I'm going to offer these two transcripts with her estate and see what they want to do with them.

RE

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When Frank O'Connor suggested the working title of Rand's novel "The Price" be changed to "Atlas Shrugged," he pulled it out of a sub-section's title. He knew the work from the inside out. All I have still is the outside in for Barbara's novel.

--Brant

I suppose you mean "The Strike."

Thanks.

--Brant

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Ellen, as to when Barbara worked on her novel, "Price, No Object," I'm pretty sure it was in the early 1970s. I either heard her say this, or saw it in writing somewhere. Darned if I can recall when or where I heard/saw it, though...

Different book. She wrote Price, No Object, then "put it in a drawer." The book I'm talking about is one she got the idea for, then sketched in white heat, but then was dissuaded by her agent from writing.

I've found the date. It was earlier than I thought, on a trip when she gave a speech, not the trip when her aunt died.

It was in August 2000.

I misremember the middle word of the title. The actual title was One Clear Chord.

Here's an excerpt from the letter to her agent:

Well now, I've decided that history will have to muddle along without me until I finish the novel, which I've entitled ONE CLEAR CHORD. The title is from Oscar Wilde's poem:

"Surely there was a time I might have trod the sunlit heights

And from life's dissonance struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God.

I did but touch the honey of romance

And must I lose a soul's inheritance..."

I copied the above excerpt from my reply to an email Barbara sent me which included a copy of the email she'd sent to her agent. I found my reply because I happened to have a text file of it on the desktop of an old laptop the contents of which I could search - search isn't working on my old main computer.

Now I know which files to look through for the original email from Barbara, but I'll have to do that tomorrow evening or Tuesday.

Ellen

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Re "Price, no object," it's a phrase Rand uses someplace in Atlas as an expression of high morality, willingness to devote one's all.

Ellen

Interesting. Here is the quote, "she" being Dagny:

She felt the whole struggle of her past rising before her and dropping away, leaving her here, on the height of this moment. She smiled—and the words in her mind, appraising and sealing the past, were the words of courage, pride and dedication, which most men had never understood, the words of a businessman's language: "Price no object." (AS, 1065)

I think that saying or thinking "price no object" would be very rare for real-world businessmen. It might occur when there is no alternative. However, there are usually alternatives, and costs matter.

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Re "Price, no object," it's a phrase Rand uses someplace in Atlas as an expression of high morality, willingness to devote one's all.

Ellen

Interesting. Here is the quote, "she" being Dagny:

She felt the whole struggle of her past rising before her and dropping away, leaving her here, on the height of this moment. She smiled—and the words in her mind, appraising and sealing the past, were the words of courage, pride and dedication, which most men had never understood, the words of a businessman's language: "Price no object." (AS, 1065)

I think that saying or thinking "price no object" would be very rare for real-world businessmen. It might occur when there is no alternative. However, there are usually alternatives, and costs matter.

There was a lot Ayn Rand didn't understand or put aside understanding about business and businessmen for the sake of her novel. For a businessman price is often the only object--point of reference--sometimes to the point of purblindedness. Price is the great operative advantage of free markets for if you can't make a profit you go out of business. Taken literally, Rand's statement is simply false. "Price no object" is the language of a hero being heroic, but it could also be the operative language of a psychopath or drug addict--and is more likely to be. And of course price in money is only one way to denote a price quite aside from the fact that everything costs something. I sure do wish Barbara's novel had been titled "The Price" instead, in the sense I'd hunger more to read it off it than the other, assuming I'd be reading it at all, for I don't want to go through life drooling for something I cannot have. Instead I can live, for me, with my current state of curiosity.

--Brant

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Re "Price, no object," it's a phrase Rand uses someplace in Atlas as an expression of high morality, willingness to devote one's all.

Ellen

Interesting. Here is the quote, "she" being Dagny:

She felt the whole struggle of her past rising before her and dropping away, leaving her here, on the height of this moment. She smiled—and the words in her mind, appraising and sealing the past, were the words of courage, pride and dedication, which most men had never understood, the words of a businessman's language: "Price no object." (AS, 1065)

I think that saying or thinking "price no object" would be very rare for real-world businessmen. It might occur when there is no alternative. However, there are usually alternatives, and costs matter.

There was a lot Ayn Rand didn't understand or put aside understanding about business and businessmen for the sake of her novel. For a businessman price is often the only object--point of reference--sometimes to the point of purblindedness. Price is the great operative advantage of free markets for if you can't make a profit you go out of business. Taken literally, Rand's statement is simply false. "Price no object" is the language of a hero being heroic, but it could also be the operative language of a psychopath or drug addict--and is more likely to be. And of course price in money is only one way to denote a price quite aside from the fact that everything costs something. I sure do wish Barbara's novel had been titled "The Price" instead, in the sense I'd hunger more to read it off it than the other, assuming I'd be reading it at all, for I don't want to go through life drooling for something I cannot have. Instead I can live, for me, with my current state of curiosity.

--Brant

Price *is* operative in economics/business, when you're ranking your values in a hierarchy, as means to an end, as subsidiary values to the ultimate value. But it's precisely when you're considering your ultimate value and/or something you cannot do without, then you will risk and willingly pay everything or anything in order to have it.

Even businessmen may face situations in which they will do this, because without that thing, the game is over. They lay it all on the line, knowing that they may fail and have to start over. But that if they don't do so, they couldn't live with themselves for abandoning something they highly valued. "Price no object."

That's how I understand it, anyway.

However, another common meaning is: "I know it's expensive, and that many people would consider it a frightful indulgence, but I don't care. I want it, because it will make me or my loved one happy." In this case, "price no object" simply means I don't care if you're "gouging" or "scalping" me, I want it. There you're not investing everything you have, just more than most people think someone "should."

REB

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Re "Price, no object," it's a phrase Rand uses someplace in Atlas as an expression of high morality, willingness to devote one's all.

Ellen

Interesting. Here is the quote, "she" being Dagny:

She felt the whole struggle of her past rising before her and dropping away, leaving her here, on the height of this moment. She smiled—and the words in her mind, appraising and sealing the past, were the words of courage, pride and dedication, which most men had never understood, the words of a businessman's language: "Price no object." (AS, 1065)

It's on pg. 1159 of the original Random House hardcover, in a segment which starts on pg. 1158 with the words "There were not many lights on the earth below." A few paragraphs later the lights of New York City go out.

"She knew that now, at this hour, their plane was carrying all that was left of New York City."

Ellen

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Ellen wrote of BB:

Instead, the main subject upon her return was the mystery dominating attention on ATL – the identity of Roland Pericles.

end quote

It is amusing when someone reenters a site using an assumed name but I have never liked the subterfuge. Sometimes it seems akin to fraud. Here is an old mention of various made-up names. I remember Helena Handbasket. I think she played a wind instrument.

Pewter Mug

From: "Jeff Olson" <jlolson@cal.net>

To: "atlantis" <atlantis@wetheliving.com>

Subject: ATL: Two quickly brush-stroked rights-theories (was: Doris' Epiphany)

Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 18:52:07 -0700

Mr. Geek inquires:

"I'm new to the list. Would you give me the quick brush strokes on either or both of these theories?"

First, Mr. Geek, may I ask if you're related to "Lilah Kerrug," "Helena Handbasket," "Sheila Ikes Ithot," "M. Bobcrist Jorrhay," "Roland Pericles," or even "Jason Alexander" (the one who *actually* has quotemarks around his name)? If so, then the odds of your appreciating these two theories are greatly improved. If not, please disregard the above.

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Ellen wrote:

Re "Price, no object," it's a phrase Rand uses someplace in Atlas as an expression of high morality, willingness to devote one's all.

end quote

There were some prequel short stories to “Atlas Shrugged.” They were: “Atlas Struggled,” followed by “Atlas Got Steamed.”

I hope that minor joke doesn’t pea anybody off.

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Since I had a bit of time to spare before Larry and I leave for a meeting we're attending, I did further searching for Barbara's email about her projected novel, One Clear Chord.

I can't find the email, and I'm afraid that it was in a folder which I threw out when I was tight for disk space. The date, which I've now established as late August 2000, was during the time frame of the material in that folder.

I'll look again hoping I filed the email someplace completely weird, but I'm not expecting to find it at this point.

Best I can do is to copy part of a follow-up note from Barbara. I'd written to her asking how things were going. She replied in part:

Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 14:29:22 -0400 (EDT)

From: BB...

Subject: Re: Just Saying Hi

Dear Ellen,

All is going very well indeed for me. I've completed one-and-a-half chapters of my novel--although of course I'll probably have to rewrite chapter one when I finish. I'm having a very good time with it. IT'S FLOWING!!! So far, says she with a small burst of terror. The trouble with being my kind of writer--the inspirational kind--is that I only partly control the inspiration. I don't mean that I wait for the muse before I go to my desk; I'm there all day, no matter what. I well know that that's where inspiration happens, and besides, I can write something no matter what.

I find that the more I think about the nature of creative writing, the more control I have. Something totally wonderful happened with about the last third of PASSION. I would be about to start a new sequence, and have no idea how I would begin it, what the hook would be to what had happened and what was to happen. So, before I went to sleep, I'd tell my subconscious to know, when I woke, how to begin it. And it worked! I'd wake up and discover that I was writing the sequence in my head, and that most of it was there. It can't hurt to pray a lot that that will happen with the novel.

[The rest was about other goings-on.]

Barbara

I found an email in which I mentioned to a mutual friend that Barbara had told me when Larry and I were visiting her in Santa Fe September 16 and 17, 2001, about her agent's dissuading her from continuing with the novel then. The agent had urged the financial need for something more immediately commercial, like the Ayn Rand and Friends book Barbara had been working on before she got the idea for the novel.

I'd meanwhile periodically asked Barbara how work was going on the novel, but she'd never replied to that question, so I'd figured that she was stuck or that something else had gone awry with her progress.

Ellen

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Since I had a bit of time to spare before Larry and I leave for a meeting we're attending, I did further searching for Barbara's email about her projected novel, One Clear Chord.

I can't find the email, and I'm afraid that it was in a folder which I threw out when I was tight for disk space. The date, which I've now established as late August 2000, was during the time frame of the material in that folder.

I'll look again hoping I filed the email someplace completely weird, but I'm not expecting to find it at this point.

Best I can do is to copy part of a follow-up note from Barbara. I'd written to her asking how things were going. She replied in part:

Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 14:29:22 -0400 (EDT)

From: BB...

Subject: Re: Just Saying Hi

Dear Ellen,

All is going very well indeed for me. I've completed one-and-a-half chapters of my novel--although of course I'll probably have to rewrite chapter one when I finish. I'm having a very good time with it. IT'S FLOWING!!! So far, says she with a small burst of terror. The trouble with being my kind of writer--the inspirational kind--is that I only partly control the inspiration. I don't mean that I wait for the muse before I go to my desk; I'm there all day, no matter what. I well know that that's where inspiration happens, and besides, I can write something no matter what.

I find that the more I think about the nature of creative writing, the more control I have. Something totally wonderful happened with about the last third of PASSION. I would be about to start a new sequence, and have no idea how I would begin it, what the hook would be to what had happened and what was to happen. So, before I went to sleep, I'd tell my subconscious to know, when I woke, how to begin it. And it worked! I'd wake up and discover that I was writing the sequence in my head, and that most of it was there. It can't hurt to pray a lot that that will happen with the novel.

[The rest was about other goings-on.]

Barbara

I found an email in which I mentioned to a mutual friend that Barbara had told me when Larry and I were visiting her in Santa Fe September 16 and 17, 2001, about her agent's dissuading her from continuing with the novel then. The agent had urged the financial need for something more immediately commercial, like the Ayn Rand and Friends book Barbara had been working on before she got the idea for the novel.

I'd meanwhile periodically asked Barbara how work was going on the novel, but she'd never replied to that question, so I'd figured that she was stuck or that something else had gone awry with her progress.

Ellen

Ellen:

This may seem like a dumb question and it might be something you do not care to share: do you think it bothered BB that you were not a self-identifying Objectivist?

Clearly, it didn't bother her in the broad sense, but did she ever seemed concerned why/why not?

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