Funny typo in My Years with AYn Rand

[Alfonso Jones]

I was just looking something up in My Years with Ayn Rand, and found the following on page 227, regarding Rand's new introduction (in 1958) to We the Living:

"It's basic theme," she wrote, "is the sanity of human life."

Read it again.... Sanity.

Of course, the original is "sanctity."

Alfonso (smiling)

[pbmaltzman]

I was just looking something up in My Years with Ayn Rand, and found the following on page 227, regarding Rand's new introduction (in 1958) to We the Living:

"It's basic theme," she wrote, "is the sanity of human life."

Read it again.... Sanity.

Of course, the original is "sanctity."

Alfonso (smiling)

And I'll bet the original read "Its basic theme" (possessive) rather than "It's basic theme" (contraction meaning "it is").

Just picking a nit. ;)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Don't you guys know that this is proof of immortality... er... immorality?

Michael

[Judith]

Don't you guys know that this is proof of immortality... er... immorality?

No, we know that this DISCUSSION is proof of ... oh, whatever.

Judith

(hater of dangling "this"s, or whatever they're called)

[Reidy]

AND it came out in 1959, not 1958.

Maybe Branden (having seen the manuscript) is right and the typo is in the intro as published.

[Chris Grieb]

Branden read We The Living shortly after he read The Fountainhead. He found it in the Toronto public library. I wonder if he questioned Ayn Rand about the changes.

[Alfonso Jones]

AND it came out in 1959, not 1958.

Maybe Branden (having seen the manuscript) is right and the typo is in the intro as published.

The 1958 is from Branden, page 227 --- "In December 1958, Ayn received her advance copies."

I think it quite natural to take Branden at his word, and to assume that though the advance copies got to Rand in December 1958, the official publication occurred in 1959.

I don't have a copy of a first edition, so I don't know for certain if it said sanity or sanctity, but it seems far more natural that sanctity is what was intended.

Alfonso

[Dragonfly]

I don't have a copy of a first edition, so I don't know for certain if it said sanity or sanctity, but it seems far more natural that sanctity is what was intended.

Of course it is a typo. In the earlier version of MYWAR, Judgment Day, it is correctly written as "sanctity". It's unbelievable, but apparently Valliant really missed this... a real contradiction between two of Branden's books! If that doesn't prove what an evil scoundrel he is...

[Alfonso Jones]

I don't have a copy of a first edition, so I don't know for certain if it said sanity or sanctity, but it seems far more natural that sanctity is what was intended.

Of course it is a typo. In the earlier version of MYWAR, Judgment Day, it is correctly written as "sanctity". It's unbelievable, but apparently Valliant really missed this... a real contradiction between two of Branden's books! If that doesn't prove what an evil scoundrel he is...

Dragonfly -

Thanks. I was beginning to fear that folks were finding it extremely difficult to see the obvious.

Alfonso Jones