The Journals of Ayn Rand (135 page)

At the time, AR had already made a few notes for
To Lorne Dieterling.
In
Atlas Shrugged,
the focus was on the whole of society, and the
philosophic issues were dealt with explicitly. In
To Lorne Dieterling,
the focus is on the heroine, Hella, and her sense of life.
]

First notes for:
To Lorne Dieterling.

Basic theme:
The story of a woman who is totally motivated by love for values—and how one maintains such a state when alone in an enemy world.

 

Next step of theme:
The whole issue of values and of happiness. The role of values in human psychology, in the relationships among men and in the events of their lives. What it means to “live for one’s own sake”—shown not on a social-political scale, but in men’s personal lives.

As a consequence, show the manner in which men betray their values, and show the results. Select, for the characters of the story, the key versions of men’s attitudes toward values.

The hidden, basic issue here will be: effort or non-effort, or
happiness versus non-effort. The issue “to think or not to think” takes actual form, existentially and psychologically, as the issue: “To value or to conform.
” It is not the independent thinker as such that people actually resent, but the independent value—which means: the person who feels intensely about his values. (This point will require long, detailed analysis here.)

 

The above are
pro-life people.
Hella and Lorne are rational; the rest are the better types of social-metaphysicians.

On the “below-zero” side are the
pro-death
people—the actual haters of life and values.

The story must show:
that the death-premisers are actually after nothing, that they achieve nothing but a senseless, meaningless vacuum, that their horror is their mediocrity; and that
they
are the value-setters of a society of social-metaphysicians. (The rational men do not “take care” of other men; the thinkers require thinking men. It is only the most profoundly dependent social-metaphysicians, the power-lusters, who will undertake to “think for others.” As a consequence, the value-betrayers in the story—the men who gave up values for the sake of “safety,” on the ground that “others know best”—find, in the end, that their treason and all of their torture were for no better purpose than to have the world obey “Uncle Ed‘s” opinion on cigarettes. Or, as another example: the girl who renounces the man she loves, because of her mother’s objections—finds that her mother’s ultimate purpose was to stay in bed an hour later than usual “on whim.”)

 

The story must also show:
that the value-betrayers end up by achieving the exact opposite of the goals they sought to achieve by social-metaphysical means.

Here there are two separate aspects to consider: Whether these men have some semi-rationally selected goal and believe (emotionally) that social-metaphysics is the means—or whether in their very selection of goals, they chose the socially prescribed, chose it uncritically, as a self-evident, irreducible primary. (I believe it is more this second. As an example: the “practical man” who chooses wealth and material success without any thought of “why?” or “what for?,” simply on some such feeling as “it’s
good
to be successful, everybody wants to be successful, how can that be doubted?”—which amounts to the feeling: “one is
supposed
to be successful.” Another example: the woman who has children without ever questioning whether she wants to have them—simply on the feeling that “one is supposed to have children.”)

The “practical man” goes bankrupt.

The “glamorizer” is viciously betrayed by his “best friend” (or wife) and suffers a terrible tragedy.

The “idealist” becomes the particular “cat’s paw” of the villains in their attempted destruction of ideals.

Gloria Thomton—whose “ego-value” was her competence in the achievement of any values prescribed by society, who obeyed, adjusted and conformed in the expectation that “others” (or “reality”) would reward her with happiness—finds herself empty, exhausted, enjoying nothing and reaching a state of chronic panic.

 

Examples of value-betraying
(these are random examples of the things I hate most):

The man who, in middle-life, finds the woman he could be truly in love with, and passes her up because “it would upset his whole life.”

In the same category as above: the man who avoids any serious emotional commitment, who runs from anything that he could feel strongly about—for reasons such as: “I would be afraid to lose it” or: “It would hurt me too much to lose it,” etc.—the man who deliberately chooses the second-rate and second-best, the man who
seeks
dullness and mediocrity.

The man who says: “I don’t want to be happy, I just want to be contented—happiness is too demanding, exaltation is too difficult to bear.”

The man who says: “Don’t take anything too seriously,” and, later and more accurately: “I don’t take myself seriously.”

The man who says: “There is no black and white. All men are gray.” (With the result that he then proceeds to a mawkish, hysterical defense of any depravity as “not wholly black”—and to a malicious resentment against any man who is wholly white, and more: against any
claim
that any man
can
be wholly white.)

The man who excuses (and sanctions and accepts) another man’s evil action by claiming that the actor’s motives or intentions were good.

The man who believes that ideals are “too good for this earth.” His variants are: “If it’s good, it’s doomed,” or: “If it’s successful, it can’t be good,” or: “If
I
want it, it’s impossible.”

Any believer in any sort of compromise.

Any man who believes that mankind is essentially, metaphysically evil—and proceeds to make terms with the evil. (Any “appeaser.”)

 

Hella’s dedication to the “curse” of always seeing things “as they ought to be.” (“The Archer” prologue.)

The Hella-Lorne romance—and breach.

Hella learning of Lome’s engagement to Gloria at Gloria’s birthday party; Lome following Hella to her home and their scene. (“It is only my pain—and I can take care of it.”)

Hella’s work on her book—the excruciating loneliness—the discovery of “her own world,” her “dates” with Lorne “as they should have been.”

The publication of the book—the general fury against her—the torture scene. (“This is our wedding-night, even if such is the only form of it that I can have.”)

The walk through the woods. (“To keep moving, just to keep moving ... just to take the next step ...”) The collapse—the enraptured rededica tion. (“No, I don’t regret it....”—the “all right, even this” answer to every past torture.) Lome joins her. (“I have not asked you to forgive me.” “To forgive you? For what?”)

[On January 1, 1963, AR attached the following comment to these notes:
]

The above notes are
totally wrong
for this story. The approach in them is too broad and transforms the story into a wide-scale,
social
novel (by presenting the stories of all the other types, of all the variants). This turns it into a novel about
men ’s attitude toward values
—and
not
the story of
one valuer.
These notes may be used only as source material for the lesser characters of the supporting cast. This is
not
the right statement of the theme.
[After twelve years of work on
Atlas Shrugged,
AR, it seems, had automatized the approach to a wide-scale, social novel.
]

 

 

New statement of theme:
the art of psychological survival in a malevolent world; the art of spiritual self-sufficiency.

To think over:
the principles (and definitions) of how one knows what depends on oneself, and how one reacts to existential events which are not wholly dependent on oneself; what one aims to achieve as rewards; the preservation of action and goals in the world without dependence on others (without the torture of hope) and
without subjectivism.

Hella as a dancer
(projecting her view of man and of his relationship to existence, the stylized and benevolent universe).

The
real essence
of the story is to be the universe of my “tiddlywink” music, of the “Traviata Overture” and “Simple Confession,” of
my
sense of life. [
“Tiddlywink” music was AR’s name for her favorite lighthearted popular tunes from the turn of the century.
]

Use the incident of Good Copy as a psychological key. [The “incident” occurred when Good Copy was read in a 1958 fiction-writing seminar given by AR. Some of the students regarded the story as philosophically superficial or meaningless because it was lighthearted and cheerful; AR explained that such a criticism was based on the malevolent universe premise (see
The Early Ayn Rand).]

Lorne as the man who sacrifices values for the sake of “living on earth”—for the sake of action, motivated by a passionate pro-life premise, an unbreached (“Narcissus”-like) self-esteem, but thrown off by the wrong premise of taking action as a primary.