The Journals of Ayn Rand
by Ayn Rand 
, David Harriman (Editor)
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Rarely has a writer and thinker of the stature of Ayn Rand afforded us access to her most intimate thoughts and feelings. From Journals of Ayn Rand, we gain an invaluable new understanding and appreciation of the woman, the artist, and the philosopher, and of the enduring legacy she has left us.Rand comes vibrantly to life as an untried screenwriter in Hollywood, creating stories that reflect her youthful vision of the world. We see her painful memories of communist Russia and her struggles show more to convey them in We the Living. Most fascinating is the intricate, step-by-step process through which she created the plots and characters of her two masterworks, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and the years of painstaking research that imbued the novels with their powerful authenticity. Complete with reflections on her legendary screenplay concerning the making of the atomic bomb and tantalizing descriptions of projects cut short by her death, Journals of Ayn Rand illuminates the mind and heart of an extraordinary woman as no biography or memoir ever could. On these vivid pages, Ayn Rand lives. show lessTags
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Ayn Rand was an endless fount of brilliantly original ideas. This book is a collection of her exploratory (and occasionally final) thoughts, from 1927 through the 1960s, on a variety of subjects. Journals includes her work on a movie she planned to write about the atomic bomb project—on The Moral Basis of Individualism, her first attempt at a systematic, non-fiction presentation of her ethics—on her notes for a post-Atlas novel titled To Loren Dieterling.
Leonard Peikoff writes in the Foreword: "One great pleasure in reading the book is to see hints of later discoveries mentioned at first casually, even parenthetically. . . . In terms of cognitive value to the reader, the new material alone in this volume warrants the price. It is show more new to me also. No matter how clear Objectivism is in my mind, every time I read another Ayn Rand book, it becomes clearer. This book is no exception." show less
Leonard Peikoff writes in the Foreword: "One great pleasure in reading the book is to see hints of later discoveries mentioned at first casually, even parenthetically. . . . In terms of cognitive value to the reader, the new material alone in this volume warrants the price. It is show more new to me also. No matter how clear Objectivism is in my mind, every time I read another Ayn Rand book, it becomes clearer. This book is no exception." show less
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179+ Works 76,436 Members
Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982 Novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was born Alice Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia. She graduated with highest honors in history from the University of Petrograd in 1924, and she came to the United States in 1926 with dreams of becoming a screenwriter. In 1929, she married actor Charles "Frank" O'Connor. show more After arriving in Hollywood, Rand was spotted by Cecil B. DeMille standing at the gate of his studio and gave her a job as an extra in King of Kings. She also worked as a script reader and a wardrobe girl and, in 1932, she sold Red Pawn to Universal Studios. In the 1950's, she returned to New York City where she hosted a Saturday night group she called "the collective." It was also during this time that Rand received a fan letter from a young man, Nathaniel Branden. She was impressed with his letter, and she wrote him back. Her correspondence with him eventually led to an affair that lasted over a decade. He became her chief spokesperson and codified the principles of her novels into a strict philosophical system (objectivism) and founded an institute bearing his name. Their affair ended in 1968 when Branden got involved with another one of Rand's disciples. According to Rand, people are inherently selfish and act only out of personal interest making a selfish act, a rational one. It is from this belief that her characters play out their lives. Rand's first novel was "We the Living" (1936) and was followed by "Anthem" (1938), "The Fountainhead" (1943), and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957). All four of her novels made the top ten of the controversial list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. On March 6, 1982, Ayn Rand died in her New York City apartment. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Ayn Rand has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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- Original publication date
- 1997-09
- First words
- (Foreword by Leonard Peikoff): Ayn Rand's Journals – my name to her novels to herself through the decades – is the bulk of her still unpublished work, arranged chronologically.
(Editor's Preface): In a note to herself at the age of twenty-three, AR wrote: "From now on – no thought whatever about yourself, only about your work."
(1) The Switchman's Story: Schockley - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)It is fitting, therefore, that her last fiction notes are about a woman like herself, who maintains such a view of life to the end, even while those around her do not.
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