Ayn Rand - The Early Ayn Rand

He looked at me silently for a long time, with the funniest expression on his face.

"You're mistaken, Hawkins," he said slowly at last, "it isn't Finnegan we're looking for — it's you!"

"Me?! Me? W-why?"

"Because you've got the Night King."

"What?!!"

"You've got it and what's more, you're going to return it."

"Who the hell told you that?"

"Mr. Stokes did. And I'm going to get in touch with him at once and tell him that we've got you."

"Mr. Stokes?!" I roared. "Mr. Stokes? Why, the guy's gone bugs! Call him, call him at once! He knows it's a lie! He ought to know!"

When I confronted Winton Stokes, he looked at me with that darned mocking smile of his twisting his mouth.

"What the hell does that mean?" I yelled. "You know damn well I didn't get your sparkler! You know it as well as I do, don'tcha?"

"That's just it," he said, so very kindly, "that's just the trouble: I happen to know a little more than you do."

The cops around were grinning so that their mouths almost reached their ears.

"What's the joke?" I asked furiously.

"Oh boy!" roared one of them.

"We owe the gentleman an explanation," said Winton Stokes. "You fooled me, Hawkins, and it's a compliment I don't pay to people often. I believed you to be an honest, trustworthy servant and I chose you for a very important mission. You see, I had to carry the Night King with me and I had to hide it in a place where no one would think of looking for it. I knew it wasn't safe anywhere on my person. By chance, you yourself gave me the idea for its hiding-place. But even though I trusted you, I didn't want to take any chances and give you any temptations. So I made you serve my purpose without your knowing it. The only person I had to trust with the secret was a good old friend of mine who happens to be a dentist. Well, the whole thing turned out to be more unusual than I had expected. Open your mouth!"

In the next moment I uttered a yell, the yell of a mad beast, and if the cops hadn't seized me in time, I would have jumped at Winton Stokes and murdered him on the spot: for I opened my mouth wide, he unscrewed something in it and there, in my teeth, in my own false teeth, was the Night King!

This story was written a year or more after "The Husband I Bought," probably sometime in 1927, when Ayn Rand was living at the Hollywood Studio Club, had obtained a position as a junior screenwriter for Cecil B. DeMille, and was just beginning to date Frank O'Connor, her future husband. The spirit of the story matches these auspicious events.

Miss Rand's silent-screen synopses from the 1920s — about a dozen remain — are examples of pure, even extravagant Romanticism. Most are imaginative adventure stories, with daring heroes, a strong love interest, non-stop action, and virtually no explicit philosophy- "Good Copy" is one of the few works of this type that are not scenarios- As such, it represents a major change in mood from "The Husband I Bought."

"The Husband I Bought" portrays the dedication of the passionate valuer, who will bear the greatest suffering, if necessary, rather than settle for something less than the ideal. "Good Copy" reminds us of another crucial aspect of Ayn Rand's philosophy: her view that suffering is an exception, not the rule of life. The rule, she held, should not be pain or even heroic endurance, but gaiety and lighthearted joy in living. It is on this premise that "Good Copy" was written.

I first heard the story some twenty-five years ago, when it was read aloud in a course on fiction-writing given by Ayn Rand to some young admirers. The class was told merely that this was a story by a beginning writer, and was asked to judge whether the writer had a future. Some students quickly grasped who the author was, but a number did not and were astonished, even indignant, when they found out. Their objection was not to the story's flaws but to its essential spirit. "It is so unserious," the criticism went. "It doesn't deal with big issues like your novels; it has no profound passions, no immortal struggles, no philosophic meaning."

Miss Rand replied, in effect: "It deals with only one 'big issue,' the biggest of all: can man live on earth or not?"

She went on to explain that malevolence — the feeling that man by nature is doomed to suffering and defeat — is all-pervasive in our era; that even those who claim to reject such a viewpoint tend to feel, today, that the pursuit of values must be a painful, teeth-clenched crusade, a holy but grim struggle against evil. This attitude, she said, ascribes far too much power to evil. Evil, she held, is essentially impotent (see Atlas Shrugged); the universe is not set against man, but is "benevolent." This means that man's values (if based on reason) are achievable here and in this life; and therefore happiness is not to be regarded as a freak accident, but, metaphysically, as the normal, the natural, the to-be-expected.

Philosophically, in short, the deepest essence of man's life is not grave, crisis-ridden solemnity, but lighthearted cheerfulness. A story reflecting this approach, she concluded, a story written specifically to project pure "benevolent universe," should be written as though all problems have already been answered and all big issues solved, and now there is nothing to focus on but man acting in the world and succeeding — nothing but unobstructed excitement, romance, adventure.

In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny hears Francisco laughing: "it was the gayest sound in the world... The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools... to be able to laugh like that is the end result of the most profound, most solemn thinking." In these terms, we may say that if her more philosophic works represent Ayn Rand's profound thinking, then "Good Copy" is like the unclouded laugh of Francisco.

The story, of course, is still very early, and must be read in part for its intention, which is not consistently realized.

Laury, the young hero, is but a faint, even humorous suggestion of the heroes still to come. Reflecting the primacy of women in the early works, Jinx, the heroine, is the more mature character, and the one dominant in the action. She is ahead of Laury all the way. Yet, as one would expect from Ayn Rand, Jinx's feeling for Laury is one of the most convincing elements in the story — and she is the opposite of a feminist. "Women," she tells Laury warmly at one point, "are the bunk."

As a piece of writing, "Good Copy" represents a major advance over "The Husband I Bought." The author's command of English, though still imperfect, has increased substantially. The originality of certain descriptions and the sudden flashes of wit begin to foreshadow what is to come. The dialogue, especially the use of slang, is still not quite right; and the tone of the piece is unsteady, verging, I think, on being overly broad. But despite these flaws, the story as a whole does manage to convey a real exuberance of spirit.

Decades later, after she had completed Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand occasionally said that she wanted to write a pure adventure story without any deep philosophical theme. (At one point, she had even chosen the hero's name — Faustin Donnegal — and his description; like Laury McGee, he was to have dimples.) But she never did write it.

"Good Copy," therefore, though early and imperfect, is all we have from her in this genre. It reflects a side of Ayn Rand that her admirers will not find isolated in this pure form anywhere else.

A note on the text: In the 1950s, for the reading to her class, Miss Rand modernized some of the period expressions in the piece, substituting "sports car" for "roadster," "panties" for "step-ins," and the like. I have retained these changes in the following.