The Early Ayn Rand

At noon, they shared the box lunch Roark had brought with him; they ate, Roark sitting on the ground beside him, and they spoke of the various qualities of Connecticut granite as compared with the stone from other quarries. And later, when Roark had nothing further to do for the day, he stretched down beside Cameron, and they sat through many hours, unconscious of their long silences and of the few sentences they spoke, vague, unfinished, half-answered sentences, unconscious of the time that passed and of the necessity for any aim in sitting there.

Long after the workers had left, when the sea became a soft purple and the windows of the empty, silent house flared up in unmoving yellow fire, Roark said: "We're going now," and Cameron nodded silently.

When they had reached the car below, Cameron leaned suddenly against its door, his face white from an exhaustion he could not hide. He pushed Roark's hands away. "In a moment..." he whispered humbly. "All right in a moment..." Then he raised his head and said: "Okay." Roark helped him into the car.

They had driven for half a mile, before Roark asked: "Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm not," said Cameron. "To hell with that. I'll have to go back to the wheelchair for a month, I suppose... Keep still. You know better than to regret it."

The Simplest Thing in the World

1940

Editor's Preface

This 1940 story, with Ayn Rand's prefatory note, is reprinted from The Romantic Manifesto.

She wrote it about a creative writer, while she was deep in the writing of The Fountainhead. By that time, The Fountainhead had been rejected by some twelve publishers.

R.E.R.

The Simplest Thing in the World

(This story was written in 1940. It did not appear in print until the November 1967 issue of THE OBJECTTVIST, where it was published in its original form, as written.

The story illustrates the nature of the creative process— the way in which an artist's sense of life directs the integrating functions of his subconscious and controls his creative imagination. — A. R.)

Henry Dorn sat at his desk and looked at a sheet of blank paper. Through a feeling of numb panic, he said to himself: this is going to be the easiest thing you've ever done.

Just be stupid, he said to himself. That's all. Just relax and be as stupid as you can be. Easy, isn't it? What are you scared of, you damn fool? You don't think you can be stupid, is that it? You're conceited, he said to himself angrily. That's the whole trouble with you. You're conceited as hell. So you can't be stupid, can you? You're being stupid right now. You've been stupid about this thing all your life. Why can't you be stupid on order?

I'll start in a minute, he said. Just one minute more and then I'll start. I will, this time. I'll just rest for a minute, that's all right, isn't it? I'm very tired. You've done nothing today, he said. You've done nothing for months. What are you tired of? That's why I'm tired — because I've done nothing. I wish I could... I'd give anything if I could again... Stop that. Stop it quick. That's the one thing you mustn't think about. You're to start in a minute and you were almost ready. You won't be ready if you think of that.

Don't look at it. Don't look at it. Don't look at... He had turned. He was looking at a thick book in a ragged blue jacket, lying on a shelf, under old magazines. He could see, on its spine, the white letters merging with the faded blue: Triumph by Henry Dorn.

He got up and pushed the magazines down to hide the book. It's better if you don't see it while you're doing it, he said. No. It's better if it doesn't see you doing it. You're a sentimental fool, he said.

It was not a good book. How do you know it was a good book? No, that won't work. All right, it was a good book. It's a great book. There's nothing you can do about that. It would be much easier if you could. It would be much easier if you could make yourself believe that it was a lousy book and that it had deserved what had happened to it. Then you could look people straight in the face and write a better one. But you didn't believe it. And you had tried very hard to believe that. But you didn't.

All right, he said. Drop that. You've gone over that, over and over again, for two years. So drop it. Not now... It wasn't the bad reviews that I minded. It was the good ones. Particularly the one by Fleurette Lumm who said it was the best book she'd ever read — because it had such a touching love story.