The Early Ayn Rand

Two sleighs were waiting, their horses turned in opposite directions. Two soldiers sat in one sleigh, waiting for their prisoner. In the other, Michael was propped against the seat. He moaned feebly, still unconscious. A soldier sat next to him, holding the reins.

Joan stopped. She had no strength to go on. Commandant Kareyev smiled calmly. He noticed that her fur collar was open and fastened it. The soldiers' leader pulled her towards the sleigh.

She stopped and turned, facing Kareyev. She stood straight, leaning against the sunrise, her golden hair in the wind. She smiled proudly, gallantly, in sublime sanction of life.

Kareyev walked to the other sleigh, without an order, stepped in calmly, and sat down between the two soldiers.

A rough hand pulled Joan into the sleigh. She put her arm around Michael and held him, his head on her shoulder.

The soldier clicked his whip. The horses jerked forward, into the sunrise. Their harness creaked. Snow spurted up.

Joan turned to look at the other sleigh. Commandant Kareyev did not turn back when the horses tore forward. She saw his hair waving in the wind and above it the white line of his forehead: Commandant Kareyev's head was held high.

We the Living (unpublished excerpts)

1931

Editor's Preface

Ayn Rand returned to We the Living in 1932, but interrupted it again the next year to write her first stage play, Night of January 16th, produced in Hollywood in 1934, then on Broadway in 1935- (This play has been separately published by New American Library.) The novel was completed in March 1934, but could find no publisher until 1936. After issuing a first edition of 3,000 copies, the publisher, despite indications of rising sales, destroyed the type, and the book was not to reach its audience for a quarter of a century. In 1959, it was reissued by Random House, and in 1960 in paperback by New American Library. Since that time, more than three million copies of We the Living have been sold.

Ayn Rand's view of the theme and current relevance of We the Living, and of its place in her work, can be found in her foreword to the reissued edition.

In looking through the manuscript of the novel, I found several passages or "outtakes" that had been cut from the final version. Ayn Rand was a champion of literary economy; she was ruthless in cutting passages she considered inessential. There should not, she held, be an unnecessary scene or word in a piece of writing; in judging any element, the standard is not its interest on its own terms, but its contribution to the total.

Several of the cut passages, however, are of some interest. They can be enjoyed as separate pieces, even while one agrees with Miss Rand that they are not parts of the novel, and must not be viewed as such. I have selected for this anthology two such pieces from the early part of We the Living, both probably written in 1931. Neither has received Ayn Rand's customary editing and polishing. The titles are my own invention.

"No" is an eloquent montage of life in Soviet Russia after the Revolution. It offers a glimpse of the kind of daily existence Ayn Rand herself had to endure before she could leave for America. Some elements of this montage were retained in the novel, in the form of brief paragraphs integrated with the development of the story. Evidently, Miss Rand judged that a separate extended treatment would be too static. Perhaps she thought also that it would repeat what was already clear elsewhere in the book.

The "month to wait" mentioned in the opening lines is the month Kira, the heroine, must wait between meetings with Leo, the man she loves and is not to see again until October 28.

In the novel, there is one paragraph describing a story about a Viking that the young Kira had read; the Viking became her private symbol of man the hero. I had always loved this brief reference and was delighted to find that the story had originally been given a fuller treatment.

"Kira's Viking" may be read as a lushly Romantic fairy tale for adults, as well as for children. The language is simple, evocative, Biblical in its cadence and power. Miss Rand's admirers will recognize the similarity in this regard to her later novelette Anthem— and also to the legends about John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand was expert in creating the mood and reality of this kind of haunting, timeless legend, and I could not let this small example of her talent stay buried. (Besides, it is the only fairy tale I know with a viewpoint on the relationship between statism and religion.)

The story was cut, presumably, because it was not necessary for the purpose of the novel at this point — that is, to establish Kira's character.

The last paragraph of "Kira's Viking," which I have placed after a sequence break, originally appeared much later, near the end of the book, in Kira's death scene; it was cut when the story was cut.