The Early Ayn Rand (71 page)

Oh, stop it! Stop it! Stop it!

Well . . . ?

Pull yourself together, man. Pull yourself together . . .

Well? For whom is it you’re writing that story? For the
Women’s Kitchen Friend
?

No, you’re not tired. You’re all right. It’s all right. You’ll write this story later. You’ll write it after you have money. It’s all right. It won’t be taken away from you. Now sit quiet. Count ten.

No! I tell you, you
can.
You can. You haven’t tried hard enough. You let it get away with you. You begin to think. Can’t you think without thinking?

Listen, can’t you understand a different way of doing it? Don’t think of the fantastic, don’t think of the unusual, don’t think of the opposite of what anyone else’d want to think, but go after the obvious, the easy. Easy—for whom? Come on now. It’s this: it’s because you ask yourself “what if . . . ?” That starts the whole trouble. “What if it’s not what it seems to be at all . . . Wouldn’t it be interesting if . . .” That’s what you do, and you mustn’t. You mustn’t think of what would be interesting. But how can I do anything if I know it isn’t interesting? But it will be—to them. That’s just why it will be to them—because it isn’t to you. That’s the whole secret. But then how do I know what, or where, or why?

Listen, can’t you stop it for a little while? Can’t you turn it off—that brain of yours? Can’t you make it work without letting it work? Can’t you be stupid? Can’t you be consciously, deliberately, cold-bloodedly stupid? Can’t that be done in some way? Everybody is stupid about some things, the best of us and the brightest. Everybody has blind spots, they say. Can’t you make it be this?

Dear God, let me be stupid! Let me be dishonest! Let me be contemptible! Just once. Because I must.

Don’t you see? It’s a matter of one reversal. Just make one single reversal: instead of believing that one must try to be intelligent, different, honest, challenging, that one must do the best possible to the best of one’s ability and then stretch it some more to do still better—believe that one must be dull, stale, sweet, dishonest and safe. That’s all. Is that the way other people do it? No, I don’t think so. They’d end up in an insane asylum in six months. Then what is it? I don’t know. It isn’t that—but it works out like that. Maybe if we were told from the beginning to reverse it . . . But we aren’t. But some of us get wise to it early—and then they’re all right. But why should it be like that? Why should we . . .

Drop it. You’re not settling world problems. You’re writing a commercial story.

All right. Quick and cold now. Hold yourself tight and don’t let yourself like the story. Above all, don’t let yourself like it.

Let’s make it a detective story. A murder mystery. You can’t possibly have a murder mystery with any serious meaning. Come on. Quick, cold and simple.

There must be two villains in a mystery story: the victim and the murderer—so nobody would feel too sorry for either of them. That’s the way it’s always done. Well, you can have some leeway on the victim, but the murderer’s
got
to be a villain . . . Now the murderer must have a motive. It must be a contemptible motive . . . Let’s see . . . I’ve got it: the murderer is a professional blackmailer who’s holding a lot of people in his clutches, and the victim is the man who’s about to expose him, so the blackmailer kills this man. That’s as low a motive as you could imagine. There’s no excuse for that . . . Or is there? What if . . . Wouldn’t it be interesting if you could prove that the murderer was justified?

What if all those people he blackmails are utter lice? The kind that do horrible things, but just manage to remain within the law, so there’s no way of defending yourself against them. And this man chooses deliberately to become a crusading blackmailer. He gets things on all those people and he forces them to do justice. A lot of men make careers for themselves by knowing where some body or other is buried. Well, this man goes out after such “bodies,” only he doesn’t use them for personal advancement, he uses them to undo the harm these people are doing. He’s a Robin Hood of blackmail. He gets them in the only way they can be gotten. For instance, one of them is a corrupt politician, and the hero—no, the murderer—no, the
hero
gets the dope on him and forces him to vote right on a certain measure. Another one is a big Hollywood producer who’s ruined a lot of lives—and the hero makes him give a talented actress a break without forcing her to become his mistress. Another one is a crooked businessman—and the hero forces him to play straight. And when the worst one of the lot—what’s the worst one of the lot? a hypocritical reformer, I think—no, that’s dangerous to touch, too controversial—oh, what the hell!—when this reformer traps the hero and is about to expose him, the hero kills him. Why shouldn’t he? And the interesting thing about the story is that all those people will be presented just as they appear in real life. Nice people, pillars of society, liked, admired and respected. And the hero is just a hard, lonely kind of outcast.

Oh, what a story! Prove that! Prove what some of our popular people are really like! Blow the lid off society! Show it for what it’s worth! Prove that the lone wolf is not always a wolf! Prove honesty and courage and strength and dedication! Prove it through a blackmailer and a murderer! Have a story with a murderer for a hero and let him get away with it! A great story! An important story which . . .

Henry Dorn sat very still, his hands folded in his lap, hunched, seeing nothing, thinking of nothing.

Then he pushed the sheet of blank paper aside and reached for the
Times’
“Help Wanted” ads.