The Journals of Ayn Rand (11 page)

I put all this down as a good, clear outline of the little street’s high ideals.

Her claim that Hickman’s greatest crime is his anti-socialness confirmed my idea of the public’s attitude in this case—and explains my involuntary, irresistible sympathy for him, which I cannot help feeling just because of this and in spite of everything else.

Hickman said: “I am like the state: what is good for me is right.” Even if he wasn’t big enough to live by that attitude, he deserves credit for saying it so brilliantly. There is a lot that is purposelessly, senselessly horrible about him. But that does not interest me. I want to remember his actions and characteristics that will be useful for the boy in my story. His limitless daring and his frightful sense of humor, e.g., when he was playing the Victrola while policemen searched his apartment and he offered to help, asking if he could do anything for them. His calm, defiant attitude at the trial. His almost inhuman strength in being able to joke about his death sentence: “The die is cast and the state wins by a neck.” His deliberate smiling when posing for photographs after the sentence. His hard, cynical attitude toward everything, as shown in the little detail that he expressed his feelings after the sentence by saying one obscene word. The fact that he looks like “a bad boy with a very winning grin,” that he makes you like him the whole time you are in his presence, that he has a personality that would have carried him far if he had gone another way. His decision to die like a man and his promise to walk calmly up the death-steps. His playing jazz records and asking for flowers even in the death cell.

[The depravity of] the pastors who try to convert convicted murderers to their religion. Hickman has been baptized into the Catholic faith. So has Ruth Snyder. The horrible idea of “saving” a murderer’s “soul,” adding to the “glory” of their religion by demonstrating its power over fear-crazed convicts. The hypocrisy of “saving a soul,” of turning a man to a religion of charity and forgiveness like Christianity—and then executing him. The mob tyranny I mentioned, shown in the desire to make a new slave, add a new follower to the herd, break an independent man into submission.

The fact that right after his sentence Hickman was given a Bible by the jailer. I don’t know of anything more loathsome, hypocritical, low, and diabolical than giving Bibles to men sentenced to death. It’s one of those things that’s comical in its stupidity and horrid because of this lugubrious, gruesome comedy.

The newsboy I saw on a crowded downtown corner, a heavy, unshaven young fellow, with a [sickly] complexion, fat lips, narrow forehead and spectacles, who was yelling: “They’re gonna hang him!” when the first extras with the sentence appeared. Other adult newsboys, yelling with a bloodthirsty delight: “Hickman to hang! Hickman to hang by the neck!”

The drunken man who murdered his wife for no particular reason, and then regretted it, was Hickman’s cell-mate in jail—and beat Hickman up, thinking himself superior.

The twelve-year-old little girl, who wrote a letter to Hickman, asking him “to get religion so that little girls everywhere would stop being afraid of him.”

Dale Budlong and other prisoners who “don’t want to be mixed” with Hickman, considering themselves so much better.

The woman who wrote a letter to the authorities asking for permission to be present at Hickman’s hanging. A great number of other letters making the same request. (!) (The bloodthirsty, blind, carnivorous beast that is hidden beneath the polished surface of our “civilized,” religious,
respectable
citizens!)

All the dirty stories about Hickman. In this case they are probably true, but how easily they could have been manufactured to throw dirt at the object of the public’s hatred (which will be the case in my book).

Gertrude Stein, when she stupidly said “It’s the little things that count!” This is the perfect expression of that despicable attitude of some people—the glorification of mediocrity, the mediocrity that not only doesn’t make any effort to rise toward something high, but idealizes its own smallness, glorifies it, makes it the highest thing in life, the only thing “that counts.” The purposeful denial of high [ideals], the shameless, insolent sneering of the plebian who says: “I’m small, sure, but that’s the main thing—to be small. You big ones, you don’t mean anything, you don’t count!”

That most repulsive of all things—the pride and vanity of the mediocre.

V. M., when she said: “Original thoughts are dangerous.... If an original thinker is anti-social, the more brilliant he is—the more dangerous he is, and therefore original thinkers are to be condemned!” Doesn’t need any comment.

She speaks also of being useful to posterity, to the whole human race and so on. This gives me the thought that fear of death may govern those who think too much of the “future” and of “humanity.” It is as if they know that their own life will not be enough and they want to have something eternal to believe in outside of it.

Where can I find a man who knows that his own life will be so great and he will fill it with so much, that he doesn’t need any “high ideal” outside of it? Eternity itself doesn’t matter—to exist is glorious enough!

Arthur Brisbane, who does not sympathize with Voronoff’s desire to produce a Superman through heredity. He declares that this is just what humanity
doesn’t
need; we don’t want Supermen, we want average, equal creatures, for Nature always strives towards equality and balance. He proves [this latter claim] by deep, significant examples such as tall men liking short girls and fat women liking thin men. (And all the results of this poisonous, rotten, sewer-philosophy!)

The thing I heard about Gilbert Roland (too horrid to write down).

The parties at the studios with naked Negro girls dancing.

The way stars make their careers. (The middle-aged woman with pull who can make the careers of young men, or refuse to, telling them sincerely: “I’m sorry, you’re not my type!”)

The different kinds of mind: the abstract and the “social” mind, the latter being considered the most important for success. And what is it but the art of “getting along” with human beings? (Men like Danny Renahan don’t get along.)

I. L. [Ivan Lebedeff, a Russian-born actor whom AR knew in Hollywood], who says that he does things he despises just to lower himself, to feel he is doing something nasty, to get to the level of the mob, and mix into that mob. He is afraid to be above [the mob]; he cannot stand the tragedy of being alone on top, and the horror of what he sees under him and has to live with and tolerate.

I don’t know if it’s quite so in his case, but the idea is very profound—that those who
could
be above willingly lower themselves, because “the little street” makes it super-humanly hard for a man to remain alone and keep his ideals. Another instance of how the little street works.

The rotten swamp that sucks everything into it. And so it goes: a man has the possibility to be high; he cannot stand it—other men and “society” are too much for him to fight against; he sinks down, to the mob’s level; and thus he becomes one of those who stops some other man who could be high. [...]

College-life, the mob-reign par excellence. Danny—the most unpopular figure in college. He doesn’t belong to any clubs, societies, or fraternities. He doesn’t allow any crazy tricks to be played on him when entering college. He doesn’t take part in any sports, that is, any
teamwork.

Hetty is expelled from college for her attitude in the “Renahan case.”

Hetty is one of the defense’s star witnesses at the trial; she tries to save Danny.

Hetty implores the Governor to [pardon] Danny. She climbs into his house through a window when he refuses to see her. She pleads with real, human words against the stiff, official, blind answers of the Governor. She falls on her knees: “You can save him! Don’t destroy something you can never create again!” He orders her thrown out and advises her to be careful of the reputation she has already soiled, or he may have to send her to a penitentiary to reform her “unnatural, degenerate tendencies!” [
This scene is a precursor of one in We the Living, when Leo is dying of tuberculosis and Kira pleads to Soviet officials to save him.
]

Danny’s death. The little man who recognizes him and attracts the mob to him. The mob appears from everywhere, from every dark comer and alley, like swarming cockroaches crawling out of their holes. The big drunken brute who strikes his heavy, nail-soled foot into Danny’s breast, cracking the ribs. The quarter that rolls out of Danny’s pocket into the pool of blood and is picked up by one of the men, who wipes it and takes it. The police find Danny’s body near the sidewalk, a horribly torn mass. Only his beautiful face is left untouched, now immobile, pale, with eyes closed and long shadows of the eyelashes on the white cheeks; a head of marble, with one thin red stream, like a crack in the marble, on his temple; and only his hair moving slightly around the immobile face, moved by the water in the gutter that streams red.

Danny in jail. His perfect indifference to everything—visitors, family, everybody—except Hetty. He does not love her, but he sees, understands, and respects her feeling for him.

The only moment when Danny is afraid of death and wants to live. One night, when he looks out of his cell window and sees nothing but a dark, clear sky and stars, and one luminous spire from a tall building far away; when he does not see the city and it seems to him that he is in some other world, on another planet, where life is clear, pure and luminous like the sky he looks into. And he wants that life, he loves it with all the passion of his life-hungry soul. That is the only moment when he weakens, when he is horrified at the thought: “They are going to kill me! They have no right to
kill
me!”

This episode will probably end with a guard passing by and seeing Danny’s emotion instead of his usual calm, and snickering something about his being broken and yellow. Danny turns to him and answers with a horrible swear-word, something as obscene and contrasting with his former mood as the reality he faces is filthy and contrasting with the world he saw for a moment. With that one word, all his regrets are gone, he is back again in the life that makes him indifferent to death, he is again the hard, sneering, cynical convict, indifferent and disdainful of everything.