To Frank Lloyd Wright [Letter 119]

September 10, 1946

Dear Frank Lloyd Wright:

I am sending you a copy of ANTHEM, a short novel of mine which is to be published this fall. I wrote it while I was working on THE FOUNTAINHEAD. I think you might like it.

I have hesitated to bother you with any questions or reminders about my future house—but Gerald Loeb tells me that a client should show his interest by pestering the life out of you. I think you know my interest—and I’m not good at expressing personal things which I feel very strongly. So I can only ask: Do I get my dream house?

I will not be able to come east this year to look for the land—and I don’t want my choice of the land to be rash, since that will be my permanent home. So are you still willing to grant me the exception of a house designed ahead of the site?

I am working now on my next novel, so I’m dead to the world, and that is why I cannot make the trip. I plan to come east when I finish this novel, which will be a big event in my life. I hope I can then celebrate by actually starting the building of my house—if it becomes possible to build, by that time.

Incidentally, have you seen the comment in Life Magazine of September 2, about my “public silence”? Would you like me to send them an answer, or would you prefer that I make no comment? As you see, I have kept my word—I have not tried to use your name for publicity.

I would like to hear your opinion of ANTHEM—and whether it’s good or bad. I won’t use it publicly, either.

Reverently, always—

In response to a printed letter alleging a resemblance between Wright and Howard Roark, Life Magazine wrote: “Miss Rand has not admitted any connection between [them]. But both are complete individualists, unallied with any group or school. Wright studied under Functionalist Louis Sullivan. . . . Roark’s master was Henry Cameron, designer of functional skyscrapers. And both Roark and Wright lead very complicated lives.”