To Richard Mealand [Letter 291]

[Page 1]
January 20, 1947 

Dear Dick: 

My congratulations on the completion of your novel![*] I was most impressed to hear that you had finished it already. That was really fast, so you must have worked very hard. To me, the finishing of a novel is about the most important event that can happen in life—so if you feel as I do, you must want (and deserve) more congratulations than on any other holiday. 

I am, of course, very eager and curious to read your novel. Do you have any extra carbon copy of the manuscript that you’d care to send me? If you have, I’d love to see it—but if not, I’ll wait patiently for its official appearance in book form. 

I have just finished a script for Hal Wallis (“HOUSE OF MIST”) and am back on my own time once more (with a great sense of relief, as usual). I am now going to do the actual writing of my next novel—I did all the research and the complete outline of it in my last six months of freedom. I hope to have the novel completed this year. 

Warners will probably make “THE FOUNTAINHEAD” this year—though no official date has been set for it as yet. “LOVE LETTERS” was voted one of the ten most popular pictures of 1946 in a Gallup-Photoplay poll, which pleased Wallis very much, and pleased me, too, mainly for his sake. John Mock asked me to send you his best regards.

I don’t want to rush you about reading “ANTHEM”—I know that reading is the hardest of all jobs for a writer, I hardly have time to read anything myself. I want, of course, to hear your reaction after you have read it—but this is not a hint, only for whenever you have the time. 

[Page 2]
Page 2.

I wish you speed and success with the new novel you are planning—but, first, my most sincere wishes for the greatest success to “LET ME DO THE TALKING.” I can’t think of any novelist about whose success and happiness I feel as strongly as I do about yours. 

Best regards from both of us to both of you. 

Sincerely,

Ayn Rand

*Let Me Do the Talking (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company), 1947.