To Walter Hurley [Letter 125]

January 23, 1944

Mr. Walter J. Hurley
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
New York City

Dear Walter Hurley:

Thank you very much for your two letters. Needless to say, I am very happy if “The Fountainhead” is selling and I hope it will sell more and more.

Please give my very special thanks to Mr. Baker for the Literary Guild deal—and include a kiss to him from me across the continent. Mr. Chambers has just sent me a proof of the Guild ad—and it’s pretty lurid, but not as bad as it could be. The main thing is the size and the splash, which will help our sales, so I was very happy to see it.

Thank you also for the “Omnibook” deal. I regret only that their digest was not submitted to me for editing. It’s not too awful, but I could have improved it within the same space. I don’t want to write to Mr. Chambers about it, not to make it an official complaint at this late date, but will you remind him tactfully that this digest was supposed to be submitted for my approval according to our contract? I want only to make sure that this will be done on any other digests we may sell.

Everything is still going wonderfully here. Mr. Blanke is most pleased with the first sequence of the screen play which I have turned in. I am working as I used to work for Bobbs-Merrill, which means—like a dog, but I love it. Warners’ plans for the picture are really tremendous—and I hope it will work out that way.

My best regards to you and all my friends at Bobbs-Merrill, whom I still miss very much in spite of sunny California, which is beautifully sunny right now.

Sincerely,

Ayn Rand

Omnibook was a pocket-size monthly magazine devoted to “authorized” abridgments of current bestsellers and aimed primarily at men and women in the armed forces. The 46,000-word version of The Fountainhead was published in January 1944 in both the English and Spanish editions.