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To Ayn Rand (from FLW) [Letter 114]

Item Reference Code: 102_21A_008_001

Date(s) of creation

April 23, 1944

Recipient

Ayn Rand

Transcript

[Taliesin letterhead]

My dear Miss Rand:

I’ve read every word of THE FOUNTAINHEAD. Your thesis is the great one. Especially at this time. So I suppose you will be set up in the market place and burned for a witch.

Your grasp of the architectural ins and outs of a degenerate profession astonishes me. There is a lot of intelligent research visible back of this work of yours: a very real passion for your very real Cause. The Individual is the Fountainhead of any Society worthwhile. The Freedom of the Individual is the only legitimate object of government: the Individual Conscience is the great inviolable.

Well—the theme is as old as civilization but now buried under aeons of rubble in the upward struggle of Man, in spite of our experiment in the U.S.A. You are digging in that rubble for our salvation as a people. And while you sensationalize your digging, what else is a “novel” for?

Your novel is Novel. Unusual material in unusual hands and, I hope, to an unusual end.

So far as I have unconsciously contributed anything to your material you are welcome.

We can now watch the usual performance of omitting the message while gaudifying the pictures. Hollywood ruined “The Devil and Daniel Webster”, knocked the lesson out of “The Remarkable Andrew”, missed the real idea in “The Pied Piper”, etc., etc., ad libitum, ad nauseam. I am afraid you are down the same street.

Thanks for Ellsworth Toohey. A great portrait. His time is up.

Sincerely yours,

Frank Lloyd Wright [handwritten signature]

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

The note with your address was blown away here in the desert so I shall send this to Lloyd asking him to forward it to the proper place.

Scottsdale, Arizona 4/23/44