To Lenora M. Patton, a fan [Letter 123]

January 14, 1943[*]

Miss Lenore M. Patton
c/o S. S. Fretz Jr., Inc.
1902 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia 3, Pa.

Dear Miss Patton:

Thank you for your letter and your kind invitation [to dinner]. I am terribly sorry that I can’t accept it—my letterhead will tell you why. I have sold the movie rights to “The Fountainhead” and am now in Hollywood, writing the screen play.

I should have liked to meet you and your friend. If you read “The Fountainhead”, you must know that I am “accessible to a budding Assistant Treasurer” and to anyone who likes and understands my book, either at the Twenty-One Club or at the Automat. I don’t know when I’ll be back in New York, but when I am I’ll drop you a line and I’ll hope to meet you on your next visit to New York, if you will give me a rain check until then,

Sincerely yours,

Ayn Rand

*Although AR typed 1943 here, the year was 1944.