To Abe and Sarah (Lipton) Satrin [Letter 31]

This letter was previously published only in the Winter 2017–18 issue of The Objective Standard.

[Page 1]
New York, June 4, 1936

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Satrin:

I hope you’ll excuse me for my long silence again, but Mr. Satrin knows how busy I am here and I feel you’ll forgive me. What Mr. Satrin has seen here is nothing compared to how busy I’ve been lately, since he left. It’s been nothing but appointments, interviews, public-speech-making and so on. I enjoy it all a lot, but it does take all my time.

First of all, I want to thank Mrs. Satrin for liking my book.[*] I was very happy to hear all the nice things you said about it in your last letter. And I am glad to think that you believe the book justifies all the trouble you’ve had in bringing me to this country and in keeping me here.

[Page 2]
I often think of this, but the book is only my beginning. From now on, I think it will be easier and you won’t have to wait ten years to hear of my success.

I was shocked and terribly sorry to hear of Mr. Satrin’s troubles on the way to Chicago and then of the accident in Chicago on top of it all. The only thing I can say is that I’m glad you were not hurt, it could have been much worse. I hope that this will be the end of such bad luck for you and that things will turn for the better from now on.

Frank and I miss Mr. Satrin very much. I still hope that perhaps we will all meet again in California this winter.

[The final page(s) of this letter are missing.]

*Ayn Rand had sent Mrs. Satrin a copy of We the Living, inscribed “with profound gratitude for saving me from the kind of hell described in this book.”