Page:Ayn Rand Anthem.pdf/111



Ayn Rand said that she decided to be a writer, not in order to save the world nor to serve her fellow men, but for the simple, personal, selfish, egotistical happiness of creating the kind of men and events she could like, respect and admire.

She chose her career at the age of nine; she left home some ten years later and has been on her own ever since. She had to earn her own living, while struggling to establish herself as a writer, and has done all sorts of odd jobs; she has worked as a waitress, an office clerk, a reader for film companies.

She lives in New York City, where she is now completing the writing of a great novel on which she has been working for several years.

Her previously published works include the play THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 16TH, which ran on Broadway in the season of 1935–36, a novel WE THE LIVING published in 1936, ANTHEM, published in England in 1938, and THE FOUNTAINHEAD, published in 1943.

She has one of the finest minds and is one of the greatest of living writers.

ANTHEM is one of the most beautiful prose poems ever written. Ruth Alexander, the great Libertarian lecturer and columnist, has said in her column that ANTHEM is "Tender and terrific—the greatest novel I have ever read, and I have covered the literary water front in seven languages. You will think—you will weep—you will be inspired to new determination not to let the creeping evil of collectivism happen here." It is written with such power and sincerity and beauty that every thinking American should read it.