By Ayn Rand
Edited by Michael S. Berliner
Translated by Dina Schein Federman
Ayn Rand was a powerful writer and a passionate valuer. This book is a glimpse into Ayn Rand's literary beginnings and into her values as a young woman in Russia. It features two newly discovered works of hers, a booklet on Hollywood and a biography of a movie star, neither of which has ever before been published in English.
Trapped in the totalitarian dictatorship of Soviet Russia, the young Ayn Rand found a lifeline in the form of foreign movies. In her late teens she kept a journal in which she recorded each movie she saw, along with a list of the cast, the director, the date she saw the movie and a grade rating. She also studied writing for the screen; two of her pieces were published in Russia in 1925 and 1926. One of them was a short book called Hollywood: American City of Movies; the other, her first published work ever, was a biographical article on her favorite movie actress at the time, and was titled Pola Negri.
In Hollywood, one can see the very beginnings of the development of Ayn Rand's literary style: "About fifteen years ago . . . a man of small height, soft movement and imperious voice arrived in a suburb of Los Angeles. He cast his eyes upon the green hills, upon the transparent air, upon the dazzling sun and set up a shed on the outskirts of Los Angeles. This shed looked just like all the other sheds, but it contained an object heretofore unknown to Los Angeles: a movie camera. Later the city grew and the man grew. Both of them rose very high. The city was Hollywood. The man Cecil DeMille."
You will be intrigued by this unusual volume, which offers an early sight of Ayn Rand's grandeur-worshipping spirit.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Pola Negri
- Editor’s Note
- Facsimile of Russian Edition
- English Translation
Hollywood: American City of Movies
- Editor’s Note
- Facsimile of Russian edition
- English Translation
Ayn Rand’s Movie Diary
- Editor’s Note
- Facsimile
- Typeset reproduction
Ayn Rand’s List of Favorite Actors and Actresses
- Facsimile
- Typeset reproduction
Afterword
(Softcover; 223 pages)
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