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INDIVIDUALISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! 47
resignation in terms Rand could understand. Bits of Frank found their
way into Rand’s hero too. Roark’s cat-like grace and easy physicality
struck the couple’s friends as a precise portrait of Frank.
Frank had become increasingly important to Rand as connections
with her family in Russia snapped. In 1936, putting a long-held dream in
motion, she began a torturous round of paperwork to bring her parents to
the United States. She petitioned the U.S. government for an immigration
visa, obtaining letters from Universal describing her screenwriting work.
She and Frank wrote a notarized deposition testifying to her fi nancial
independence. She even prepaid her passage on the United States Lines.
It was all to no avail. In late 1936 the Rosenbaums’ visa application was
denied, and an appeal proved fruitless. Rand got the fi nal word in a brief
telegram sent from Leningrad in May 1937: “Cannot get permission.” 22
It was one of their last communications. Rand stopped responding
to family letters shortly afterward, believing that Russians who received
mail from America could be in grave danger. It was a cruel kindness,
for the Rosenbaums had no explanation for her sudden silence. They
pleaded with her to write. And then, ominously, the letters stopped
coming. 23 Rand was irrevocably cut off from her family.
Although she and Frank were now fi nancially secure, it appears
that they never seriously contemplated having children of their own. 24
Rand’s books would be her children, to be carefully tended and agonizingly
birthed.
As it turned out, “Second-Hand Lives” was a problem child. With
the main characters sketched out, Rand turned to the much more diffi
cult work of plotting the novel, beginning an “enormous progression
of experimenting, thinking, starting from various premises.” The
framework would be Roark’s career, but beyond this basic line Rand
was unsure how events should proceed. She spent months trying out “a
lot of pure superstructure calculations. What would be the key points of
Roark’s career, that is, how would he start, what would be the diffi culties
on the early stage, how would he become famous?” 25 She wrote a
detailed outline of Hugo’s Les Miserables to grasp its underlying structure
and create a model for herself.
The most diffi cult part was the climax, “really a mind-breaker.” Rand
wanted a single dramatic event that would draw together the novel’s
disparate story lines, dramatize her theme, and thrill readers. Until
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