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A ROUND UNIVERSE 157
naturally emotive person, Nathan struggled to please. They spent many
of their assignation hours deep in psychological and philosophical discussion,
atonement for Nathan’s latest perceived slight or indifference.
Although he was thrilled by the affair, Nathan felt pressured to meet the
depth of her romantic feeling for him, a task that became more diffi cult
as the novelty of their relations wore off. He was also pulled away by his
loyalty to Barbara, who began suffering intense panic attacks. Nathan,
who styled himself a psychologist, could fi nd no reason for Barbara’s
anxiety. Neither of them imagined the affair, and the deception it engendered,
could be a source of her inner turmoil. Perhaps the hardest hit
was Frank, who was displaced from his apartment twice a week when
Nathan arrived to rendezvous with his wife. His destination on many of
these afternoons and evenings was a neighborhood bar. 54
Rand’s liaison with Branden came just as she began writing the most
crucial part of Atlas Shrugged. The early stages of the book had been
fairly trouble-free. She had created a cast of characters that made for
pleasant company. There was Hank Rearden, a confl icted industrialist
whose new steel alloy is appropriated by the collectivists. Between
appearances at the latest jet-set parties, Francisco D’Anconia, a brilliant
aristocratic playboy, destroys his family company lest it fall to the
enemy. Most fun of all was Dagny Taggart, who gave Rand the chance to
present the ideal woman. An engineer like Kira in We the Living, Dagny
is a proto-feminist heroine, a powerful businesswoman who moves easily
from one lover to the next. Like all Rand heroines, Dagny is beautiful
as well as brilliant, and socially well born. A glamorous and striking
blonde, she is the granddaughter of a pioneering railroad tycoon whose
empire she now controls. The book’s driving force is John Galt, a character
Rand variously identifi ed as a fi ctional version of Frank or Nathan.
The leader of the strike and the mouthpiece for Rand’s philosophy, Galt
is a physicist who invents groundbreaking technologies while working
as a menial laborer.
Rand’s diffi culties came to a head around Galt’s speech, which
occurs toward the very end of the 1,084-page book. Whereas the rest
of Atlas Shrugged is a fast-paced narrative, full of the tightly plotted
twists and turns that Rand loved to write, Galt’s speech is something
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