Whenever I bring up the name Ayn Rand, as I converse with various bodies of intelligentsia, all eyebrows head north. Nobody ever wants to discuss her work. They say:
“Ayn Rand? Whoa! She’s crazy, she’s out there.”
Who is Ayn Rand?
Ayn Rand came into this world on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia. She came to our planet with the unconscious intention to improve the lot of humankind with her screenplays, novels, and philosophy of Objectivism.
Teaching herself to read at age six, she decides to become a career novelist at age nine.
Thinking of herself as a European writer, she rejects the mysticism and collectivism of the Soviet Russian culture and embraces the likes of a Victor Hugo as her most admired writer.
With her family, she escapes to Crimea to ride out the Bolshevik furies, there she finishes High School. Her father, a pharmacist loses his business and the family teeters on the borders of starvation.
In her final year, she’s introduced to American History and embraces the aspect of freedom that she will seek after going to Petrograd to study screenwriting.
She uses movies from the West, as an escape from the harshness of the infantile Soviet regime which may have whetted her appetite for writing for the movies.
In late 1925, she obtains permission to leave Russia with no intentions to ever return. She arrives in New York, and then goes to Chicago to stay with relatives until she gets a visa extension, then she moves straight to Hollywood to try her luck in the movies.
Apparently this young lady is quite a charmer. She simply hangs around the entrance to Cecil B. DeMille’s studio, as he’s filming King of Kings. One morning he stops to pick her up as he’s on the way into the compound.
He hires her first as an extra and then as a script reader. She meets and marries Frank O’Conner in 1929. They remain together until his death fifty years later.
So Ayn Rand appears to be a woman of destiny. She comes to the States and has her way, a break here, a break there. Lucky for us.
After many false starts in non writing careers, she finally sells her first screenplay to Universal Pictures in 1932 and her first stage play, Night of January 16th, is produced in Hollywood, then Broadway.
Her first novel: We The Living, is rejected by numerous publishers until placed with The Macmillan Company for the U.S. and Cassells & Company for England who publishes the book in 1936, eleven years after she’d sailed into New York.
We The Living is considered to be autobiographical in nature as it recounts her years under Soviet oppression.
She begins writing the screenplay: The Fountainhead in 1943 which is produced in 1948. Her magnum opus: Atlas Shrugged is begun in 1946.
In 1951, she goes back to New York and devotes full time to finishing the book which she publishes in 1957–a full six years devoted to this one effort.
According to some, Atlas Shrugged was destined to be her greatest achievement and her last work of fiction.
The Ayn Rand Institute says further that “although she considered herself a fiction writer, she realized that in order to create heroic characters, she had to identify philosophies and principles which makes such individuals possible.”
She spends the remainder of her life developing and lecturing on her philosophy of Objectivism, an approach that she characterizes as “a philosophy for living on earth.”
Rand’s Objectivism holds that: “There is a mind-independent reality; that individual persons are in contact with this reality through sensory perception.” (Farlex Online Dictionary)
This is directly related to the main theme of this essay: Writing and The Subconscious.
Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982 in her New York apartment.
(Biographical information derived/paraphrased from the website of The Ayn Rand Institute)
II
Rather than a shrug, as in Atlas Shrugged, this book extends a helping hand. I’m pointing this out to say that if you’ve been turned off by her Objectivism, or her famous novels, this book will inspire and educate. Her sharing here is the antithesis to The Art of Selfishness.
Rand cites quotations and wisdom from the aforementioned books and the elucidation thereof is quite appropriate to the subject matter and is consistent with her thinking.
After reading and rereading and continuing to read her monograph: The Art of Fiction, I am left with wondering if her detractors have actually read her thoroughly enough even to just grasp her logic without having to agree.
As a writer and reader, I’m partial towards the Russians anyway, starting with Dostoevsky’s Notes From The Underground and Crime and Punishment, then Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Chekov.
So it’s no wonder I’m drawn to Ayn Rand. There is something about Russian- flavored hardship, which gives birth to extreme creativity, if you will–the honing or hewing of one’s mettle.
I draw from my fated sufferings to give substance to my work, if it indeed does that, though I try to avoid suffering as much as the next man.
I wonder if there would have been a Dostoevsky or a Victor Frankl (leader of the third Viennese School of Psychology after Adler and Freud) without Siberian incarceration. Would Pushkin be as brilliant if he didn’t have to write in secret to avoid the censorship of Nicholas? Would anyone’s muscles become strong without resistance?
When story ideas come up from the unconscious, do we choose them or did they choose us? I muse that writing from the subconscious itself is therefore existential and this can be seen as a reflection when brought to paper and we show that a protagonist’s situation has no escape route–that route itself, still appears to be fated as well.
III
With the title of the chapter of interest being: Writing and The Subconscious, we then must accept or just consider that there is such thing as the subconscious mind. We can argue that. . .”If it is “sub,” how can it be conscious?
This so-called subconscious mind is invisible and technically doesn’t exist until we receive something from it through our “sensory perception,” or we ride a bicycle . . . but that’s muscle memory isn’t it?
Literally, this doesn’t make writing an objective mind-independent reality, but no one even knows what the “mind” is in the first place, or where it is located. Brain yes, mind no.
The mind-independent reality Rand speaks of is the object outside ourselves. She asserts that “knowledge is based on observed objects and events.” In the first paragraph of the chapter we’re examining here, she asserts further:
“You must have absorbed a great deal of knowledge which has become so automatic that your conscious mind need not pause on it.”
She’s saying there has to be something deposited in the unconscious before you can withdraw anything.
This particular book, The Art of Fiction, is nurturing, ever drawing quotes from her other works although it’s going to be apparent that she’s still very fussy and insistent.
You will feel energy and commitment coming from her prose. She offers advice from “some mystic.”
“For those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who don’t, none is possible.”
She further translates that and says: “I don’t know why I’m doing it and I don’t intend to explain.”
III
I’ve read several books on quillmanship and this is the best book on the craft of writing fiction, I’ve ever perused, so much so, I’m excited about turning people on to it. It’s a blast.
Unlike Stephen King’s book on writing, which I also love and intend to critique, she leaves out her autobiography and goes straight to the Filet Mignon, sorbet, cognac, coffee, and water. She assumes that you already know who she is. That is a secure ego. Typical Russian.
Ayn’s Book makes you think about writing until you experience the spontaneity and Eureka effects she’s talking about. Stephen tells you to just “write the @&%$# story,” which is equally strong. I followed his advice and started my first novel in 2003. Of course, it is not finished, but it will be. I’m letting my subconscious evolve the materials.
The Art of Fiction is a book you take to the bathroom with you, to the diner while you wait for your food, while you are waiting in any reception room. There is stuff in these chapters that you hope will stick to your mind like the memory of your own name.
Wait, I have to tell you. Let me just give you this before we go any further–although it’s from a different chapter, I have to jump the rails and tell you this. Ayn Rand suggests that if you want to write a good story,
“Start with the ending first and work forward.”
Is that ever a challenge? It’s probably borne of her experience as a screenplay writer. Somewhere inside, we have to answer the question:
“What is this story about?”
We can hand that task over to our subconscious and wait for it to give it back to us, solved.
That is just a preference, but if I stop to ask myself, “How is this going to end,” and stay away from the story, my mind will churn out some good plausible probabilities. One of them will feed me . . . literally.
Just tonight, I had a dream where I went to sleep within the dream and dreamt again. In the second dream I’m given the idea for a great story, like I had gone to an oracle to get it.
I awaken from that particular dream, still asleep inside dream number one wherein I wake up and forget what happened in dream number 2.
Since it’s there, I’m counting on it coming back when I go ride my bike, or wash my clothes, or shave, or just when I’m answering the phone.
Until we have the answer to what causes us to dream, we can accept that dreaming involves an imagining by some phenomenon.
We and the substance of our dreams are “imagined” by something, beyond our control. We become, as Rand might say, objectified even by our own minds. Just to think of that causes me to pause to ascertain the deeper implication: Are we thinking or being thought? Are we dreaming or being dreamt?
Dreams proceed with its own cinema, unless of course you are a lucid dreamer and you script the whole thing. We can look at a shoe, a broom and a coat hanger and write a story from it–create a waking dream, as it were.
That moves towards Freud, but alas, we are discussing subconscious matters here. People have snubbed his book The Interpretation of Dreams, but who has matched such a work without going “mystic?” It is a fascinating read.
In the next section, I’ll talk about Freud’s notions about the subconscious although my studies reveal that his greatest mentor Breuer was responsible for revealing those concepts to him.
IV
The subconscious mind is a concept and not an object. The term: unconscious may be more applicable because we can say: “I was not conscious of this thought, before I “heard” this thought.”
Theoretically we can say that the pre-thought that was to be thunk was in the subconscious mind first, as if our regular waking state is dream number one and what comes from the subconscious is dream 1-A. The semantics are clear enough.
As I mentioned earlier, Freud himself dismissed Jung as a mystic, so even Freud himself would not proceed to expound upon the properties of the subconscious mind as something metaphysical or otherworldly.
He conducted experiments to verify that we indeed have a vast storehouse of perhaps, pre-determined thoughts–i. e., Determinism. The mystery is– determined by whom and by what?
One such experiment of Freud’s: I ask you to think of a number. While you are “waiting” for the number to come into your head, you wonder what it is.
When it pops in, where did it come from? Why is easier to explain than where and how. Is it likely the number was somehow pre-determined? If not, what decided it would be determined at all.
You can say, “That’s my birthday, or whatever.” If that’s the case we do have existential determinism at work. Your choice was therefore fated.
Leaving things to “chance” and randomness would be quite unscientific if you have read a little about chaos theory and of course, concur.
One reason, I think, Freud was atheist is because he accepted that there is no such thing as choice.
If that’s true, then we all go to heaven, in a hand basket. No need for Ten Commandments because we are designed to do whatever we are going to do anyway, then we are dichotomized by our guilt which causes us to need religion so we won’t punish ourselves inordinately.
That’s why people are baptized–whatever put this together knew all mankind was doomed to make some grievous errors. Even the best of us. Get that water on your head with a few words from the ordained and you have a seat in the choir–regardless. What a deal.
Well, I best speak for myself. I’m not a holy roller, but I’m glad my mother opted me out for Pascal’s wager and had me doused–just in case. What I can’t understand is: why was it necessary to baptize Jesus? Please, don’t write me with answers to that one. But is that a good question or what?
From Freud, we are given the Superego who is the judge, jury, and executioner when our Id furnishes our ego with desire and energy to sin, as it were. Woe is we.
So then, in regards to determinism (fate) with Freud’s number experiment, The thesis is: You were not conscious of the number before thinking it, the number was in a “sub” consciousness. Give it another name, but it’s still the same hidden thought.
Conversely, you may not have been conscious of your own life before living it, so you had no idea how it was going to be lived until you lived it–against your will maybe, but here you are.This is the exact advantage that Rand wants us to see in this chapter.
This essay is not about Freud, but Rand is using a term that made Sigmund Freud a famous man, so I can’t leave him out–and I shan’t.
Yes, I know, folks think he’s an idiot. At the mention of his name, a girl commented:
“Oh yeah, him, the sex guy.”
During a particular case, when Freud worked with Josef Breuer, he observed the “splitting” or dichotomizing of consciousness in a certain hysterical patient. Freud, in essence told her she was not responsible for her feelings (as the feelings were unconscious). This was indeed the recognition of a condition beyond the control of the patient–an unconscious puppet master.
In the same way, creative-wise, we are not necessarily responsible for what we create, since we don’t know what an idea is until we “hear it” manifest in our usual, utility of the conscious mind. And thank goodness for that, or we’d never start nor finish a work. . .me anyway.
Now, all the way back to Ayn Rand and the meat of the chapter: Writing and The Subconscious, to tie the concepts together.
V
Rand speaks of the automatic nature of creativity, how to trust it and depend on it. She stresses, on the very first page in the second paragraph:
“Language is a tool you had to learn; you did not know it at birth. When you first learned that a certain object is a table, the word table did not come into your mind automatically.” This mirrors the number experiment by Freud.
The foregoing is an empirical argument to be sure. She stresses that a mastery of the language is pre requisite; she further elucidates the importance of life experience and attentive perception which gives your words something to ride on as they enter the conscious mind. She says,
“Before you sit down to write, your language has to be so automatic that you are not conscious of groping for words or forming them into a sentence.”
To her, groping for words is not writing, although I’ll admit, I keep a Roget’s handy and “my baby:” The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale (Warner Books 1978) within arms reach anytime I’m writing at home.
Conversely I’ll admit that most of my writing is indeed automatic, most of the time. When I’m thinking of what to write, I am really waiting for my subconscious to give me the goods. That’s why, when I take the advice to come up with an ending first, I know it’s possible if I ask my subconscious to work on it–or pray for it to work.
I keep a little cassette recorder by the bed so I don’t miss these burps and I still miss them, so yes, I am relying on something other than my waking consciousness.
Towards the end of the chapter Rand speaks of inspiration. Insofar as inspiration goes, she asks us to consider the following:
“What is colloquially called inspiration–mainly that you write without full knowledge of why you write as you do, yet it comes out well–is actually the subconscious summing-up of the premise and intentions you have set for yourself.”
In this light, you are truly unknown even to yourself–not even conscious of what allows you to bring forth the power of words to persuade, entertain, infuriate, reveal, chastise, move and stop, save the world, blow up the world.
This summing up she speaks of, draws on two prerequisites: command of the language and experience, which brings me to the phenomenon of imagination. Both language and experience are components of Objectivism. I just love it when a philosopher is consistent thru all works.
One confounding variable in aforementioned model is the omission of plain old imagination which surely substitutes for experience more often than not.
Otherwise we wouldn’t have “the lie” and it’s utility. That is a good title for an essay: The Utility of The Lie.
Briefly, I’ll present two challenges to the honest person.
First-Let’s say you, like Bertrand Russell, happen to be out in the woods and you see a tired, weary fox, scurrying into some bushes down in a glen.
Moments later, hoards of hunters come into your presence asking you which way the fox went. Would you lie? I would.
Second-If you run a red light or a stop sign, are you going to stop your vehicle, get on the cell and turn yourself in, even if you are a goody-goody? My conscience can handle that.
So imagination has great utility where there is no experience to back it up. Moral experience may still save the fox with a quick brown lie.
Rising car insurance premiums serve to deter us in the second example. In both cases, we’d probably get over it and not trouble our priests or beg mercy from our respective deity.
VI
To stimulate the imagination:
We may stare at the shoe, until it “tells” us something. Where does the telling come from? According to Rand it’s from the subconscious.
We know that a shoe maker is called a cobbler; we can see the cobbler’s son doing his apprenticeship by braiding laces, and so on. Our mind will pile on more for us if we stay open for the telling.
Thesis:
And, there are those who speak of God telling them what to write. She has something for this to in the chapter:
“The writers that tell you writing is an innate talent–that if you sit down to write, God either moves you or He does not and if He does not . . . they do not know what enables them to write. This type of writer usually writes himself out after a few years.”
Antithesis:
When I was working as music teacher for Andre 3000 of OutKast in 2001, I was invited to participate in the recording of their 2003, triple Grammy CD-Speakerboxx. His partner Big Boi, said:
“This tune is rap ready now.”
He told the engineer John Frye, to run the tracks. Then the words just flowed out of his pencil with no groping or wondering. He glances at me, and then looks up saying:
“Giving thanks.”
So there are artists who attribute their ideas as coming from an Almighty Well of ideas if not the Godhead Himself. It is entirely their business and their bank accounts and CD sales prove to complete the whole spookiness of it all. So be it, even if it defies what Rand is saying.
When I was at the bank last week cashing a check. I told the teller:
“Er, he puts my stage name “ZaZa” on all my checks, just to aggravate me. Here’s my card with that name on it.”
“So you play here at . . . The Bistro,” she asked, looking at the address on the check.
“Yes, I actually do it for a living,” I said.
“That’s using what God gave you,” she said.
I was moved and inspired by the risk she took to preach to me. I’m not sure we share the same concept of deity but I felt her essence and sure enough felt a bit validated.
I allow myself to be inspired wherever I can find it, even cashing a check, which can be inspiring in and of itself.
Another antithesis:
On the other hand, suppose we say that God gave Charlie Parker his peerless ability on the alto sax and brilliant ideas for jazz composition.
Parker used his earnings and his band members earnings to buy heroin. Did God make sure he got his fix? Was Parker created to shoot dope? Did God give him ideas that would lead to drug addiction? The answer is in the blues.
Synthesis:
As John Lee Hooker sings on the blues song Burning Hell, about when Deacon Jones gets down on his bended knee and Hooker says “Deacon Jones pray for me–when I die, where I go, don’t nobody know.”
With the “blues as literature,” as Ralph Ellison points out, I’d surmise the same can be said for the source of our ideas–if they are indeed ours in the first place.
Where the ideas come from. . .nobody knows. It;s all rather cosmic and, that’s okay with me as long as they just keep on a’comin’.
On page seven of The Art of Fiction, Rand relates to the fallacy of writing with divine inspiration in mind. She puts forth a good argument and ultimately the proof would be in a given pudding.
I don’t think that’s something that can be solved–citing Bertrand Russell’s Third Proposition that in essence theorizes: “if you can’t prove it, then we can’t have a sensible discussion about it and we’re wasting out time.”
I don’t think Bertrand’s assertion is true in the absolute sense otherwise we wouldn’t enjoy seeing our guess validated. I wonder what he’d say to that.
Rand states further: “By contrast, if you really know where your inspiration comes from, you will never run out of material. A rational writer can stroke his subconscious just as one puts fuel in a machine.”
Rand continues:
“If you keep on storing things in your mind for you future writing, and keep integrating your choice of theme to your general knowledge, allowing the scope of your writing to grow as your knowledge widens, then you’ll always have something to say and you will find even better ways to say it.”
As the chapter closes, she makes some assertions that can be countered readily, as she refers to the fallacy of instinct. This is where I beg to differ although if I read more about her semantic around the word, I may not have a hound in this chase after all.
I find a basic mental-food-group in her first chapter’s treatise: Writing and The Subconscious, as it is a key to getting “imagined” and stuff not yet imagined, onto paper and into the minds and lives of readers.
I will accept that the subconscious also helps us render verity with it’s ready-made facts into something that can be called literature, though it be fiction.
As you may well know, there are numerous essays on the contradiction one might refer to as the “verity of fiction.” John Gardner’s essays on that topic are enlightening . . . again and again.
There are other tidbits in this chapter that I’m sure you can use and they await your perusal and discovery. Some parts, if not all of the chapter will speak to you personally, contributing to the spontaneous birth, plausible sequences, and meaningful endings to your stories as they pour from the wells and mansions of your subconscious. If there is such a thing.
References:
The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand-Edited by Tore Boeckman-Introduction by Leonard Peikoff
Penquin Putnam, Inc., NY 2000
Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision by Louis Breger -John Wiley and Sons, Inc NY 2000
Joihn Lee Hooker-excerpted lyrics from Burning Hell
Farlex online dictionary
Website: Ayn Rand Institute
Reference:
- Freud, Breuer, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Big Boi, OutKast, subconscious mind, writing, how to write fiction.
