Old School

Some of the school’s masters are upset by the selection of Ayn Rand as the next visiting writer. The chairman of the board of trustees, a man who “was also very rich and rained money on the school,” is believed to have insisted on the visit (63). Apparently, the headmaster was planning a drive for scholarship money and needed this man’s backing. The narrator believes in the masters’ conviction that Rand does not deserve a place among literary masters, but, as a scholarship student, he also understands the need for funds. He decides to make up his own mind about her work and gets a copy of The Fountainhead. It captivates him.

Over the holidays, he is taking a bus to visit family in Baltimore when a girl from nearby Miss Cobb’s Academy boards the bus. He knows her, Rain, from a joint school dance where they danced together so closely that a monitor separated them. Later that night, he saw her kissing one of his classmates. They engage in small talk and then she expresses shock at his possession of Rand’s book. Rain loves The Fountainhead and asks if she can borrow his copy, but he denies her.