Anthem (novella)

Ayn Rand in 1943

Ayn Rand initially conceived Anthem as a play when she was a teenager living in Soviet Russia.[1] After migrating to the United States, Rand didn't think of writing Anthem, but reconsidered after reading a short story in The Saturday Evening Post set in the future.[note 1] Seeing that mainstream magazines would publish speculative fiction, she decided to try submitting Anthem to them. She wrote the story in the summer of 1937, while taking a break from research she was doing for her next novel, The Fountainhead.[2]

Rand's working title was Ego. Leonard Peikoff explains the meaning behind this title: "[Rand] is (implicitly) upholding the central principles of her philosophy and of her heroes: reason, values, volition, individualism." Thinking that the original title was too blunt, unemotional, and would give away too much of the theme, Rand changed the title to Anthem. "The present novel, in Miss Rand's mind, was from the outset an ode to man's ego. It was not difficult, therefore, to change the working title: to move from 'ego' to 'ode' or 'anthem', leaving the object celebrated by the ode to be discovered by the reader."[3]

There are similarities between Anthem and the 1921 novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, another author who had lived in Communist Russia. These include:

• A novel taking the form of a secret diary or journal.
• People are identified by codes instead of names.
• Children separated from their parents and brought up by the State.
• Individualism disposed of in favor of collective will.
• A male protagonist who discovers individuality through his relationship with a female character.
• A forest as a 'free' place outside the "dystopian" city.
• The protagonist discovers a link to the past, when people were free, in a tunnel under the Earth.

There are also a number of differences between the two stories. For example, the society of We is in no scientific or technological decay, featuring X-rays, airplanes, microphones, and so on. In contrast, the people of Anthem believe that the world is flat and the sun revolves around it, and that bleeding people is a decent form of medicine. The similarities have led to speculation about whether Rand's story was directly influenced by Zamyatin's.[4][5] However, there is little evidence that Rand was influenced by or even read Zamyatin's work, and she never mentioned it in discussions of her life in Russia.[4][6]

Anthem was reprinted in the June 1953 issue of the pulp magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

Initially, Rand planned on publishing Anthem as a magazine story or serial, but her agent encouraged her to publish it as a book. She submitted it simultaneously to Macmillan Publishers in America and Cassell in England. Both had handled her previous novel, We the Living.[7] Cassell agreed to publish Anthem, but Macmillan declined it. According to Peikoff, "[Macmillan's] comment was: the author does not understand socialism."[8] Another American publisher also turned it down, and Rand's agent was unable to sell it as a magazine serial. Cassell published it in England in 1938.[9]

After the success of The Fountainhead, a revised edition of Anthem was published in the US in 1946 by Pamphleteers, Inc., a small libertarian-oriented publishing house owned by Rand's friends Leonard Read and William C. Mullendore.[10] A 50th Anniversary Edition was published in 1995, including an appendix which reproduces the Cassell edition with Rand's handwritten editorial changes.

Since its publication in 1946, the revised version of Anthem has sold more than 3.5 million copies.[11]

The original UK edition received mostly positive reviews; several praised Rand's imagination and her support of individualism.[12] In The Sunday Times, reviewer Dilys Powell complimented its "simplicity and sincerity". Anti-communist journalist Malcolm Muggeridge gave a mixed review in The Daily Telegraph, saying it had appeal, but its dystopia was not believable.[12] A short review by Maurice Richardson in The Observer said it was "highly unconvincing, in spite of some extremely eloquent writing".[13]

Reviewing the 1953 American first hardcover edition for a genre audience, Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas were unsympathetic. Saying that "Rand implies that a sinister conspiracy of purveyors of brotherhood has prevented its American publication until now", they ironically concluded, "One can only regret that the conspiracy finally broke down."[14] (Caxton Press offered this first U.S. edition in boards in 1953, while the pulp magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries included reprints of both Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" and Anthem in the magazine's final, June 1953 issue.)

The Libertarian Futurist Society awarded Anthem its Hall of Fame Award in 1987.[15] In 2014, Anthem was nominated for a Retrospective Hugo Award for "Best Novella".[16]

Following the release of Anthem in the United States, Rand explored opportunities for having it adapted to other media. She had discussions about potential film, opera, and ballet adaptations, but these projects were never realized.[17] In 1946, Rand wrote to Walt Disney that if a screen adaptation were possible, "I would like to see it done in stylized drawings, rather than with living actors."[18]

In 1950, a radio adaptation was done for The Freedom Story, a weekly radio program produced by Spiritual Mobilization, a Christian libertarian group.[19] In 2011, it was released as an unabridged audiobook by ABN, the narration by Jason McCoy described as 'stirring and evocative'.[20]

In 1991, Michael Paxton wrote, directed, and co-produced a stage adaptation of Anthem, which appeared at the Lex Theater in Hollywood.[21] The book was adapted into a stage play in 2013 by Jeff Britting, the department manager of the Ayn Rand Archives at the Ayn Rand Institute. First performed in Denver, it opened Off-Broadway in September 2013 at the Jerome Robbins Theater. The New York Times review stated, "For a play that celebrates the individual, Anthem sure doesn’t trust its audience. Instead of illustrating ideas, this sporadically interesting show too often delivers exposition, desperate to overexplain rather than risk a moment of misunderstanding."[22] The novella also inspired a spoof rock musical, premiering Off-Broadway at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre in May 2014. The cast included Randy Jones of The Village People, Jason Gotay, Jenna Leigh Green, Remy Zaken, and Ashley Kate Adams.[23] The review in The New York Times criticized the acting of the leads, but called the show "exuberant" and better than a straight adaptation.[24]

In 2011, Anthem was adapted into a graphic novel by Charles Santino, with artwork by Joe Staton.[25] In 2018, a second graphic novel adaptation was produced, unrelated to the 2011 adaptation, adapted by Jennifer Grossman and Dan Parsons.[26]

The work has inspired many musical pieces, including full-length albums. According to Enzo Stuarti, Pat Boone composed the lyrics and his friend Frank Lovejoy wrote the, quoting Stuarti, "Prelude to this next offering," of "The Exodus Song", featured in the album Stuarti Arrives at Carnegie Hall. The song begins with a line right out of Anthem. In another point of the song it reads: "...I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my land, and my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom." In Anthem, it reads: "...I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my land, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom." A memo to Rand dated May 4, 1964, mentions the unauthorized adaptation, but there is no indication that she took any legal action.[27]

Robert Silverberg's 1971 novel A Time of Changes also depicts a society where I is a forbidden word and where the protagonist rebels against this prohibition. In a 2009 preface to a reprint edition of his novel, Silverberg said he had read Anthem in 1953, but had long forgotten it when he wrote A Time of Changes. He was surprised to see the similarities when he rediscovered Rand's story, but said overall the two books are very different.[28]

Anthem is also credited by Neil Peart for influencing Rush's "2112" with strong parallels to the plot, structure, and theme of Anthem. Peart has said that although he read Anthem, he was not consciously thinking of the story when he wrote the song; however when he recognized there were similarities, he gave credit to "the genius of Ayn Rand" in the liner notes.[29] The band also released a song called "Anthem" on their Fly by Night album, and their Canadian record label (co-founded by Rush manager Ray Danniels) is Anthem Records.

Among Rand's works, Anthem is one of the most commonly assigned as secondary school reading.[30] The Ayn Rand Institute provides free copies of the novel for use in schools, and holds an annual Anthem essay contest for students.[31]

• Burns, Jennifer (2009). Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532487-7. OCLC 313665028.
• Gimpelevich, Zina (1997). "'We' and 'I' in Zamyatin's We and Rand's Anthem". Germano-Slavica. 10 (1): 13–23.
• Gotthelf, Allan & Salmieri, Gregory, eds. (2016). A Companion to Ayn Rand. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-8684-1.
• Heller, Anne C. (2009). Ayn Rand and the World She Made. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51399-9. OCLC 229027437.
• Mayhew, Robert, ed. (2005). Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-1030-6. OCLC 255289400.
• Rand, Ayn (1995) [1938]. Anthem. Introduction and appendix by Leonard Peikoff (50th anniversary ed.). New York: Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94015-4. OCLC 317624468.
• Saint-Andre, Peter (Spring 2003). "Zamyatin and Rand". Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 4 (2): 285–304.
• Silverberg, Robert (2009) [1971]. "Preface". A Time of Changes. New York: Tom Doherty Associates. ISBN 978-0-7653-2231-9. OCLC 836855251.