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Title: Library of Congress Retrieves Ayn Rand's Fountainhead Pages View count: 2623 Rating: 5.0 (13 ratings) Description: Footage of the confiscation of first two pages of The Fountainhead manuscript from Leonard Peikoff's home. Recorded on January 15th, 2002 by Andrew Lewis. Wikipedia Excerpt: "Ayn Rand's heir Leonard Peikoff inherited many of Rand's manuscripts. During her lifetime, Rand had apparently made a comment at one point saying that she would donate her manuscripts to the Library of Congress upon her death, a bequest she later had reservations about. The Library of Congress requested the manuscripts, and demanded that Peikoff present them to the library. He considered his options, and after a heart attack in July 1991 he decided to turn over the manuscripts. He had his assistant box all of the manuscript pages except for two--the first and last pages of The Fountainhead--which he had framed. In their stead, he had the pages photocopied so that the manuscripts would be "complete." An appraiser went through the manuscripts and notified the Library of Congress about the replacement pages, but the Library of Congress replied that it was of no consequence. Some years later, Peikoff held an interview in his home with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, and when asked about the pages (which had been framed and hung on the wall of his office), Peikoff joked about having "stolen" them from the Library of Congress. This apparently went into the article, and not long after that the Library of Congress contacted Peikoff and demanded that he return U. S. Government property. After consulting with his lawyer, Peikoff determined that there was not much he could do about his situation. While perhaps he had a right to keep the papers and even though they were legally his (his argument is that he had never donated them to the library, so they had never been property of the U. S. Government), and even though he might win a lawsuit against the government, the process would be long and expensive. So he signed a capitulation agreement, but supplied the condition that the Library of Congress must come and retrieve the pages themselves. This retrieval was videotaped by a friend. Peikoff's personal narrative of the story and video of the manuscript pages' retrieval can be found on his website." http://www.peikoff.com/essays/library.htm Tags: library, of, congress, fountainhead, ayn, rand, leonard, peikoff, andrew, lewis, legal, Author: AynRandAnswers |
