Born slightly too late for WWI and the literary cynicism of the Lost Generation, Richard Halliburton took his 1920s wanderlust and applied it to popular travel writing and lecturing, gaining a huge following (especially among women) and consciously building a "brand" with cross-promotions, media stunts and (in a particularly ill-advised swim across the Hellespont), faking his own death. At the same time he was carefully constructing a persona (one which included disappointing exotic foreign women by refusing to settle down), Hallibrand was living a closeted life to the disapproval of his Memphis parents, and attempting to cut loose in California being Bohemian and building the famous Hangover House in Laguna Beach (later used by Ayn Rand as the model for the house in the Fountainhead).