Letters of Ayn Rand Book

The collection is slanted by the editor, who is the current custodian of the cult. At least two of the correspondents were aware of how this was probably going to go, and obtained statements that basically criticized the decision to publish only Rand's sides of their correspondence. There are minimal letters to Barbara and Nathaniel Branden, referred to as Nathan Blumenthal (which is his real name, but still . . . ), and nothing at all that deals with the affair between Branden and Rand and his subsequent expulsion from the cult when the physical intimacy collapsed. The point of this collection seems to be to emphasize that Rand was all of a piece philosophically early in her life, succeeded on her own, married the template for Howard Roark --- she herself described O'Connor as Roark --- and lived her life rigidly adhering to her "philosophy" of Objectivism. Most of which is pretty much nonsense. Her very survival was made possible by members of her family who gave her refuge in the United States (and to be fair, Rand attempted to do the same for an old family friend trapped in Austria after World War II); she persisted in a view of Frank O'Connor's "genius" at odds with everything that is known about him; and most damning of all, she refused her adherents the right to think on their own. That is truly the problem with the way in which the collection is presented. It is entirely possible to shoot some of her presuppositions and historical interpretations down without much effort, but since we never see what her correspondents did, the impression given by the book is that she rolled over them. Hardly. By the end of the collection, Rand has degenerated into a rude old lady publishing Diktats to her cult and surrounded by sycophants. But fewer of them than one might think, and most of the remaining Keepers of the Flame seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time scrambling to get a secure perch in front of their idol by maligning the others. Sound familiar? Rand blew up when Whittaker Chambers wrote a beyond-scathing review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review that included the notorious comparison of Our Lady of Laissez-faire to Hitler, but by the 1970s, her New York apartment bore suspicious similarity to the Bunker.

The letters, like the novels, are grindingly, irredeemably, third-rate. They do, however, provide a through-line of narcissism on a level so profound it was clearly a personality disorder. I was really surprised. It is difficult to imagine Howard Roark begging people to praise his buildings, but I lost count of the number of times Rand seeks compliments for her books, and by how angry bad reviews made her. Howard Roark would have laughed. Mirthlessly. She also was constantly frustrated by the failure of fans to understand what she was saying --- but it never occurs to Rand that the failure might have something to do with the writing itself. I particularly enjoyed her testy responses to hapless fans who asked her if she was Toohey in The Fountainhead.

And by the time of the Branden contretemps, Rand had descended into a conspiracy theory of life (again, something she overtly rejected in her letters). Ayn Rand stood on the burning deck, whence all but she had fled . . I suppose the novels will endure as the bodice-ripping literature of unbridled capitalism and 14 year-old boys, and as a source of bumper stickers. They're kind of like The Lord of the Rings for a different fanboy set. The difference is that Tolkien would have repudiated the vulgarity of it all. Rand would have insisted on a cut.

Oh, and Tolkien could write. His least-developed orc is a more believable character than Dagny Taggart or Dominique Francon.