Bookreporter.com - AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE by Anne C. Heller

AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE
Anne C. Heller
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Biography
ISBN: 9780385513999

Anne C. Heller acknowledges that “because [she was] not an advocate for Rand’s ideas, [she] was denied access to the Ayn Rand Papers at the Ayn Rand Institute.” By “advocate” she meant “idolater” since that is what is required of those who wish to gain access. But as well as being able to read many letters and papers not possessed by the Institute, she interviewed Rand’s still-living family and her ex-lover/first great protégée, Nathaniel Branden (born Nathan Blumenthal, a young man who at one time admired Ayn Rand so much that he changed his name to incorporate hers within it, a kind of marital custom in reverse), to discover much about the life of the highly controversial author.

Ayn Rand (born Alissa Rosenbaum in 1905) immigrated to the United States from Russia in her early 20s and quickly gained employment as a Hollywood screenwriter. She was nothing if not driven, believing she had a destiny as a great author. She used amphetamines to stay awake night and day to write both her best known books, THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED. She sometimes taped a needle to her thumb so that if she lost focus, she could stick herself back to work. Rand espoused a philosophy that came to be called Objectivism and was symbolized by a U.S. dollar sign. Objectivism celebrated the total independence of all human beings, yet Rand was devastated when ATLAS SHRUGGED was, for the most part, panned by the reviewers. Paradoxically, it seemed that praise was the food she most craved, yet when people merely liked her work without espousing the ideas behind it, she was quick to label them fools and weaklings.

Heller takes a dispassionate view of Rand and, in this detailed portrait, seeks to reveal her as a whole person rather than the cardboard cutout swathed in legend created by the great lady herself. That Rand was Russian was known -- her accent proclaimed that --- but that she was Jewish was less acknowledged, especially since Rand made the claim that she had decided upon atheism by her early teens. Heller seeks to illustrate by many examples Rand’s “Russianness” and her cultural “Jewishness.” The biographer took care to disentangle the public image of Rand --- caped, clever and sometimes cruel --- from the private person, an enigma wrapped in a mystery and possibly driven more by personal fear than by public idealism.

No doubt, she was a genius who had many insightful ideas and could write a whale of a sexual romance. Her plots thickened exponentially, and even those who disagreed with her world view tired themselves out turning the pages of her giant tomes, keeping them on the bestseller lists despite critical disdain. Rand posited a world in which only productive, capitalistic people truly matter, the rest being slaves and underlings. She believed that only fiercely independent people can truly enjoy sex; in her own way, she was a proto-feminist and also anti-war, two banners that could have won her some admirers on the left. But she caustically rejected any devotion that was not total. Also, it is difficult to feel warm towards someone who characterizes altruism as the greatest possible evil, and that was Rand’s absolute belief.

Reacting poorly to the world’s failure to fall at her feet, and perhaps affected mentally by years of ingesting large numbers of dexadrine pills, Rand gradually fashioned herself into the legend she thought she deserved to be. Reading the book, I found myself thinking she was, by turns, either a high-functioning autistic, a psychotic, or a self-degraded drug addict, despite her genius and her occasional acts of kindness. She vilified nearly all of her early supporters (anyone who might have remembered her when she was not famous), dropping them in favor of a coterie of young admirers (who some would call sycophants). She never thanked anyone. She handily forgot her own missteps and recalled only her glory moments. Fiercely anti-communistic, she paradoxically played the role of a petty Stalin at the center of a clutch of young worshippers, staging psychologically destructive purges and lengthy show trials of those she identified as disloyal.

Surprisingly, however, her longest relationship, with her husband Frank O’Connor, exemplified, on his part, the quality she claimed most to despise: generosity of spirit. Hardly the sadistic, raging hero of her literary imaginings, he was passive yet protective, the opposite of what a “goddess” like Rand deserved. Frank defended her, cooked and cleaned for her, and did not protest over her affair of many years with a man some 30 years her junior conducted twice weekly in Frank’s own bed. Rand’s books have always sold well as each new generation “discovers” her. Young people, usually in their teens, take her philosophy to heart.

But, ultimately, her cold ideas lose their flavor, and most of her avid readers become as indifferent to her seductive speechifying as did her lover, Nathaniel Branden. By recanting his once hot ardor for all things Rand, he was cast into outer darkness, and an unknown young professor, Leonard Piekoff, inherited all of the author’s considerable intellectual property. That was the beginning of the Rand Institute, the end of the open sharing of Objectivism, and the middle of what is proving to be a long story. Though she passed away in 1982 from lung cancer and loneliness for her dear, weak Frank, Ayn Rand’s philosophy and the novels that proclaim it are getting more attention since the current recession took hold. That and the right wing’s perception of the imminent threat of government takeovers comprise just the sort of scenario Rand would love to have been alive to scorn and struggle against.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

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