Jennifer Burns

Goddess of the market: Ayn Rand and the American right

Annotations

SOURCE: Burns, Jennifer. 2009. Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Oxford university press.

“Back in Leningrad Alisa continued to accept his overtures, but her heart lay with the memory of another man. Her first adolescent crush had been on the darkly attractive Lev, whom she met through a cousin. Years later his memory lingered as the character Leo in We the Living: “He was tall; his collar was raised; a cap was pulled over his eyes. His mouth, calm, severe, contemptuous, was that of an ancient chieftain who could order men to die, and his eyes were such as could watch it.”19 Fascinated by the intense young Alisa, Lev for a time became a regular visitor to the Rosenbaum household.” (Burns, 2009, p. 24)

“But he had no genuine interest in a romance, soon abandoning her for other pursuits. Alisa was crushed. Lev symbolized all the lost possibility of her life in Russia.” (Burns, 2009, p. 24)

“Rand was becoming increasingly wary of dependence of any kind. The prospect of romance in particular roused the pain of Lev’s rejection years earlier. To desire was to need, and Rand wanted to need nobody.” (Burns, 2009, p. 28)

“Several short stories she wrote in Hollywood, but never published, dwelled on the same theme. The Husband I Bought stars an heiress who rescues her boyfriend from bankruptcy by marrying him. Another heiress in Good Copy saves the career of her newspaper boyfriend, again by marrying him, while in Escort a woman inadvertently purchases the services of her husband for an evening on the town. In several stories the woman not only has financial power over the man, but acts to sexually humiliate and emasculate him by having a public extramarital affair. In Rand’s imagination women were passionate yet remained firmly in control” (Burns, 2009, p. 29)

“Under the surface Rand’s unfulfilled ambitions ate away at her. When the tabloids filled with the sensational case of William Hickman, a teen murderer who mutilated his victim and boasted maniacally of his deed when caught, Rand was sympathetic rather than horrified. To her, Hickman embodied the strong individual breaking free from the ordinary run of humanity. She imagined Hickman to be like herself, a sensitive individual ruined by misunderstanding and neglect, writing in her diary” (Burns, 2009, p. 30)

“Rand still found criminality an irresistible metaphor for individualism, with dubious results. Translated by Rand into fiction, Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values changed criminals into heroes and rape into love.” (Burns, 2009, p. 34)

“From these first deliberations Rand segued to a series of musings about the relationship between feelings and thoughts. She wondered, “Are instincts and emotions necessarily beyond the control of plain thinking? Or were they trained to be? Why is a complete harmony between mind and emotions impossible?” During her first spell of unemployment Rand had chastised herself for being too emotional. Now she seemed to be convincing herself that emotions could be controlled, if only she could think the right thoughts. Couldn’t contradictory emotions, she ventured, be considered “a form of undeveloped reason, a form of stupidity?”” (Burns, 2009, p. 35)

“Rand was aghast. This piece of petty Hollywood braggadocio opened an entire social universe to her. Here, she thought furiously, was someone who appeared selfish but was actually selfless. Under her neighbor’s feverish scheming and desperate career maneuverings was simply a hollow desire to appear important in other people’s eyes. It was a motivation Rand, the eternal outsider, could never understand. But once identified the concept seemed the key to understanding nearly everything around her.” (Burns, 2009, p. 45)

“second-hander” (Burns, 2009, p. 45)

““the basic distinction between two types of people in the world.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 45)

“Egoism or selfishness typically described one who “puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one’s way to get the best for oneself,” she wrote. “Fine!” But this understanding was missing something critical. The important element, ethically speaking, was “not what one does or how one does it, but why one does it.”6 Selfishness was a matter of motivation, not outcome. Therefore anyone who sought power for power’s sake was not truly selfish. Like Rand’s neighbor, the stereotypical egoist was seeking a goal defined by others, living as “they want him to live and conquer to the extent of a home, a yacht and a full stomach.” By contrast, a true egoist, in Rand’s sense of the term, would put “his own ‘I,’ his standard of values, above all things, and [conquer] to live as he pleases, as he chooses and as he believes.” Nor would a truly selfish person seek to dominate others, for that would mean living for others, adjusting his values and standards to maintain his superiority. Instead, “an egoist is a man who lives for himself.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 46)

“Like Nietzsche, Rand intended to challenge Christianity. She shared the philosopher’s belief that Christian ethics were destructive to selfhood, making life “flat, gray, empty, lacking all beauty, all fire, all enthusiasm, all meaning, all creative urge.” She also had a more specific critique, writing that Christianity “is the best kindergarten of communism possible.”10 Christianity taught believers to put others before self, an ethical mandate that matched the collectivist emphasis on the group over the individual. Thus a new system of individualist, nonChristian ethics was needed to prevent the triumph of Communism.” (Burns, 2009, p. 47)

“Although her ethical theory was firm, Rand was less certain of the other messages her book would impart. In her first notes she thought she “may not include” Communism in the novel. By early 1938 she described it to an interested publisher as “not political, this time.” “I do not want to be considered a ‘one-theme’ author,” she added.11 Not a single Russian or Communist would appear, she assured him. At the same time Rand had always sensed a connection between politics and her conception of the second-hander. Indeed, her neighbor’s statement had rocked her precisely because it seemed to illuminate a puzzling question: What made some people collectivists and others individualists? Before, Rand had never understood the difference, but now she believed that the basic collectivist principle was “motivation by the value of others versus your own independence.”12 Even as she professed a purely philosophical intent, the book’s very origins suggested its possibilities as political morality play. Still, Rand was ambivalent about writing that kind of book.” (Burns, 2009, p. 47) The Fountainhead.

“Rand’s reading was a Nietzschean hall of mirrors with a common theme: forthright elitism.” (Burns, 2009, p. 48)

““if there are things in capitalism and democracy worth saving” and speculated, in a Spenglerian aside, that perhaps the white race was degenerating.” (Burns, 2009, p. 48)

“She qualified every reference to America’s individualistic economic system with sarcastic asides such as “so-called” or “maybe!”15 According to Rand the primary “fault” of liberal democracies was “giving full rights to quantity.” Instead, she wrote, there should be “democracy of superiors only.”16” (Burns, 2009, p. 48)

“Rand’s characterizations flowed directly from her architectural research, her knowledge of current events, and her developing opposition to American liberalism. To give Roark form and specificity she drew on the career of the modernist pioneer Frank Lloyd Wright, whose avant-garde style she admired. Numerous details of Wright’s life as described in his autobiography would recur in the novel, and she gave Roark a cranky, embittered mentor in the vein of Wright’s own teacher, Louis Sullivan.” (Burns, 2009, p. 48)

“Second-hander Peter Keating was based on a contemporary mediocrity, the popular architect Thomas Hastings. As Rand noted excitedly after reading a book on Hastings, “If I take this book and Wright’s autobiography, there is practically the entire story.” (Burns, 2009, p. 48)

“Her villain, Ellsworth Toohey, promised to transform Rand’s supposedly nonpolitical novel into a sharp satire on the leftist literary culture of 1930s New York. One evening she and Frank reluctantly accompanied two friends to a talk by the British socialist Harold Laski at the leftist New School for Social Research. When Laski took the stage Rand was thrilled. Here was Ellsworth Toohey himself! She scribbled frantically in her notebook, sketching out a brief picture of Laski’s face and noting his every tic and mannerism. She and Frank went back twice more in the following evenings.” (Burns, 2009, p. 49)

“Most of Rand’s notes on Laski’s lecture, and her resultant description of Toohey, showcased her distaste for all things feminine. Rand was repelled by the women in the New School audience, whom she characterized as sexless, unfashionable, and unfeminine. She and Frank scoffed at their dowdy lisle stockings, trading snide notes back and forth. Rand was infuriated most by the “intellectual vulgarity” of the audience, who seemed to her half-wits unable to comprehend the evil of Laski’s socialism. What could be done about such a “horrible, horrible, horrible” spectacle, besides “perhaps restricting higher education, particularly for women?” she asked in her notes on the lecture. This misogyny rubbed off on Rand’s portrait of Toohey, who was insipidly feminine, prone to gossip, and maliciously catty “in the manner of a woman or a finance.” Through Toohey, Rand would code leftism as fey, effeminate, and unnatural, as opposed to the rough-hewn masculinity of Roark’s individualism.” (Burns, 2009, p. 49)

“The great exception to this method was Dominique. To capture the psychology of Dominique, a bitter and discontented heiress, Rand conjured up her own darkest moods. She tapped into all the frustration and resentment of her early years, her feeling that the world was rigged in favor of the mediocre and against the exceptional, and then imagined, “[W]hat if I really believed that this is all there is in life.”20 In the novel Howard would teach Dominique to let go of these poisonous attitudes, just as Rand herself had become more optimistic with her professional success and freedom to write.” (Burns, 2009, p. 50)

“Now, as she crafted Dominique, Rand hit on a satisfying explanation for Frank’s passivity. Dominique, like Frank, would turn away from the world in anger, “a withdrawal not out of bad motives or cowardice, but out of an almost unbearable kind of idealism which does not know how to function in the journalistic reality as we see it around us.”21 Dominique loves Howard, yet tries to destroy him, believing he is doomed in an imperfect world. Confusing and conflicted, Dominique is among Rand’s least convincing creations. More important, though, was the effect this character had on Rand’s marriage” (Burns, 2009, p. 50)

“When Frank found work in a summer stock production of Night of January 16th the two spent an idyllic few weeks in Stonington, Connecticut. There, in a flash of inspiration, Rand completed a new manuscript, a novel of scarcely a hundred pages that she titled Anthem. Again Rand did not hesitate to borrow an idea that had worked well for another writer. She began the project after reading a short science fiction story, “The Place of the Gods,” in the Saturday Evening Post. Many of Anthem’s basic elements mirror those of the story and another famous science fiction work, Evgeny Zamyatin’s We, a novel that circulated samizdat in Russia when Rand lived there.32 Unlike these other works, however, Rand’s fable emphasized individual creativity and the destructive power of state control.” (Burns, 2009, p. 53)

“Strange in style and provocative in substance, Anthem aroused little interest among American publishers but was recognized as a trenchant political parable in Britain. It was released there in 1938 by Cassells, the same firm that handled British distribution of We the Living. Despite the cool reception it initially received in the United States, Rand considered Anthem one of her favorite pieces of writing. The brief novel was her hymn to individualism, “the theme song, the goal, the only aim of all my writing.”33 It had been a welcome break from the planning of her novel-in-progress.” (Burns, 2009, p. 54)

“Rand began her volunteer work as a humble typist and filing clerk. Her ascent through the ranks was swift, and within weeks she spearheaded the creation of a new “intellectual ammunition department.” Rand taught other volunteers how to skim newspapers for damning statements by Roosevelt or his running mate, Henry Wallace. These quotations would then be compiled for use by campaign speakers or other Willkie clubs. Wallace, in particular, proved a fertile source of objectionable rhetoric, and Rand sent several volunteers to the local library to comb through material from his earlier career.” (Burns, 2009, p. 58)

“At times Rand butted heads with her superiors in the Willkie campaign. Her instinct was to highlight Roosevelt’s negative qualities, his collectivist ideology, and his antagonism to business. The campaign managers, however, chose to advertise Willkie like a new kind of soap, stressing his positive qualities. Such mild tactics disgusted Rand. When she wasn’t researching Roosevelt’s misdeeds, she visited theaters where Willkie newsreels were shown, staying afterward to field questions from the audience. These sessions were among the most exciting parts of the campaign for Rand, who reveled in the chance to share her strong opinions and argue with strangers. “I was a marvelous propagandist,” she remembered.” (Burns, 2009, p. 58)

“The base of Rand’s individualism was a natural rights theory derived from the Declaration of Independence. Each man had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and these rights were “the unconditional, personal, private, individual possession of each man, granted to him by the fact of his birth and requiring no other sanction.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 63)

“This clash between Active and Passive even structured world history, according to Rand. When the Active Man was ascendant, civilization moved forward, only to succumb to the lure of the security needed by the Passive Man. It was a cycle of light and dark that had continued for centuries, and now Rand saw another round dawning in America: “[W]hen a society allows prominence to voices claiming that Individual Freedom is an evil—the Dark Ages are standing on its threshold. How many civilizations will have to perish before men realize this?” (Burns, 2009, p. 64)

“Snyder helped Rand codify and historicize the ideas she had already expressed in Anthem. In allegorical form Rand had emphasized the power of the individual and the importance of breakthrough innovations. Now Snyder set these ideas in an economic and historical context, arguing that economic prosperity was due to “some few [who] are very successful, highly talented, endowed with capacities and abilities far beyond the mass of their fellows.”68 As she read Snyder, Rand transformed the psychological categories of second-hander and creator into the economic concepts of Active and Passive Man.” (Burns, 2009, p. 66)

“She saw now that democracy might be more hospitable to capitalism than she had ever assumed.” (Burns, 2009, p. 67)

“Although Rand spoke in the coded language of individualism, her business audience immediately sensed the political import of her ideas. Many correctly assumed that her defense of individualism was an implicit argument against expanded government and New Deal reforms. Rand was a powerful polemicist because she set these arguments in terms both abstract and moral. She flew above the grubby sphere of partisan politics, using the language of right and wrong, the scope and scale of history to justify her conclusions.” (Burns, 2009, p. 72)

“Rand also became uneasy about Pollock’s role in the organization. She began to question his sincerity and his commitment to the cause; too many people had joked to her about Pollock’s wanting to run for president. When he brought in the gravy boys, professional fund-raisers, they talked only about how to raise money, eclipsing discussion of all other issues. She sensed that Pollock and his contacts clung to individualism out of inertia rather than true commitment: “They were going out of fashion. And that that fight was much more to retain the status quo or the personal status of being leaders of public opinion, rather than what did they want to lead the public to, nor what were their opinions.”11 What bothered her most of all was a sense of resignation she detected. Almost Marxists at heart, some of the group seemed to feel they had ended up on the wrong side of history.” (Burns, 2009, p. 73)

“John Maynard Keynes” (Burns, 2009, p. 74)

“Indeed, to counter Keynesian economics, many of Rand’s Willkie group reached for arguments popular during America’s Gilded Age in the late nineteenth century. The British economist Herbert Spencer and his great American disciple, William Graham Sumner, were particular favorites” (Burns, 2009, p. 74)

“If Rand’s associates replicated the arguments of nineteenth-century laissezfaire in many ways, they were noticeably circumspect about evolutionary theory, which had played such a dominant role in the thought of Spencer and Sumner. The earlier generation of capitalist boosters had based their arguments largely on evolutionary science and the corresponding idea that natural laws were at work in human societies. From this basis they argued that government interference in the economy was doomed to failure. Some of these arguments came close to the infamous social Darwinist position, in that they suggested government support for the poor might retard the evolution of the species.” (Burns, 2009, p. 75)

““We can’t afford a social order of the unfit, by the unfit, for the unfit.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 75)

“As it turned out the only person who did not disappoint Rand was one who didn’t even join the group: Isabel Paterson, a well-known columnist for the New York Herald Tribune.” (Burns, 2009, p. 75)

“Rand sent Paterson an invitation to their meeting and followed up with a brief visit to her office. They had a cordial conversation, but Paterson explained that it was her policy not to join any group. Rand was surprised when, a few weeks later, Paterson found her home phone number and asked if they might meet again. More than twenty years Rand’s senior, the divorced and childless Paterson had a formidable reputation. She had published several successful novels but wielded true influence through her weekly column, “Turns with a Bookworm.” Written in a chatty, conversational style, Paterson’s column mixed literary gossip with book reviews and ran for twenty-five years, from 1924 to 1949.” (Burns, 2009, p. 76)

“Rand and Paterson’s political friendship quickly became personal. Paterson invited Rand to her country home in Connecticut, an “enormous jump in the relationship,” Rand remembered. “I was being very polite and formal, since it’s just a political acquaintance. And she made it personal in very quick order.” Initially hesitant, Rand soon found Paterson to be a boon companion. She left Frank behind in New York and spent the weekend in Connecticut. The two women stayed awake “the whole first night, ‘til seven in the morning—we saw the sunlight— talking philosophy and politics” (Burns, 2009, p. 76)

“And of course I was delighted with her for that reason.”20 Words and thoughts flowed easiest for Rand in the midnight hours, which she usually spent alone, buried in thought. That she so happily spent this time with Paterson, or “Pat” as Rand was now calling her, testified to the fast bond that grew between the pair. It was the first of many long talks that came to define their friendship.” (Burns, 2009, p. 77)

“Especially in the beginning, these conversations were decidedly one-sided. Paterson spoke and Rand listened. Educated only through high school, Paterson was nonetheless widely read, and friends recall the younger Rand literally “sitting at the master’s feet” as Paterson discussed American history.21 Paterson was working on a lengthy nonfiction treatise that would express her political views and had developed a commanding grasp of world history and economics that she gladly shared with Rand. She was an encyclopedia of knowledge. Rand would propose a topic—the Supreme Court, for example—and Paterson would hold forth for hours.” (Burns, 2009, p. 77)

“Rand’s encounter with Paterson constituted a virtual graduate school in American history, politics, and economics. She soaked up Paterson’s opinions, using them to buttress, expand, and shape her already established individualism. Paterson helped shift Rand onto new intellectual territory, where Nietzsche’s voice was one among many. Now Rand could draw from and react against the British classical liberal tradition and its American variants. Conversations with Paterson made Rand well versed in the major and minor arguments against the New Deal state.” (Burns, 2009, p. 78)

“To Rand, Paterson’s arguments in favor of reason were “marvelous and unanswerable” and her anger in the face of disagreement understandable, even honorable.” (Burns, 2009, p. 79)

“Family was a sticking point for Paterson. Wasn’t it true, she asked Rand, that parents must take care of their children before themselves? Rand countered swiftly, “If the child has no one but the parent, and the situation is such that the parent has to sacrifice himself and die, how long would the child survive thereafter?” Rand remembered, “[Paterson] gasped, in a pleased way, like an electric bulb going off. And she told me, ‘of course that’s the answer.’ Now that’s the last brick falling into place and she is convinced.”30 Paterson asked if she could draw on this conversation in her book, permission Rand gladly granted.” (Burns, 2009, p. 82)

“ersations with the philosophically literate Paterson most likely played a role. Regardless of where she picked up the term, Rand’s use of altruism reflected her refinement and abstraction of the concepts that had underlain the novel from the very start. At first she had understood the second-hander as a kind of glorified social climber. The frame of altruism significantly broadened this idea, allowing Rand to situate her characters within a larger philosophical and ethical universe. Identifying altruism as evil mirrored Rand’s celebration of selfishness and completed the ethical revolution at the heart of The Fountainhead” (Burns, 2009, p. 83)

“Now came the hard part. Both Rand and Ogden knew the manuscript was too long. Rand wanted to write everything down and then edit from there. She had only a few months to do it, for Bobbs-Merrill planned to release The Fountainhead in the spring. After nearly a year of nonstop writing Rand was now sleepy and unfocused when she sat at her desk. When she visited a doctor to consult about her chronic fatigue, he offered Benzedrine as a solution. At midcentury Benzedrine was a widely prescribed amphetamine and had a cult following among writers and artists. Jack Kerouac produced his masterwork On the Road in a three-week, Benzedrine-induced frenzy. Similarly Rand used it to power her last months of work on the novel, including several twenty-four-hour sessions correcting page proofs.32” (Burns, 2009, p. 85)

“Even so, Roark’s relations with women remained one of the most troubling parts of the book. Often, as Rand struggled to make concrete what she intended by the heroic, she described characters with icy emotional lives and distant, destructive relationships.” (Burns, 2009, p. 85)

“Although their passions for each other are allconsuming, in another sense the novel’s characters never truly relate to one another. Friends find their greatest moments of connection in silence, because it seems that in silence they truly understand one another. Lovers don’t hold hands, they hold wrists. And then there is the infamous rape scene.” (Burns, 2009, p. 85)

“As in Night of January 16th the grand passion of The Fountainhead begins in violence. The first encounters between Dominique and Roark are charged with sexual tension. The two meet when Roark is working in her father’s quarry. Dominique requests that he be sent to repair a marble replace she has deliberately scratched. Seeing through her ruse, Roark smashes the marble, to Dominique’s shocked delight, and then sends another man to set the replacement. Encountering him again while on horseback, Dominique slashes Roark across the face with a riding crop. He returns a few nights later to finish what both have started, slipping through her bedroom window. Rand wrote the scene to emphasize that even as she resisted, Dominique welcomed Roark’s advances. Yet it remained a brutal portrayal of conquest, an episode that left Dominique bruised, battered, and wanting more. Rand herself offered conflicting explanations for the sadomasochistic scene. It wasn’t real rape, she insisted to a fan, then called it “rape by engraved invitation.”34 Certainly Rand perceived the encounter as an erotic climax for both characters. Risqué for its time, the rape became one of the most popular and controversial parts of the book.” (Burns, 2009, p. 86)

“Defenders of laissezfaire invoked both elite privilege and the wonders of the ordinary, self-sufficient citizen, often in the same breath.” (Burns, 2009, p. 87)

“As she neared the end of the project Rand was working at fever pitch, thanks to her new medication. She was thrilled by the long hours the drug made possible, freely telling friends about this latest discovery. In a few short months she had sliced the novel’s length, reshaped its philosophical implications, and given a final polish to characters that had lived in her mind for nearly a decade.” (Burns, 2009, p. 88)

“And she had done all this while holding down a part-time job. But Benzedrine had a boomerang effect. By the time the book was complete Rand’s doctor diagnosed her as close to a nervous breakdown and ordered her to take two weeks of complete rest.” (Burns, 2009, p. 89)

““It’s time we realize—as the Reds do—that spreading our ideas in the form of fiction is a great weapon, because it arouses the public to an emotional, as well as intellectual response to our cause.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 91)

“As anti-Communists were hustled out of Leningrad State University, Rand had realized that the most innocuous of literary works could have political meaning. She kept this in mind during her first years in the United States, when she sent her family American novels to translate into Russian. These books were an important source of income for the Rosenbaums, but they had to pass the Soviet censors. Rand became an expert in picking out which type of story would gain the approval of the Communists. These same works, she believed, were slowly poisoning the American system and had contributed to Willkie’s defeat. “The people are so saturated with the collectivism of New Deal propaganda that they cannot even grasp what Mr. Willkie really stood for,” she wrote in a fundraising letter. “That propaganda has gone much deeper than mere politics. And it has to be fought in a sphere deeper than politics.”49 The Fountainhead would expose Americans to values and ideals that supported individualism rather than collectivism.” (Burns, 2009, p. 92)

“Rand’s individualism ran against the mainstream intellectual currents of her day, but it echoed the common Victorian idea that dependence would create weakness or lead to moral degradation. As a Presbyterian minister from Indiana testified, “In Howard Roark I rediscovered the ‘individual’—the individual I had been brought up to be and believe in, but who had been lost somewhere in the miasma of intellectual, moral, and spiritual confusions spawned in the unhealthy jungle of preachers, professors, and the poverty of the Depression.” Rand was right to sense that there still existed a strong antigovernment tradition in America and an almost instinctual fear of bureaucratization, regulation, and centralization. Even as it promoted a new morality, politically the novel reaffirmed the wisdom of the old ways.” (Burns, 2009, p. 93)

“Rand was active in bringing several of her Hollywood connections aboard, where they joined a prominent line-up of literary stars, including Dorothy Thompson, Hans” (Burns, 2009, p. 98)

“Christian Andersen, Margaret Mitchell, and Zora Neale Hurston” (Burns, 2009, p. 99)

“Read, Mullendore, and Hoiles rightly recognized Rand as a writer whose work supported their antiunion stance. It had not escaped their notice that The Fountainhead’s villain Ellsworth Toohey is a union organizer, head of the Union of Wynand Employees.” (Burns, 2009, p. 100)

““What if I went on strike?” From there a story unfolded instantly in her mind. What if the all creators in the world went on strike, much like her father had in Russia? What would happen next? It was a refinement of the conflict she had dramatized through Dominique. Rand galloped ahead with this new idea, once alert to it seeing the concept of the strike everywhere.” (Burns, 2009, p. 104)

“Next Wallis asked her to develop ideas for a movie based on the atomic bomb. Rand began a careful investigation of the Los Alamos project, even securing an extensive audience with the atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project. The film was never produced, but Rand’s encounter with Oppenheimer provided fuel for a character in her developing novel, the scientist Robert Stadler.” (Burns, 2009, p. 104)

“The house meant far more to Frank than an investment. Reinventing himself as a gentleman farmer, he grew lush gardens on their land and raised a flock of peacocks. In true individualist fashion the birds were not shut up in cages but flew shrieking about the property. Frank’s agricultural dabbling soon revealed a true talent for horticulture. The fields filled with bamboo, chestnuts, pomegranate trees, and blackberry bushes. In a greenhouse he bred delphiniums and gladiolas and over the years developed two new hybrids, one called Lipstick and another called Halloween. He supervised a small staff of Japanese gardeners and in the high season opened a roadside vegetable stand to sell excess produce. After one of his employees taught him flower arranging he began selling gladiolas to Los Angeles hotels.21 No longer living in Rand’s shadow, Frank’s talents drew admiration from his neighbors and customers.” (Burns, 2009, p. 105)

“Within the household, however, Frank continued to carefully defer to Ayn. Deep in concentration, she was often shocked to discover that he had silently glided into the house to tend the flowers or deliver the latest crop. At her request he agreed to wear a small bell on his shoe so she could hear him come and go. The rhythm of daily life revolved around her writing. She worked in the downstairs study with her door firmly shut and instructions to be left alone. A few days a week a secretary came in and took dictation. The house was large enough to accommodate live-in servants, typically a couple who divided household and outdoor tasks between them. Lunch was served on a regular schedule, but all understood they were not to speak to Ayn unless spoken to. If she was lost in thought the meal would be a silent affair. Dinner was more formal, with servants delivering a hot meal to the couple when summoned.22” (Burns, 2009, p. 105)

“When the conversations stretched all night Frank retired midway through the evening, and when Rand hosted the Hollywood conservatives he remained on the sidelines, a gracious yet opinion-free host. But when social occasions became fraught or tense, Frank stepped in to manage the situation. One memorable afternoon Rosalie Wilson was visiting with her mother, Millie. As a child Rosalie had briefly lived with the O’Connors in Hollywood while her parents were divorcing. During a spirited political discussion Millie shocked the others by opining, “I don’t think much of Hitler, but I’ll have to agree with him he should have incinerated all those Jews.” Rosalie remembered a silence that stretched to eternity. Then Rand said in a beautifully modulated tone, “Well, Millie, I guess you’ve never known, but I am Jewish.” The silence continued as Frank walked the Wilsons to their car. Leaning through the window with tears on his face he squeezed Rosalie’s shoulder one last time.23” (Burns, 2009, p. 106)

“Frank’s cool collection was a vital counterbalance to Rand’s uneven moods and fiery temperament.” (Burns, 2009, p. 106)

“To others Rand seemed to be chafing at the bonds of marriage. Jack Bungay, an assistant to Hal Wallis, saw a sensuality in Rand that seemed barely contained. “There was a lot of sex in her face,” he remembered, “beautiful eyes, black hair and very beautiful lips, very prominent lips, a lovely face, not especially big, but a beautiful smile.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 106)

“Although she was never fully comfortable with her looks, Rand had learned how to present herself to best advantage. The Benzedrine helped her shed excess weight, and she began wearing platform heels that boosted her height. She stepped out in dramatic clothing by Adrian, a designer favored by Hollywood stars. Rand enjoyed a close, flirtatious rapport with her boss Wallis, teasing and joking with him as they reviewed her scripts.” (Burns, 2009, p. 106)

“Other young men orbited around Rand during this time, including Thaddeus Ashby, a Harvard dropout and later an editor at the libertarian magazine Faith and Freedom.” (Burns, 2009, p. 107)

“Frank was both indispensible to Rand’s happiness and unable to satisfy her completely. His unwillingness to engage her intellectually made their relationship possible, for she would never have tolerated dissent from her husband.” (Burns, 2009, p. 107)

“Yet Frank’s distaste for dispute and argument left a void that Rand sought to fill with others.” (Burns, 2009, p. 107)

“Later she would confess to friends that during their years in California she had considered divorce. Frank, on the other hand, had found a comfortable accommodation with their differences. When Rand proclaimed to friends that Frank was the power behind the throne, he joked back, “Sometimes I think I am the throne, the way I get sat on.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 107)

“Frank was well aware of the trade-offs he had made. Rand’s wealth enabled him to work the land with little worry about finances. In return he did whatever was needed to keep her happy. On the surface he was dependent on her. But like Ruth Hill, Frank understood that Ayn needed him too.” (Burns, 2009, p. 107)

“This dispassionate tone infuriated Rand, who saw Roofs or Ceilings? through the lenses of her experience in Communist Russia. Friedman and Stigler’s use of the word “rationing” particularly disturbed her. She did not know such usage was standard in economics, instead flashing back to her days of near starvation in Petrograd.” (Burns, 2009, p. 113)

“Before long, more serious disagreements emerged as Rand’s individualism clashed with Lane’s holistic view of the world. Commenting on one of Lane’s book reviews, Rand criticized Lane’s invocation of “love thy neighbor as thyself,” and her discussion of mutual effort. She warned Lane that both could be construed as supporting collectivism. This touched off a lengthy discussion about individualism, collectivism, and cooperation. Lane felt it would be “natural human action” to help others, citing the example of a neighbor’s house catching fire. She asked Rand, “isn’t there a vital distinction between cooperation and collectivism? It seems to me that the essential basis of” (Burns, 2009, p. 116)

“cooperation is individualism. . . . I think that it is literally impossible for one person on this planet to survive.”56 In her reply Rand emphasized that although human beings might choose to help one another, they should never be obligated to do so, and certainly they should never help another person to their own detriment. To argue that human beings should help others in need was “the base of the New Deal pattern of declaring one emergency after another.” She tore apart Lane’s logic, posing hypothetical situations in which it would be moral to not help a neighbor (if one’s own house was on fire, for example). Aside from logic, Rand’s response to Lane drew upon her own stark understanding of the world. She told Lane, “each man’s fate is essentially his own.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 117)

“Lane was unconvinced. Calmly she told Rand, “you have perhaps shown me that I am a collectivist.” But she simply couldn’t believe that all human action should be or was motivated by self-interest. If that was the case, Lane asked, why did she herself oppose Social Security? Lane opposed Social Security because she thought it was bad for society as a whole, “which I can’t deny is a do-good purpose.” But opposing Social Security on “do-good” rather than selfinterested grounds was not, Lane thought, inappropriate.” (Burns, 2009, p. 117)

“She described a typhoid epidemic in her small prairie town: “People ‘helped each other out,’ that was all. . . . It was just what people did, of course. So far as there was any idea in it at all, it was that when you were sick, if you ever were, the others would take care of you. It was ‘common neighborliness.’ . . . The abnormal, that I would have thought about, would have been its not being there.” She concluded, “There IS a sense of ‘owing’ in it, of mutuality, mutual obligation of persons to persons as persons.”58 Lane saw charity arising naturally from human societies.” (Burns, 2009, p. 117)

“Through their letters it became clear that Rand and Lane did not share the same understanding of human nature on either an individual or a social level. But these differences lay under the surface, for Rand had not yet explicitly formulated her moral and political philosophy.” (Burns, 2009, p. 117)

“But the friendship’s end speaks to Rand’s weaknesses as well. Unable to meet Paterson’s demands for connection, she retreated into silence, a move that exacerbated any intellectual differences between the two. After their break she could no longer retain respect for Paterson, downgrading her to a second-rate novelist rather than an important thinker.85 Her changed estimate of Paterson changed Rand’s own understanding of herself. If Paterson had not been so brilliant after all, then Rand had done most of her thinking alone. Erasing Paterson’s contribution made Rand into the completely autonomous heroine of her own personal narrative. She would come to believe that her individual effort had solely shaped her ideas and driven her work, excluding her participation in the intellectual world that Paterson represented.” (Burns, 2009, p. 126)

“Personal relationships had always been troublesome for Rand. As she confessed to Paterson shortly after arriving in California, “I get furiously nervous every time I have to go out and meet somebody.” Part of the problem was simply communicating her views to others. Rand found it difficult to be understood, no matter how long the letters she wrote. “I strongly suspect that we are not discussing the same theory or the same problem,” she told Paterson as their relationship unraveled. The same gap in understanding had plagued her correspondence with Lane and shaped her reactions to Hayek, Friedman, and Read.86” (Burns, 2009, p. 126)

“While it was being shot Rand had been on the set almost daily, making sure the script she wrote was not altered. She paid special attention to Roark’s courtroom speech. When King Vidor, the director, tried to shoot an abridged version of the six-minute speech, the longest in film history, she threatened to denounce the movie. Jack Warner joked later that he was afraid she would blow up his studio, and he told Vidor to shoot it as written. Rand also successfully battled film censors in the conservative Hays Office, who objected as much to her individualistic rhetoric as the movie’s racy sexuality. But even Ayn Rand was no match for the Hollywood hit machine. At the movie’s star-studded premiere she was devastated to discover the film had been cut, eliminating Howard Roark’s climactic declaration, “I wish to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.”1” (Burns, 2009, p. 127)

“The movie’s debut fueled a general disillusionment with her life in California. Now in her forties, Rand struggled with her weight, her moodiness, her habitual fatigue. The differences between her and Frank, once the source of fruitful balance in their relationship, had translated into a widening gap between them. Frank spent most of his days out in the garden while Rand worked in her study. At dinner they often had little to say to one another. Adding to her weariness was a contentious lawsuit against an anti-Communist colleague, Lela Rogers (mother of the dancer Ginger). Rand had coached Rogers before a political radio debate and was named party to a subsequent slander suit, then forced to answer court summons and consult with her lawyers.2” (Burns, 2009, p. 127)

“Over time Rand had developed ingenious methods to combat the squirms. A visiting cousin was surprised to see Rand pricking her thumb with a pin, drawing dots of blood. “It keeps my thoughts sharp,” she explained. At other times Rand would roam the Chatsworth grounds, picking up small stones along the way. Back in her study she sorted them according to color and size, filling the room with more than a hundred small boxes of them.3 Perhaps her most effective method was writing to music. She tied specific melodies to different characters, using the music to set the proper mood as she wrote their starring scenes. Rand selected mostly dramatic classical pieces, so that as the plot thickened the music would reach a crescendo. Sometimes she found herself crying as she wrote.” (Burns, 2009, p. 128)

“As Rand began writing seriously she continued to receive visitors. Ruth and Buzzy Hill visited nearly every weekend, and a small coterie from nearby Los Angeles State College were regulars. Rand had spoken to a political science class there at the invitation of the professor and invited students to visit her at home, provided they were not Communists. Their professor remembered, “She was welcoming and all that, but there was still a certain coldness about her. It was in her personality. She had her own mind and her own opinions—and that was that.”7 Rand sought, with some success, to convert students to her own point of view. One remembered, “I’d been confronted with 250 different philosophies, but it was all like a big wheel with its spokes all counterbalancing each other, and I didn’t know what I thought anymore. She began removing spoke after spoke after spoke. Finally, the wheel began to turn. And I turned definitely in her direction.” 8 In contrast to the mature conservatives she had met in New York and Hollywood, Rand found it easy to make converts out of the young seekers who flocked to her side.” (Burns, 2009, p. 129)

“In the group of students that crowded around Rand, Nathan Blumenthal stood out above all others. The connection between them was immediate. Rand liked him from the start, and Blumenthal had a simple feeling: “I’m home.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 129)

“Rand’s break with Lane foreshadowed the growing importance of religion on the political right. In the years since The Fountainhead, religion had moved to the forefront of American political discourse. Rand remembered the transition clearly. Until the mid-to late 1940s she “did not take the issue of religion in politics very seriously, because there was no such threat. The conservatives did not tie their side to God. . . . There was no serious attempt to proclaim that if you wanted to be conservative or to support capitalism, you had to base your case on faith.” By 1950 all this was changing. As the Cold War closed in, Communism became always and everywhere Godless, and capitalism became linked to Christianity.” (Burns, 2009, p. 132)

“According to Rand, they had all the necessary ingredients for a successful relationship. Against her instincts Barbara followed Rand’s advice. Nathan and Barbara’s subsequent decision to change their last name to Branden symbolized the new strength of Rand’s growing circle. “Branden” had the crisp, Aryan ring of characters in Rand’s fiction; it also incorporated Rand’s chosen surname.” (Burns, 2009, p. 139)

“As in the case of young Alisa, the symbolism was clear enough. Barbara and Nathan were reborn not only as a married couple, but as a couple with an explicit allegiance to Rand.” (Burns, 2009, p. 139)

“The scope of her project awed her young followers, who considered her a thinker of world-historical significance. In her ideas they found a “round universe,” a completely comprehensible, logical world. Rand’s focus on reason led her to declare that paradoxes and contradictions were impossible.” (Burns, 2009, p. 140)

“Thought, she explained, was a cycle of moving from abstract premises to concrete objects and events: “The cycle is unbreakable; no part of it can be of any use, until and unless the cycle is completed.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 140)

“Therefore a premise and a conclusion could never clash, unless an irrational thought process had been employed. Nor could emotions and thoughts be at odds, Rand asserted. Emotions came from thought, and if they contradicted reality, then the thought underlying them was irrational and should be changed. Indeed even a person’s artistic and sexual preferences sprang from his or her basic philosophical premises, Rand taught the Collective.” (Burns, 2009, p. 140)

“Always by her side at these occasions, Frank was a silent paramour, an ornamental and decorative figure. As the conversation wore into the evening, he served up coffee and pastries but contributed little to the discussion, sometimes dozing silently in his chair. The move to New York had been profoundly disruptive for Frank. He made a fainthearted attempt to sell flowers to decorate building lobbies, printing up cards that identified him as “Francisco, the lobbyist.” But without his own land and greenhouse, the business offered little reward and soon collapsed. Rand turned again to fiction to sort out Frank’s behavior, telling the Collective, “He’s on strike.” She continued to value their connection, always introducing herself to strangers as “Mrs. O’Connor.” When their schedules diverged as she stayed up late to write, she left him friendly notes about the apartment, always addressed to “Cubbyhole” and signed “Fluff.” Rand was elated when he suggested that one of her chapter titles, “Atlas Shrugged,” serve as the book’s title, and she proudly informed new visitors that Frank had thought up the book’s name. Such claims did little to disguise Frank’s failure to emulate the active, dominant heroes Rand celebrated. The Collective knew, however, that his place by Rand’s side was never to be questioned. Frank was outside the rankings, of the Collective but not in it.41” (Burns, 2009, p. 141)

“Murray Rothbard caught a glimpse of this emerging dark side in 1954. In the years since their first meeting, Rothbard had gathered to himself a subset of young libertarians who attended Mises’s seminar and carried on discussion into the early hours of the morning, often at Rothbard’s apartment. Energetic, polymathic, and erudite, Rothbard dazzled his retinue, mostly young men who were students at the Bronx High School of Science. This group called themselves “the Circle Bastiat,” after the nineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat, and looked to Rothbard as an intellectual leader.” (Burns, 2009, p. 143)

“Rand was bad enough, but Rothbard was truly horrified by the Collective. “Their whole manner bears out my thesis that the adoption of her total system is a soul-shattering calamity,” he reported to Cornuelle. Rand’s followers were “almost lifeless, devoid of enthusiasm or spark, and almost completely dependent on Ayn for intellectual sustenance.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 144)

“Rothbard’s discomfort with the Collective masked his own conflicting emotions about Rand and her circle. After all, Rothbard had also gathered to himself a set of much younger students over whom he exercised unquestioned intellectual authority. He freely used the word “disciple” to refer to both his and Rand’s students, a word she eschewed. Now some of Rothbard’s own students were feeling the magnetic pull of Rand. Even Rothbard, as he later confessed, was subject to the same response. Many years later, speaking of this time, he told Rand, “I felt that if I continued to see you, my personality and independence would become overwhelmed by the tremendous power of your own.”47 Rand was like a negative version of himself, a libertarian Svengali seducing the young.” (Burns, 2009, p. 144)

“Apparently after his first meeting with Rand, Rothbard had credulously accepted her claims to originality. Now he discovered that “the good stuff in Ayn’s system is not Ayn’s original contribution at all.” There was a whole tradition of rational ethics, and “Ayn is not the sole source and owner of the rational tradition, nor even the sole heir to Aristotle.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 144)

“More seriously, Rothbard teased apart Rand’s system and discovered that it meant the very negation of individuality. Rand denied both basic instincts and the primacy of emotion, he wrote Cornuelle. This meant, in practice, that “she actually denies all individuality whatsoever!” Rand insisted that all men had similar rational endowments, telling Rothbard, “I could be just as good in music as in economics if I applied myself,” a proposition he found doubtful. By excising emotions, asserting that men were only “bundles of premises,” and then outlining the correct rational premises that each should hold, Rand made individuals interchangeable. Therefore, Rothbard concluded, in an eerily perceptive aside, “there is no reason whatever why Ayn, for example, shouldn’t sleep with Nathan.” The proof of Rothbard’s analysis lay in the Collective, a group of lifeless acolytes who frightened Rothbard in their numb devotion to Rand.” (Burns, 2009, p. 145)

“He enjoyed the certainty he found in Rand, the sense that he “suddenly had an answer for practically anything that might come up.” He was both drawn to Rand and unsettled by her. Pecking away at his Calvinist shell, Rand would ask him psychologically probing questions about sexuality and his feelings. “I think she might have been wanting to help me, I think . . . and wanted to contribute to my relaxing about that kind of thing,” he reflected later. But at the time he felt “terribly uncomfortable.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 145)

““You have to make a decision. You’re either going to continue to be my disciple or his.” I said, I’d rather duck. She said, “you can’t.” And that was it. I never spoke to her again after that. . . . She didn’t want me to agree with her. She wanted me to discontinue my relations with von Mises as a way of showing I was on her side.50” (Burns, 2009, p. 145)

“Rand now began to demand allegiance from those around her. She had made “the most consistent arguments” on behalf of a fully integrated system and cast out those who did not acknowledge her achievement.” (Burns, 2009, p. 146)

“Essentially, “social metaphysics” made everyday human concern with the thoughts and opinions of others problematic and pathological. It was a judgmental and reductive concept, a pejorative label that both Branden and Rand began using freely.” (Burns, 2009, p. 146)

“Branden’s new idea was doubly destructive because he employed it during therapy sessions with members of the Collective and other interested patients. Indeed, Branden had first derived the idea after conversations with fellow Collective members whom he deemed insufficiently independent.” (Burns, 2009, p. 146)

“His credentials in the area of counseling psychology were slim, to say the least; he had only an undergraduate degree. But with Rand’s system behind him, Branden felt qualified to promote himself as an expert. Rand had always enjoyed talking to people about their personal problems, urging them to apply rationality to any problem in life. Now Branden picked up this habit, his authority buttressed by Rand’s obvious respect for him. In tense therapy sessions, during which he paced the room “like a caged tiger,” as one patient remembered, Branden demanded that members of the Collective check their premises and root out all traces of irrationality from their thinking.” (Burns, 2009, p. 146)

“Like Barbara, Ayn had registered a shift. The next day she summoned Nathan to her apartment, where she waited alone. It was a scene out of the best romantic fiction. After some delay, Rand became urgent and direct. She and Nathan had fallen in love, yes? Nathan, overwhelmed, flattered, excited, confused, responded in kind. They kissed hesitantly. There would be no turning back. But this was still the founder of Objectivism, believing in rationality above all else. They must be honest with their spouses, Rand decided. She called them all to a meeting at her apartment. As Barbara and Frank listened incredulously, Rand’s hypnotic voice filled the room and stilled their protests. The spell she had cast was too strong to break now. At meeting’s end she and Nathan had secured what they requested: a few hours alone each week. Their relationship would be strictly platonic, they assured their spouses. Privacy would allow them to explore the intellectual and emotional connection they could no longer pretend did not exist.” (Burns, 2009, p. 147)

“When the inevitable happened, Rand was again honest with both Barbara and Frank. She and Nathan wished now to be lovers, she explained. But it would naturally be a short affair. She had no wish to hold back Nathan, twenty-five years her junior. Her explanation came clothed in the rational philosophy she had taught them all. By giving their feelings full expression, Nathan and Ayn were simply acknowledging the nature of reality.” (Burns, 2009, p. 147)

“For all her iconoclasm, Rand had a streak of cultural conventionality deep within. Afraid of what the outside world would say, she insisted the affair be kept a secret. Her work and her reputation would be smeared if anyone found out, she told the others. Uncomfortable with the idea of literally disrupting her marriage bed, Nathan proposed that they rent a small apartment in her building, ostensibly an office, that could be used for their meetings. Rand refused. On the surface everything would continue as usual. Even members of the Collective could have no inkling of the new arrangements between the Branden and O’Connor households.” (Burns, 2009, p. 148)

“The officially sanctioned yet secret affair sent all four parties spinning into perilous emotional territory. For all the passion they shared, relations between Nathan and Ayn were not smooth. Ayn was an insecure, jealous lover, constantly pushing Nathan to express his feelings. Not a naturally emotive person, Nathan struggled to please. They spent many of their assignation hours deep in psychological and philosophical discussion, atonement for Nathan’s latest perceived slight or indifference. Although he was thrilled by the affair, Nathan felt pressured to meet the depth of her romantic feeling for him, a task that became more difficult as the novelty of their relations wore off. He was also pulled away by his loyalty to Barbara, who began suffering intense panic attacks. Nathan, who styled himself a psychologist, could find no reason for Barbara’s anxiety. Neither of them imagined the affair, and the deception it engendered, could be a source of her inner turmoil. Perhaps the hardest hit was Frank, who was displaced from his apartment twice a week when Nathan arrived to rendezvous with his wife. His destination on many of these afternoons and evenings was a neighborhood bar.54” (Burns, 2009, p. 148)

“During the two years she struggled to write Galt’s speech, Rand’s pronounced nervous tension wreaked havoc on those closest to her. The emotional center of Nathan’s, Barbara’s, and Frank’s lives, she set the mood for all. She was irritable, angry, and tense. Nathan’s attentions did little to soothe her. No matter how welcome, he was a distraction to her writing. When he let her down, the price seemed too much to pay. Rand flayed him in private for his inattention, while praising him extravagantly to others. She erupted at Frank for small transgressions, sometimes drawing Nathan into their arguments. She was also infuriated by Barbara’s persistent anxiety attacks and her accompanying pleas for help.” (Burns, 2009, p. 150)

“In frustration, Rand developed a new theory of “emotionalism” to explain Barbara’s behavior. Like the idea of social metaphysics, emotionalism was a psychological rendering of the ideals conveyed in Rand’s fiction. Emotionalists were those who, contrary to Objectivist teaching, allowed their emotions, rather than their rationality, to guide them through the world. Rand speculated that emotional repression might be one source of emotionalism; that is, repression might eviscerate the rational faculty altogether. By not acknowledging emotions, the emotionalist was subject to their sway. Certainly this theory did provide some insight into Barbara’s suffering. However, in Rand’s and Nathan’s hands, the idea of emotionalism was not a tool for understanding, but rathera method of judgment. Neither suggested that Barbara’s emotional repression came from her acceptance of the “rational” affair between her husband and her closest friend.” (Burns, 2009, p. 150)

“Rand and the Collective too were breathless with anticipation. Rand told her followers she would face criticism: she steeled herself for attack. The Collective did not take her warnings seriously. Carried away by the power of Rand’s words, they were convinced it would only be a matter of years before Objectivism conquered the world.” (Burns, 2009, p. 154)

““Is it a novel? Is it a nightmare?”” (Burns, 2009, p. 154)

“Once again Rand let loose all the bile that had accumulated in her over the years.” (Burns, 2009, p. 160)

“Atlas Shrugged represented a fundamental challenge to the new conservative synthesis, for it argued explicitly that a true morality of capitalism would be diametrically opposed to Christianity. By spinning out the logic of capitalism to its ultimate conclusion Atlas Shrugged showcased the paradox of defending free market capitalism while at the same time advocating Christianity.” (Burns, 2009, p. 163)

“Atlas Shrugged represented a fundamental challenge to the new conservative synthesis, for it argued explicitly that a true morality of capitalism would be diametrically opposed to Christianity. By spinning out the logic of capitalism to its ultimate conclusion Atlas Shrugged showcased the paradox of defending free market capitalism while at the same time advocating Christianity.” (Burns, 2009, p. 163)

“Chambers’s review sent shock waves across the right. Rand herself claimed to have never read it, but her admirers were horrified. The Collective chafed at the injustice of assigning a former Communist to review her work and barraged the magazine with a number of incendiary letters angrily comparing National Review to the Daily Worker” (Burns, 2009, p. 163)

“Chamberlain was right to highlight religion as fundamental to the controversy over Rand, for it was religious conservatives who most disliked her book.” (Burns, 2009, p. 164)

“By contrast, secular and agnostic libertarians were more likely to tolerate or even embrace Rand. Murray Rothbard jumped into the fray on Rand’s side. Rothbard was deeply impressed by Atlas Shrugged, and his earlier reservations about Rand vanished. He began attending weekly meetings at her apartment and enrolled in therapy with Nathaniel Branden. As if to prove his loyalty, Rothbard began a letter-writing campaign on behalf of Rand and her book. He sent querulous letters to Whittaker Chambers and others who had negatively reviewed Atlas Shrugged and began recommending it to many of his correspondents” (Burns, 2009, p. 164)

“Some form of letdown was probably inevitable after the long buildup to publication, and Rand’s continued use of Benzedrine may have further contributed to her emotional fragility.” (Burns, 2009, p. 165)

“The Collective had satisfied her need to be a teacher and an authority, but it left unquenched her desire for accolades from intellectual peers.” (Burns, 2009, p. 165)

“What she dwelled upon was the painful absence of intellectual recognition. Rand longed to be publicly hailed as a major thinker on the American scene. The Collective had satisfied her need to be a teacher and an authority, but it left unquenched her desire for accolades from intellectual peers. Rand enjoyed being a dominant figure, but she also wanted to admire, to lift her gaze upward like Howard Roark.” (Burns, 2009, p. 165)

“Rand enjoyed being a dominant figure, but she also wanted to admire, to lift her gaze upward like Howard Roark.” (Burns, 2009, p. 165)

“Rand’s quest for intellectual recognition was doomed from the outset. It was not simply that her political views were unpopular. Five years after the publication of Atlas Shrugged Milton Friedman advanced similarly controversial ideas in his Capitalism and Freedom, with little loss to his academic reputation.” (Burns, 2009, p. 165)

“Friedman’s association with the University of Chicago and his technical work in economics insulated him against the type of attacks Rand endured.22 She had neither a formal academic post nor any academic training beyond her Soviet undergraduate degree. Yet it was her choice of style rather than form which inhibited her work’s reception. Rand’s romantic fiction, with its heavy political messages and overdrawn contrasts between good and evil, was hopelessly out of fashion as a vehicle for serious ideas. Atlas Shrugged was a throwback to Socialist realism, with its cardboard characters in the service of an overarching ideology.” (Burns, 2009, p. 166)

“Rand was fighting against a powerful current, not so much politically as intellectually. Atlas Shrugged was published just as a great era of system building had passed. Weary from Communism, fascism, and two world wars, intellectuals were above all uninterested in ideology. Daniel Bell’s book The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the 1950s captured the mood well. Rand’s Objectivism, a completely integrated rational, atheistic philosophical system delivered via a thousand-page novel, was simply not what most established intellectuals were looking for in 1957.23 Those curious enough to investigate it were repelled by her attacks on college professors and the intellectual classes.” (Burns, 2009, p. 166)

“Desperate for anything to cheer her up, Nathan convinced Rand to endorse a series of public lectures about her philosophy. If universities would not teach Objectivism, then Nathan would establish his own sort of Objectivist University.” (Burns, 2009, p. 166)

“If intellectuals scorned Rand’s ideas, then he would raise up a new generation fluent in her thought. His creation of the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) was intended to circumvent the intellectual establishment that was so hostile to Rand’s ideas. Not incidentally, NBI also promised to advance Nathan’s career. He had already begun to establish himself as a therapist on Rand’s coattails, drawing patients primarily from those who found her work interesting. Now he started a second business drawing on Rand’s ideas.” (Burns, 2009, p. 167)

“Nathan’s organization drew on earlier Objectivist efforts at education. Immediately following the publication of Atlas Shrugged Rand had conducted informal classes in fiction writing in her apartment. The invitation-only classes were her first foray into cultural criticism. As she taught students the basics of her style, which she called “Romantic Realism,” Rand criticized the work of such authors as Thomas Wolfe for writing stories without a plot or moral meaning. Just as there was an Objectivist view on sex, there was also an Objectivist theory of literature. These fiction classes also formed the nucleus of a “Junior Collective,” whose members enjoyed less frequent contact with Rand than the original insiders. If a student showed particular promise he or she would be invited for a one-on-one audience with Rand. From there a friendship might blossom. Or Nathan might suggest that an aspiring Objectivist write Rand a letter, expressing appreciation for her philosophy; if Rand was suitably impressed a closer relationship could develop. When Time magazine published a negative review of Atlas Shrugged, Nathan instructed all members of the Junior Collective to cancel their subscriptions as an exercise in living up to their principles.” (Burns, 2009, p. 167)

“Nathan’s organization drew on earlier Objectivist efforts at education. Immediately following the publication of Atlas Shrugged Rand had conducted informal classes in fiction writing in her apartment. The invitation-only classes were her first foray into cultural criticism. As she taught students the basics of her style, which she called “Romantic Realism,” Rand criticized the work of such authors as Thomas Wolfe for writing stories without a plot or moral meaning. Just as there was an Objectivist view on sex, there was also an Objectivist theory of literature. These fiction classes also formed the nucleus of a “Junior Collective,” whose members enjoyed less frequent contact with Rand than the original insiders. If a student showed particular promise he or she would be invited for a one-on-one audience with Rand. From there a friendship might blossom. Or Nathan might suggest that an aspiring Objectivist write Rand a letter, expressing appreciation for her philosophy; if Rand was suitably impressed a closer relationship could develop. When Time magazine published a negative review of Atlas Shrugged, Nathan instructed all members of the Junior Collective to cancel their subscriptions as an exercise in living up to their principles.2” (Burns, 2009, p. 167)

“Confounding the opinions of almost all who had weighed in on the topic, he discovered a ready market of people willing to spend time and money on philosophy lectures given by an unaccredited, newly established institution. Undoubtedly Rand was the primary draw. In the beginning she attended the question-and-answer session at the end of each lecture. The Brandens soon discovered additional demand. Barbara began offering a similar course in Philadelphia, with Rand an occasional visitor, and developed her own curriculum on “Principles of Efficient Thinking.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 168)

“It was Barbara who suggested the tape transcription idea that led to the rapid expansion of Nathaniel Branden Lectures, soon incorporated as the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI). The idea seemed preposterous at first: Branden would record his New York lectures and send them to approved representatives across the country. These representatives would then charge an admission fee for the twenty-week series. Enrolled students would gather around a tape recorder to listen to Branden and take notes. Again, the unlikely idea had wings. Soon Barbara had quit her publishing job and was working full time for NBI.” (Burns, 2009, p. 168)

“These new ventures strained the already stressful relationships in Rand’s inner circle. Despite their new business partnership Nathan and Barbara’s marriage was deteriorating fast. Weepy and lethargic, Rand called an effective stop to her sexual relationship with Nathan. She had no appetite for love but hoped their affair might resume in the distant future. The return to platonic relations was a relief to Nathan, whose ardor for Rand had dimmed considerably. No longer her lover, he now became her psychologist. Swamped by melancholy, Rand turned to Nathan as her lifeline. Following her own philosophy she strained to rationally understand the source of her negativity. John Galt wouldn’t have felt this way, she was sure. More often Rand focused on the deficiencies of the culture around her, working with Nathan to find explanations for the state of the world. She was in a state of crisis, her home a “hospital atmosphere,” as Nathan remembered it.” (Burns, 2009, p. 168)

“Now if a member of the Collective offended, Nathan would “invite that person to lunch, and, in a quiet but deadly voice, I would inform him or her of the nature of the transgression.”26 Serious offenses could mean an appearance before the entire Collective, a sort of show trial with Branden or Rand presiding. Defendants who promptly confessed their guilt and promised to work harder at living Objectivist principles were let back into the fold.” (Burns, 2009, p. 169)

“That evening’s mail brought a special delivery letter from Rand’s lawyer, outlining in detail the accusation of plagiarism and threatening a lawsuit against both Rothbard and the conference organizer, the German sociologist Helmut Schoeck.” (Burns, 2009, p. 170)

“The confrontation soon spilled out into open warfare between the Collective and the Circle Bastiat. George Reisman and Robert Hessen, formerly Rothbard loyalists, took Rand’s side in the plagiarism dispute. After a tense showdown Rothbard kicked Reisman out of his apartment. Angry phone calls flew back and forth between Rand, Nathan, and the remaining members of Circle Bastiat. When the dust settled, Rothbard had lost both Reisman and Hessen to the Collective. In a gesture of high drama Joey Rothbard mailed each a torn dollar bill, symbolizing their broken connection. Filled in on the accusations, outsiders like Schoeck, the National Review editor Frank Meyer, and Richard Cornuelle dismissed Rand and her group as “crackpots.” They found her accusations of plagiarism groundless. The ideas that Rand claimed as her own, Schoeck noted, had been in circulation for centuries. Still constrained by his phobia, Rothbard was unable to attend the conference as planned.” (Burns, 2009, p. 170)

“The incident left Rothbard with a deep hatred of Rand and her followers. He was profoundly traumatized by the hostility of Nathan, with whom he had shared deeply private information during therapy.” (Burns, 2009, p. 170)

““It is now obvious to me and everyone else what a contemptible clown Branden is,” he wrote his parents, concluding, “I’m certainly glad I’m free of that psycho.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 171)

“Looking again at Whittaker Chambers’s review of Atlas Shrugged, Rothbard discovered that he had been warned. He sent Chambers a second, appreciative letter, apologizing for his first attack and marveling at Chambers’s ability to identify Rand’s dictatorial nature. Later he would write a satirical play about Rand, Mozart Was a Red, and a pamphlet titled The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult.31 He was a powerful enemy who did everything possible to turn fellow libertarians against Rand.” (Burns, 2009, p. 171)

“He identified Kant as the source of all error in modern thought, an opinion Isabel Paterson had also held. To Peikoff, Kant’s argument that the means of perception structured humans’ sense of reality undermined objective reality, reason, and all absolutes. Kant’s ideas had opened the philosophical gates to destructive ideas like relativism and existentialism, which created the poisonous atmosphere that greeted Atlas Shrugged. Rand began to listen more seriously to Peikoff’s opinions about philosophy.” (Burns, 2009, p. 172)

“As Lean noticed, it was undoubtedly true that Rand had her own unique definitions for common philosophical terms. In a designation that must have shocked Rand, he even joked that he was “not as much of a Kantian” as Rand.39 Instead of believing all questions could be resolved by fact and deductive logic, a position he attributed to Kant, Lean suggested that subjective factors might play a role. Hospers had the same experience with Rand: “I had to be careful that she not misinterpret or oversimplify what a philosopher was saying; she was so” (Burns, 2009, p. 173)

“‘out of the loop’ of the give-and-take of contemporary philosophers that she found even the basics to be elusive.”40 If she truly wanted to make an impact on the field, Hospers told her, she should publish in an academic journal and respond to her critics; a dialogue would start, and she would be on her way. But the normal push and pull of academic life was alien to Rand.” (Burns, 2009, p. 174)

“Her friendship with Hospers ended dramatically when he invited her to present at the 1962 American Aesthetics Association meeting, held at Harvard University. Rand must have felt she was finally getting her due, speaking to Ivy League philosophers as an equal. But after her presentation Hospers took the floor and made a critical commentary on her presentation. In his role as commentator he held forth as an authority, commending Rand in some areas, tweaking her in others, suggesting avenues of further inquiry or points to clarify. This was not the kind of treatment Rand had expected, and she was deeply hurt. At the reception afterward neither she nor the Collective would acknowledge Hospers’s presence. By criticizing her in public Hospers had committed an unforgivable error, made all the worse by Rand’s sensitivity to her status among intellectuals. He tried to heal the breach, but Rand would never again speak to him. Hospers continued to acknowledge Rand as an influence, including a discussion of her work in his textbook, Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. But he alone could do little to transform Rand’s reputation in the academy. Later he even came to believe his identification with Rand cost him a job at UCLA and a Guggenheim fellowship.” (Burns, 2009, p. 174)

“The long years of labor on Atlas Shrugged, the stress of her relationship with Nathan and her disappointment in Frank, regular drug use and unhealthy personal habits, all had culminated in a mental rigidity that increasingly defined Rand. She was even unwilling to acknowledge her own intellectual development, releasing an edited version of We the Living in 1959 that erased any passages at odds with Objectivism.” (Burns, 2009, p. 174)

“For years she had sealed herself off from all outside influences save Nathan and Leonard, and it was now impossible for her to communicate with contemporaries. The woman who had written long demonstrative letters to Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane, trying her best to understand and be understood, had vanished forever.” (Burns, 2009, p. 174)

“in 1887 but set in 2000, imagined a bemused time traveler awakening in a socialist utopia and marveling at the rampant selfishness and greed that had characterized his own time. In Bellamy’s most famous metaphor, a character describes late Victorian society as a carriage pulled by toiling masses, on top of which decadent capitalists live a life of luxury and ease. Inspired by Bellamy’s vision of a planned, egalitarian society, organizations sprang up across the country to advocate for his plans.3 Now, similarly enraptured by Rand’s utopia, came forth a new cohort of well-educated, affluent reformers, this time eager to defend the carriage-pulling capitalists against the mob who rode atop their effort.” (Burns, 2009, p. 176)

“Shaking off her lethargy, Rand now began paying attention to the new following she had gained through Atlas Shrugged. The book was an instant bestseller despite the largely negative reviews it received. As with The Fountainhead enormous quantities of enthusiastic fan mail poured in. Although Rand could not respond personally to every letter, she was interested in her readers, particularly those who wrote especially perceptive or ignorant letters. Nathan often interposed himself between Rand and the most objectionable writers, but in the early 1960s it was entirely possible to send her a letter and receive a personal response. Sometimes she even engaged in a lengthy correspondence with fans she had not met, although her more usual response was to refer the writer to work she had already published.” (Burns, 2009, p. 177)

“Rand then paused to clarify her most misunderstood and controversial idea, her attack upon altruism, or “moral cannibalism,” as she liked to call it. She explained that she used the word as did the French philosopher August Comte, to mean “self-sacrifice.” This usage was philosophically precise, but potentially very confusing. Most of Rand’s critics took the word in the more colloquial sense, as broadly meaning concern for or caring about other people. This meant that Rand seemed to be attacking even kindness itself. Once again, as she had with selfishness, Rand was redefining words to match her philosophical concepts.” (Burns, 2009, p. 178)

“It was not, she thought, her fault that she was sometimes misunderstood, and in any event she relished her iconoclastic persona. If her audience thought she was violating all standards of human decency, so much the better.” (Burns, 2009, p. 178)

“Rand presented herself as a serious philosophical thinker and analyst of American history, but could not fully escape her innate penchant for provocation and emotional invective.” (Burns, 2009, p. 178)

“A prominent 1955 volume, The Radical Right, set the tone by treating libertarianism and antiCommunism as psychological syndromes, an expression of paranoia or status anxiety.” (Burns, 2009, p. 179)

“The more the guardians of respectability criticized Rand, the more irresistible she became to conservatives who loved thumbing their noses at the ascendant liberal order.” (Burns, 2009, p. 179)

“In 1964 she reached what was then a lofty summit of journalism, the Playboy interview. In the mid-1960s Playboy was at the height of its cultural influence, publishing serious essays and commentary alongside photos of its famous playmates. Hugh Hefner had long been a fan of Rand, and his magazine ran a long and probing piece by the future futurist Alvin Toffler, who treated Rand with care and respect. She even visited a Playboy Club, which she pronounced “a wonderful place and a brilliant undertaking.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 181)

“When she traveled to distant places she preferred to have the Collective with her, or at least Frank and Nathan. Her husband raised eyebrows among outsiders like Mike Wallace, who called him “her gelded companion.”18 The Collective had grown used to Frank’s silence, but to others his passivity was a troubling suggestion of Rand’s need for dominance. Few understood how vital Frank’s presence was to Rand. If it could benefit Objectivism, she would go through the rituals and forms of being famous and expose herself to the public eye. But she needed Frank there with her, a comforting shield against the world.” (Burns, 2009, p. 181)

“After Yale she began to regularly accept invitations to visit on college campuses. By all accounts a fascinating and effective public speaker, she regularly drew above-capacity crowds. In public Rand cultivated a mysterious and striking persona. Her dark hair was cut in a severe pageboy style, and she wore a long black cape with a dollar sign pin on the lapel. Decades after emigration she still spoke with a distinct Russian accent. At parties afterward she chain-smoked cigarettes held in an elegant ivory holder, surrounded by her New York entourage.” (Burns, 2009, p. 182)

“She defined herself as a leader of the nearly lost Romantic school and attacked Naturalistic writers and artists as “the gutter school.” Alluding to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Rand criticized modern intellectuals and writers: “They feel hatred for any projection of man as a clean, self condent, efficacious being. They extol depravity; they relish the sight of man spitting in his own face.”25 She preferred the popular mystery novels of Mickey Spillane, featuring a hard-boiled detective who doggedly tracked down evildoers.” (Burns, 2009, p. 183)

“In many ways the overwhelming impact of Rand’s ideas mimicked Marxism’s influence. Arthur Koestler’s memory of his conversion to Communism echoes the sentiments expressed by Rand’s readers: “The new light seems to pour from all directions across the skull; the whole universe falls into pattern like the stray pieces of a jigsaw puzzle assembled by magic at one stroke. There is now an answer to every question; doubts and conflicts are a matter of the tortured past.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 184)

“Students pressed onward in their quest to share Rand’s ideas, often becoming the bane of their college instructors in the process. One student at Montclair State in New Jersey described his battle with a political science professor: “One day after class I recommended your books and repeated the Oath of Self Allegiance. He winced.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 186)

“A writer for New University Thought captured the mood among university professors. Robert L. White grudgingly admitted Rand’s influence, calling her “a genuinely popular ideologue of the right” and identifying a “genuine grassroots fervor for her ideas.” According to White, Rand was the only contemporary novelist his students consistently admired, and he found it “dismaying to contemplate the possibility that Ayn Rand is the single writer who engages the loyalties of the students I am perhaps ineffectually attempting to teach.” White thought Rand was “a horrendously bad writer,” and, condescendingly, he thought his student’s identification with her heroic characters “pathetic.” But White was also scared. Even though he couldn’t take Rand seriously as a thinker or a writer, he worried that when his students outgrew her, “some of Ayn Rand’s poison is apt to linger in their systems—linger and fester there to malform them as citizens and, possibly, deliver them over willing victims to the new American totalitarians.”33 Like many of Rand’s critics it was difficult for White to imagine Rand as simply another purveyor in the marketplace of ideas.” (Burns, 2009, p. 186)

“Although Objectivism appeared a way to escape religion, it was more often a substitute, offering a similar regimentation and moralism without the sense of conformity. Rand’s ideas allowed students to reject traditional religion without feeling lost in a nihilistic, meaningless universe. But from the inside Objectivists threw off the shackles of family and propriety by defining themselves anew as atheists. “Last spring I discarded my religion, and this past Fall I took the Principles course in Washington. Two better choices can hardly be imagined,” one Georgetown student reported proudly to Rand.36” (Burns, 2009, p. 188)

“As the campaign wore on, Rand was outraged to see Goldwater caricatured as a racist by the mass media. It was true that both she and Goldwater opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a litmus test of liberal acceptability, but neither she nor Goldwater was truly prejudiced. Rand inveighed against racism as “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism,” and Goldwater had integrated his family’s business years before and was even a member of the NAACP. But Goldwater’s libertarianism trumped his racial liberalism. He was among a handful of senators who voted against the bill, a sweeping piece of legislation intended to address the intractable legacy of racial discrimination in the South. Goldwater’s vote was based on principles he had held for years. A firm supporter of state’s rights, he was alarmed at the expansive powers granted the federal government under the act. Following the analysis of his friends William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, he also believed the act was unconstitutional because it infringed on private property rights. In the scrum of electoral politics such distinctions were academic. Goldwater’s vote went down as a vote for segregation.” (Burns, 2009, p. 189)

“Early civil rights activists who struggled against government-enforced segregation drew Rand’s approval. Now she criticized “Negro leaders” for forfeiting their moral case against discrimination by “demanding special race privileges.” Rand considered race a collectivist fiction, a peripheral category to be subsumed into her larger philosophy. Her rendering of American history did not ignore race, but neatly slotted it into her larger vision of capitalism. Slavery simply proved her point about the country’s “mixed economy,” and the Civil War demonstrated the superiority of the capitalistic North against “the agrarian-feudal South.”42” (Burns, 2009, p. 190)

“Rand viewed the charge of racism as a smokescreen for liberal opposition to capitalism.” (Burns, 2009, p. 191)

“In truth Goldwater faced a nearly impossible task. He was running against the master politician Lyndon Baines Johnson, who pulled the mantle of the deceased John F. Kennedy close around his shoulders. And Goldwater’s irreverent, shootfrom-the hip, folksy style, so attractive to straight-talking libertarians, was a huge liability. Caricatured as a racist fanatic who would drag the United States into nuclear war, Goldwater lost by a landslide in the general election. Besides Arizona the only states he won were in the Deep South, filled with the very southern Democrats Rand cited to disprove his racism. Yet Goldwater’s decisive defeat held within it the seeds of political transformation, for his positions had made the Republican Party nationally competitive in the South for the first time since the Civil War. It was an augury of the first national political realignment since FDR’s New Deal.” (Burns, 2009, p. 192)

“In 1967 she was a guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show three times in five months. Each time she explained to Carson the fundamentals of her philosophy, the audience response was so great she earned another invitation.1 Ted Turner, then a little-known media executive, personally paid for 248 billboards scattered throughout the South that read simply “Who is John Galt?”2 Ten years after the publication of Atlas Shrugged she was at the apex of her fame.” (Burns, 2009, p. 197)

“Nathan was “tall, striking, his hair cascading in blonde waves over his forehead and his eyes sparkling like blue ice.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 197)

“Barbara, cold and remote in her bearing, looked the part of a Rand heroine with her delicate features and pale blonde hair.” (Burns, 2009, p. 198)

“As Objectivism grew, Rand became increasingly sensitive about her public profile. Immediately after Atlas Shrugged was published she had sparred with liberals in televised forums, in print, and at academic symposiums. Now she refused to appear with others, telling an inquirer she did not do debates: because the “epistemological disintegration of our age has made debate impossible.”8 Stung by years of bad publicity, by the mid-1960s she had composed a release form to be used for media appearances. The form required that her appearance be “a serious discussion of ideas” and that disagreements, “if any, will be expressed politely and impersonally.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 200)

“Rand insisted that no references be made to her critics and reserved the right to approve the exact wording of her introduction. She was also touchy about the unexpected side effects of her literary fame, telling an eager fan, “I am sorry that I cannot let you take snapshots of me. I have discontinued this practice because I photograph very badly.” When an NBI student violated this policy at a lecture Nathan confronted the student and exposed her film.9” (Burns, 2009, p. 200)

“Far from welcoming the swelling in Objectivist ranks, Rand was increasingly suspicious of those who claimed to speak in her name. Even the Ayn Rand campus clubs, which germinated spontaneously at many of the nation’s top colleges and universities, including Boston University, Dartmouth, MIT, Stanford, and Columbia, began to bother her, for they used her name without her supervision.” (Burns, 2009, p. 200)

“In May 1965 Nathan issued a rebuke and a warning to the campus clubs in The Objectivist Newsletter. He and Rand were particularly concerned about the names these organizations might choose. Nathan explained that names such as the Ayn Rand Study Club were appropriate, whereas names such as the John Galt Society were not. “As a fiction character, John Galt is Miss Rand’s property; he is not in the public domain,” Nathan argued.10” (Burns, 2009, p. 200)

“He also spelled out the proper nomenclature for those who admired Rand’s ideas. The term Objectivist was “ intimately and exclusively associated with Miss Rand and me,” he wrote. “A person who is in agreement with our philosophy should describe himself, not as an Objectivist, but as a student or a supporter of Objectivism.” At a later date, when the philosophy had spread farther, it might be possible for there to be more than two Objectivists.” (Burns, 2009, p. 200)

“Objectivist protestors revealed their essential orientation toward studying, learning, and personal advancement. Objectivists were excited by ideas, not political programs(although eventually the ideas were to cause political change). Their version of rebellion was fundamentally scholastic: reading philosophy rather than taking over buildings.” (Burns, 2009, p. 203)

“Still, student Objectivists had to be careful how they used Rand’s ideas or they would incur her wrath.” (Burns, 2009, p. 203)

“The University of Virginia Ayn Rand Society planned an ambitious three-day conference, with speakers, discussion groups, a banquet, and several cocktail parties. Eager to draw Rand’s blessing and interested in her advice, the organizers shared their plans for an event intended to “provide what neither our colleges nor our culture provides—an exciting intellectual experience and a social event.” What Rand noticed instead was that the club used a phrase from John Galt’s oath on its stationery. Her lawyer dispatched a blistering letter ordering removal of the offensive quote. The club’s president was apologetic and ashamed: “I have cut the bottoms from all of our stationery I have, and have issued instructions and anyone else who has any of our stationery shall do likewise.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 203)

“A similar fate befell Jarrett Wollstein, a dedicated student of Objectivism. Wollstein offered a course on Rand’s thought at the University of Maryland’s “free university,” hoping to balance the overtly leftist content of the other courses. He was careful to identify himself as an independent operator who had not been sanctioned by Rand. But his disclaimer was to no avail. The local NBI representative soon visited his class to read aloud a legalistic statement announcing that he was not an approved teacher, in the process scaring off several students.” (Burns, 2009, p. 203)

“Rand’s attack on the campus clubs was part of her increasing impatience with NBI students, whom she now regularly assailed during her question-and-answer sessions. The chance to hear from Rand in person had originally been one of NBI’s greatest draws. In the beginning she was a regular attendee at the New York classes and occasionally delivered a lecture herself. Although she was normally generous in her responses to general audiences, NBI students were held to higher standards. Rand was likely to denounce anyone who asked inappropriate or challenging questions “as a person of low self-esteem” or to have them removed from the lecture hall. In front of journalists she called one questioner “a cheap fraud” and told another, “If you don’t know the difference between the United States and Russia, you deserve to find out!” These were moments of high drama, with Rand shouting her angry judgments to the widespread applause of the audience. But this antagonism toward his paying customers made Nathan extremely uncomfortable, and he began discouraging her from attending lectures.21” (Burns, 2009, p. 204)

“Always quick to anger, Rand now erupted regularly. She even began to clash with Frank. Since that first fateful evening with the Collective, Frank had continued to paint. His work was impressive, and one of his best paintings, a gritty yet etherial composition of sky, sun, and suspension bridge graced the cover of a 1968 reissue of The Fountainhead. But Ayn forbade him to sell his paintings, saying she couldn’t bear to part with any of them.” (Burns, 2009, p. 204)

“When she offered unsolicited advice about his work, he blew up at her. Frank preferred the Art Students League to NBI. He kept a low profile, never telling anyone about his famous wife. He stood out nonetheless. Before either became fashionable, Frank wore a navy blue cape and carried a shoulder strap bag. His fellow students described him as “always just very chic, very elegant without overdoing it.” In 1966 they elected him vice president of the League. This vote of confidence came just as Frank’s artistic career was cut short by the decline of his body” (Burns, 2009, p. 204)

“Stricken by a neurological disorder, by the end of 1967 his hands shook so badly he could paint no more.22 Once playful and witty, Frank now became sharp and snappish. He withdrew to the sanctuary of his studio, where he drank his days away.” (Burns, 2009, p. 205)

“Besides Frank’s decline, Rand was further disconcerted by the deterioration of her connection to Nathan. Aside from a few brief episodes just after Atlas Shrugged appeared, their relationship had been platonic for years. Rand had halted the affair during the depths of her depression. After recovering her spirits she became eager to rekindle their romance. Nathan, however, was reluctant and uninterested. He offered one excuse after another. It was the strain of betraying Barbara; the stress of cuckolding Frank; the pressure of lecturing at NBI, deceiving his students and public audience. What Nathan kept from Rand was the most obvious explanation of all: he had fallen in love with one of his NBI students, a twenty-three-year-old model named Patrecia Gullison.” (Burns, 2009, p. 205)

“Nathan first noticed Patrecia when she enrolled in his Principles class. Strikingly beautiful in the manner of Dominique Francon or Dagny Taggart, Patrecia was far more lighthearted than any Rand heroine. Carefree and gay, she teased Nathan about his serious bearing, even as she made her dedication to Objectivism clear. She struck up a romance with another Objectivist and invited both the O’Connors and the Brandens to the wedding, where Nathan brooded at the sight of her with another man.” (Burns, 2009, p. 205)

“Soon the two began meeting privately under the aegis of her interest in Objectivism. Their conversations in his office grew longer. Nathan’s feelings for Patrecia, which developed into an intense sexual affair, lit the fuse that would blow Objectivism sky high.” (Burns, 2009, p. 205)

“Unaware of Nathan’s new dalliance but anxious to maintain Objectivist rationality, Barbara petitioned her husband for permission to renew relations with an old boyfriend who was now working at NBI. First Nathan forbade it, then he relented. Barbara’s new sanctioned liaison forced the Brandens to admit that their marriage had been a hollow shell for years. Mismatched from the beginning, the pair had no natural chemistry and little in common besides mutual admiration for Rand. In 1965 they decided to separate. Just months later Patrecia and her husband split up.” (Burns, 2009, p. 205)

“All this was more than enough to make Rand uneasy and illtempered. She had counseled Barbara and Nathan through each step of their relationship and endorsed their marriage. The separation was a sign that she had failed. Even more significantly, the Brandens’ marriage, however troubled, meant Nathan was taken by a woman Rand liked and even controlled; their secret was safe with Barbara.” (Burns, 2009, p. 205)

“Rand worried that her deepest fear had come true: Nathan did not love her anymore. She was still his idol, but no longer his sweetheart.” (Burns, 2009, p. 206)

“At an Objectivist fashion show” (Burns, 2009, p. 206)

“Ayn and Nathan were both trapped by Objectivist theories of love, sex, and emotion, which allowed them no graceful exit from a failed affair.” (Burns, 2009, p. 206)

“From the start Rand had integrated sexuality into Objectivism. In Atlas Shrugged she argued that sexual love was a response to values and a reflection of self-esteem. Love was not mysterious, mercurial, or emotional, and desire was never a mere physical response. “Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself,” declares Francisco D’Anconia.24 So it was that Dominique loved Howard, Dagny loved Galt, and Nathan loved Ayn. According to Objectivism, Nathan’s love for Ayn was natural, even expected, because he held her as his highest value. To repudiate her was to repudiate all his values; to deem her unattractive was to reject her on the deepest level. Yet Nathan was still an Objectivist, still considered Rand a genius. He could find no way to reconcile his esteem for Rand with the seeming contradiction that he no longer wished to be her lover. Even worse, how could he value the young and winsome Patrecia over her? What did that say about him?” (Burns, 2009, p. 207)

“Nathan’s problems were compounded by his development of Objectivist psychology, which denied the autonomy and importance of emotions.” (Burns, 2009, p. 207)

“Rand was also blinded by her idea of man worship, a corollary to her sex theory. Men and women are equal, Rand emphasized, but nonetheless a woman should look up to her man’s superior masculinity.” (Burns, 2009, p. 208)

“When McCall’s called Rand for a puff piece about a woman president, she told the magazine, “A woman cannot reasonably want to be a commander-in-chief.” Many readers of The Objectivist were astounded by the assertion and asked Rand for clarification. She elaborated in a longer essay, “An Answer to Readers: About a Woman President.” According to Rand, a woman should never be president, not because she was unqualified for the task, but because a woman president would be too powerful.” (Burns, 2009, p. 208)

“As commander in chief she would be unable to look up to any man in her life, and this would be psychologically damaging. Any woman who would consider such a position, Rand claimed, was unfit for it, for “a properly feminine woman does not treat men as if she were their pal, sister, mother—or leader–29Rand’s theory of man worship was an abstract projection that kept her ignorant of both Frank’s and Nathan’s inner emotional states.” (Burns, 2009, p. 208)

“Although she called Frank a hero, in truth he was a passive and withdrawn man whose brief renaissance as an artist had been snuffed out by alcohol and old age. The idea of man worship was a wishful fancy, as unattainable for her as the svelte physiques and Aryan features of her heroines. Still, it was a fantasy that satisfied. Rand identified Nathan as a hero, a paragon of morality and rationality. Such beliefs made it impossible for her to let go of him as a lover or to suspect him of duplicity. “That man is no damn good!” Frank stormed after one of their counseling sessions.30 But Rand continued to take Nathan’s words at face value.” (Burns, 2009, p. 208)

“For all the successes of the New York NBI, the organization was developing an unsavory reputation. The idea that Objectivism was a weird pseudo-religion had wide currency in the mass media. Some of this sprang from the obvious passion Rand inspired in her readers. Religious metaphors were often used to describe her: she was a “prophetess” or “she-messiah,” and her audience was “a congregation” or “disciples.” 44 Much of the religious imagery, however, stemmed from eyewitness reports of NBI classes.” (Burns, 2009, p. 213)

“Life quoted a student who described an NBI class as “almost liturgical: an immaculate white cloth altar with a tape-recorded tabernacle.” “As a newcomer,” the student said, “I was asked three times if I were a ‘believer.’” (Burns, 2009, p. 213)

“In the letter it also became clear that Rand thought of Atlas Shrugged as a kind of revealed truth. She argued that for her or Nathan to assume a stance of “uncertainty” would be tantamount to pretending “that Atlas Shrugged [had] not been written.” She also seemed to equate disagreement with ignorance, and understanding with agreement.” (Burns, 2009, p. 214)

“If her ideas weren’t presented as deriving from “rational certainty,” it would permit the audience to make “assertions of disagreement, while evading and ignoring everything” she and Branden said. Rand was unable to conceive of a person’s understanding her ideas, yet disagreeing with them. She told Hospers that the classes were offered “only to those who have understood enough of Atlas Shrugged to agree with its essentials,” as if the two were synonymous.” (Burns, 2009, p. 214)

“Rand also explicitly rejected any pedagogical role, telling Hospers that NBI’s purposes were very different from those of a university. They had no interest in the development of their students’ minds: “we are not and do not regard ourselves as teachers. . . . We address ourselves to adults and leave up to them the full responsibility for learning something from the course.”48 Despite her emphasis on reason and independent judgment, Rand had a very narrow idea of how this reason should be used. She conceived her ideal student as an empty vessel who used his or her rationality only to verify the validity of Objectivism. At the same time, she excoriated those who did so as weaklings or cowards.” (Burns, 2009, p. 215)

“Although Objectivism claimed to be an intellectual culture, it was decidedly not one devoted to freewheeling inquiry, but rather a community in which a certain catechism had to be learned for advancement. A flyer for the Basic Principles of Objectivism class openly alerted potential students to the bias inherent in NBI.” (Burns, 2009, p. 215)

“Striving to become good Objectivists, Rand’s followers tried to conform to her every dictate, even those that were little more than personal preferences. Rand harbored a dislike of facial hair, and accordingly her followers were all clean shaven.” (Burns, 2009, p. 217)

“Libertine in her celebration of sex outside marriage, she described homosexuality as a disgusting aberration. The playwright Sky Gilbert, once an enthusiastic Objectivist, remembered, “As a young, self-hating gay man, I welcomed Rand’s Puritanism.” (Burns, 2009, p. 217)

“I imagined I could argue myself out of homosexuality. I labored over endless journal passages, arguing the advantages and disadvantages of being gay, always reminding myself that gay was ‘irrational.’” 54 If Objectivism was a religion to some people, it was a notably dogmatic and confining one. Led to Rand by a quest for answers and a need for certainty, her followers could find themselves locked into the system she had created.” (Burns, 2009, p. 217)

“The presence of Rand, a charismatic personality, was enough to tip Objectivism into quasi-religious territory, but Objectivism was also easy to abuse because of its very totalizing structure. There were elements deep within the philosophy that encouraged its dogmatic and coercive tendencies. Although Rand celebrated independence, the content of her thought became subsumed by its structure, which demanded consistency and excluded any contradictory data deriving from experience or emotion. Rand denied any pathway of knowledge that did not derive from rational, conscious thought and did not lead to the conclusions she had syllogistically derived. Thus Objectivism could translate quickly into blind obeisance to Rand. One former Objectivist remembered, “If you think to yourself, I have to be able to go by rational arguments, and you’re unable to refute them, then you’re really in a bind, which is where we all were.” At NBI balls dozens of women appeared in slinky, one-shouldered gowns, like Dagny wore in Atlas Shrugged. When Ayn and Frank purchased a new piece of furniture, the Objectivist dining table became all the rage.55” (Burns, 2009, p. 217)

“Roy Childs, an active Objectivist and later advocate for anarchocapitalism, remembered that many did not simply read Atlas Shrugged but were “dominated” by it.” (Burns, 2009, p. 217)

“Members of Rand’s inner circle saw her outbursts as a danger they would willingly brook in exchange for what she offered. Henry Holzer, Rand’s lawyer, remembered that nights at her apartment involved a trade-off of sorts: “Ayn would hold court mostly, and every word, every sentence was magic. It was a revelation. . . . But, on the other hand, I think it’s fair to say that most people were walking on egg shells.” He described Rand’s reaction if one of her friends said something she did not like: “She’d look at you with those laser eyes and tell you that you have a lousy sense of life, or what you said was really immoral, or you didn’t see the implications, or it was anti-life.”” (Burns, 2009, p. 218)

“Such tongue-lashings did little to deter Rand insiders. She offered them a “round universe” and a comprehensive philosophy that seemed to clear an easy path through life’s confusions. Once they made a psychic investment in Rand, it was nearly impossible to pull away. Many victims accepted that they had done something wrong, even as they were cast out of Rand’s world. The worst offenders were publicly rebuked in group discussions and analyses that resembled trials.” (Burns, 2009, p. 218)

“It mattered little if the accused was also a patient of Branden’s who had exposed personal information as part of treatment and expected confidentiality or support. This official rejection by friends, therapist, and intellectual idol was crushing.” (Burns, 2009, p. 218)

“During 1967 her relationship with Nathan became purely therapeutic, as he continued to seek her help for his sexual problems. Nathan claimed that he still loved her and wanted to resume an affair with her; he simply couldn’t. Four years into his clandestine affair with Patrecia he claimed to be asexual, unattracted even to desirable eighteen-year-olds, practically a celibate.” (Burns, 2009, p. 219)

“It was the worst and most violent of Rand’s many breakups. When Barbara told her the full story of Nathan’s relations with Patrecia, Rand was white-hot with fury. She summoned Nathan, cowering in his apartment several floors above. Barbara, Frank, and Allan Blumenthal waited with her. When Nathan arrived, Rand blocked him from the living room, seated him in her foyer, and unleashed a torrent of abuse. He was an impostor, a fake. She would destroy him and ruin his name. In a crescendo of rage she slapped him hard across the face, three times. Nathan sat motionless, absorbing her words and her blows. Years later he and Barbara remembered her parting words verbatim: “If you have an ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health— you’ll be impotent for the next twenty years! And if you achieve any potency, you’ll know it’s a sign of still worse moral degradation!”63 Then she ordered him out of her apartment. It was the last time the two would meet.” (Burns, 2009, p. 221)

“For the dedicated, the break was tantamount to a divorce between beloved parents. Ayn, Nathan, and Barbara had stood as exemplars and role models for their Objectivist flock. They suggested that the ideals of Rand’s fiction could be lived in the ordinary world and that true love and deep friendship were possible. When Ayn and Nathan broke apart many Objectivists were shattered too. One fan sent Rand a heartfelt missive: “Today, when I received a copy of the issue ‘To Whom it May Concern’ I cried.”70 The rationally ordered universe NBI students sought and found in Rand was no more.” (Burns, 2009, p. 223)