From time to time, here and there, someone brings Ayn Rand up as some kind of role model. Lately it’s even in the national news, thanks to the Tea Party and an apparently not very good film of Rand’s seminal masterwork, Atlas Shrugged. The uber conservatives now crowding reason out of the halls of congress with their bizarro legislation and their lectures from the floor and on committees about how their toilets don’t flush right so why should regulations on light bulbs be passed are the children of the Dragon’s Teeth cast randomly by Ms. Rand and her philosophical cult followers. It amazes how people who profess to believe in a philosophy of independent thought can sublimate themselves so thoroughly to the dogmas of that philosophy and claim with a straight face that they are free thinkers on any level. The phrase “more Catholic than the pope” comes to mind sometimes when crossing verbal swords with these folks, who seem perfectly blind to the contradictions inherent in their own efforts. Rand laid out a My Way or the Highway ethic that demanded of her followers that they be true to themselves—as long as they did as she directed.
Ayn Rand’s novels, of which there were three (plus a novella/parable I don’t intend to discuss here), moved by giant leaps from promising to fanciful to pathetic. There are some paragraphs in any one of them that are just fine. Occasionally a secondary character is nicely drawn (Eddie Willers is possibly her most sympathetic and true-to-life creation) and from time to time there is even a moment of genuine drama. But such bits are embedded in tar pits of philosophically over-determined panegyric that drowns any art there might be.
But then, her devoted fans never read them for the art.
What Rand delivers in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is a balm to the misunderstood and underappreciated Great Man buried in the shambling, inarticulate assemblage that is disaffected high I.Q. youth.
The give-aways in both novels involve laughter. The opening scene in The Fountainhead characterizes Howard Roark for the entire novel, prefiguring the final scene in the novel, which translated to film perfectly in the weird 1947 Gary Cooper thing.
Howard Roark laughed.
He stood naked at the edge of a cliff….He laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning and at the things which now lay ahead.
Of course, the thing that had happened to him that morning was his expulsion from university for not completing his assignments. You can pretty it up with philosophical dross, but basically he didn’t do what he was required to do, instead opting for self-expression in the face of everything else. Hence the misunderstood genius aspect, the wholly-formed sense of mission, the conviction of personal rightness, and the adolescent disdain for authority no matter what.
But his reaction? To laugh.
Any other kid in the same situation generally goes skulking off, bitter and resentful, harboring ill thoughts and maybe an “I’ll show you” attitude that may or may not lead to anything useful.
But not a Rand character. They laugh. It’s Byronic in its isolated disdain for rules or logic or anything casually human. It’s a statement of separation.
It’s also just a bit psychotic.
The other scene is from Atlas Shrugged in which Dagny Taggart falls into bed with Henry Reardon. Both are depicted as mental giants, geniuses, and industrial rebels. They are self-contained polymaths who make their own rules. And one of the rules they now make for themselves is that adultery is the only sensible choice for two such kindred beings.
And as they’re tumbling into an embrace?
When he threw her down on the bed, their bodies met like the two sounds that broke against each other in the air of the room: the sound of his tortured moan and of her laughter.
Of course, this most poignant moment is preceded by a long paragraph of Dagny explaining to Hank Reardon that she was going to sleep with him because it would be her proudest moment, because she had earned it. It’s really rather ridiculous. It’s the kind of thing that, if done at all, would most likely occur at the end of an affair, when both parties are trying to justify what they’d done, which is basically commit adultery because, you know, they wanted to.
But it’s the laughter that characterizes these two people in these moments. Crossroads for them both, turning points, and what do they do? They laugh. You can’t help but read contempt into it, no matter how much explanation Rand attempts to depict them as somehow above it all. For her it’s the laughter of victory, but in neither case is there any kind of victory, but a surrender.
Later in Atlas Shrugged Reardon gives her a bracelet made of his miracle metal and upon snapping it closed on her wrist, she kisses his hand, and it is nothing short of a moment from Gor. Dagny gets traded around through the novel until she ends up with John Galt, and no matter how much Rand tries to explain it, the scenarios she sets up for each transition turn Dagny into a groupie. She becomes by the end of the novel the prize each of the men gets when they’ve done a particularly impressive trick.
Rand attempts to portray their interactions (if you can call them that—really, they’re more contract negotiations, which means Rand owes an implicit debt to Rousseau) as strenuously righteous achievements. No one just has a conversation if they’re a Rand hero, they declaim, they negotiate, they issue position statements. They are continually setting ground rules for the experience at hand, and while maybe there’s something to this (we all indulge this sort of thing, from earliest childhood on, but if we tried to do it with the kind of self-conscious clarity of these people nothing would ever happen), it serves to isolate them further. They are the antithesis of John Donne’s assertion and by personal fiat.
Only life isn’t really like that.
The problem with being a nerd is that certain social interactions appear alien and impenetrable and the nerd feels inexplicably on the outside of every desirable interpersonal contact. People like Rand attempt to portray the group to which the nerd feels isolated from as deliberately antagonistic to the nerd because they sense the nerd’s innate superiority. They “know” that the nerd is really better than them, has more going on, and fails to join their group because it’s obvious that group is a collection of the flawed and failed. This is overcomplicating what’s really going on and doing so in an artificially philosophical way which Rand pretends is an outgrowth of a natural condition. The messiness of living is something she seeks to tame by virtue of imposing a kind of corporate paradigm in which all the worthwhile people are CEOs.
As I said, it’s attractive to certain disaffected adolescent mindset.
But it ain’t real life.
I have intentionally neglected the third novel, which was her first one—We The Living. I find this book interesting on a number of levels, one of the most fascinating being that among the hardcore Randites it is almost never mentioned, and often not read. The reasons for this are many, but I suspect the chief one being that it doesn’t fit easily with the two iconic tomes. Mainly because it’s a tragedy.
We The Living is about Kira Argounova, a teenager from a family of minor nobility who comes back to Moscow after the Revolution with the intention of going to the new “classless” university and becoming an engineer. She wants to build things and she knows that now is her chance. Prior to the revolution, she would never have been allowed by her family or social convention—her destiny was to have been married off. That’s gone now. We never really learn what has become of the rest of her family, but we can guess. And Kira is intent on pursuing her dream.
But she can’t. Because she is from minor nobility, she soon runs afoul of the self-appointed guardians of the Revolution, who oust her from the university just because.
She ends up a prostitute, then a black market dealer. She becomes the lover of an NKVD agent and uses him. She is already the lover of a wannabe counter-revolutionary who can’t get his game on and ends up in self-immolation. The NKVD agent self-destructs because of the contradictions she forces him to see in the new state and Kira goes from bad to worse and finally makes an attempt to escape Russia itself and ends up shot by a hapless border guard at the Finnish border. She dies just inside Finland.
It is a strikingly different kind of novel and it offers a glimpse of where Rand might have gone had she stuck to this path. Sure, you can see some of the seeds of her later pedantry and polemic, but the bulk of the novel is heartfelt, an honest portrayal of the tragedy of dreams caught in systemic ambivalence.
One can understand the source of Rand’s fanatic love of the United States—she grew up under the early Soviets, and there’s no denying that this was a dreadful system for a bright, talented, intellectually-bent young woman—or anyone else, for that matter—to endure. The freedom of the United States must have been narcotic to her.
But she fundamentally misunderstood the American landscape and identified with the glitzy, large-scale, and rather despotic “captains of industry” aspect rather than the common citizens, the groundseed of cooperation and generosity and familial observance and openness that her chosen idols took advantage of rather than provided for. She drew the wrong lessons and over time, ensconced within her own air-born castles, she became obsessively convinced that the world was her enemy and The People were irredeemable.
Sad, really. Sadder still that so many people bought into her lopsided philosophy.
She made the mistake so many people seem to make in not understanding that capitalism is not a natural system but an artifice, a tool. It is not a state of being but a set of applications for a purpose. It should serve, not dictate. She set out a playbook which gave capitalism the kind of quasi-legitimate gloss of a religion and we are suffering the consequences of its acolytes.
However, it would seem the only antidote to it is to let people grow out of it. There’s a point in life where this is attractive—I read all these novels when I was 15 and 16 and I was convinced of my own misunderstood specialness. But like the adolescent conviction that rock’n’roll is the only music worth listening to and that the right clothes are more important than the content of your mind, we grow out of it.
Some don’t, though. And occasionally they achieve their goals. Alan Greenspan, for instance.
And even he has now admitted that he was wrong. Too bad he didn’t realize that when he was 21.
"[I]t was always a matter of ideology for Greenspan, a libertarian champion. In 1963, writing in Rand's "Objectivist" newsletter, he noted, "It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product." Regulation, he maintained, undermines this "superlatively moral system." Self-governance by choice, he said, would be more effective than governance through government. Regulation, Greenspan maintained, was the enemy of freedom: "At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun."
Well, it turns out that at the bottom of the system that Greenspan oversaw for years, there was nothing but a pile of bad paper. And testifying to the House oversight committee, Greenspan, one of the more ideological Washington players of the past few decades, essentially said that Ayn Randism had let him—and the entire world—down."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/25-6
The biggest mistake one can make in any endeavor is to assume that one (and one's ilk) are infallible. It's at that point that wild fantasy becomes one's worldview. If one believes that one is infallible, there's no need to be self-critical, and the confirmation bias buffets one along until one day there is a catastrophe–and there might or might not ever be a rude inner awakening. Such is the power of religious ideology.
I read several of Ayn Rand's paperback philosophy books when I was a teenager. I was delighted with her clarity back then–it wasn't at all like trudging through Immanuel Kant's "Prolegomena to a Future Metaphysics."
I tore out the postcard in the back of one of her books and subscribed to an Objectivist periodical (I don't remember the exact name). Reading it led to my rude awakening. Readers occasionally wrote to ask questions or to express concerns about an aspect of Rand's writings. Instead of being the start of a meaningful exchange of ideas, they were belittled and berated by Rand's cronies for not getting with the program. Readers were essentially deemed to be stupid for failing to parrot Ayn Rand. It was stunning and repulsive. Thank goodness Rand's successors (I believe these writers included Harry Binswanger and Nathaniel Branden, made it clear that they were trying to establish a religion rather than a place were people could think.
Mark, I haven't read any of Rand's novels, but I've read enough summaries (yours and otherwise) to get the general idea. Thank you for your insights. It does require a mature mind to be able to hear, with appreciation, ideas that conflict with one's own.
It has been decades since I read Atlas Shrugged. I tried to read The Fountainhead a couple of years ago, but gave up on it because I found it so inconsistent. I have never read any of Rand's other work.
Atlas Shrugged is interesting because it seems that everybody who reads it sees in it only what they look for. When I read Atlas Shrugged I had no knowledge whatsoever of Rand's political or philisophical theories; as a result simply read it as a story. But, as an inventor and a technologist, I saw in Atlas Shrugged (and identified strongly with) NOT, as Mark said, "People like Rand attempt to portray the group to which the nerd feels isolated from as deliberately antagonistic to the nerd because they sense the nerd’s innate superiority." Instead I found affirmation that the group from which I feel isolated is deliberately antagonastic simply because its members either will not or can not accept, understand, or even acknowledge the role (both positive and negative) that science and mathematics and just plain critical thinking plays in their lives. (This continues to this day in many forms, such as people utilizing amazing levels of computer and telecommunications technology to selectively deny science and preach that the Earth is only 6000 years old, without ever noticing the inherent self-contradiction.)
As for the rest of her novel, the portions that apparently her followers have adopted as dogma; I attributed those to "bad writing" and ignored them.
(Spoiler alert)
I agree that Eddie Willers was one of the most sympathetic and realistic characters in Atlas Shrugged, and what ultimately happens to him?
Dagny and the other captains of industry abandon him to die in the desert – because even though he loves capitalism, he's not a superhuman dynamo genius like the rest of them, and therefore clearly doesn't deserve to live in Galt's free-market utopia.
I was incredulous when I read that scene in the book. I kept waiting for the cavalry to come charging over the hill to save him, something to show that Rand hadn't forgotten about him, but no. Whether that was intentional or not, it makes a strikingly clear statement about what her morals are.
Ebonmuse: I don't know whether you have seen this http://dangerousintersection.org/2011/04/17/ayn-r… . I didn't know about it until recently. A fascinating and disturbing glimpse into Rand's sense of "morality."
I would agree with Erich's statement: a good summary, Mark– thanks. Like most people, I read Atlas Shrugged in junior high school, right after Animal Farm and The Scarlett Letter. All part of my programming, I guess.
My favorite Ayn Rand anecdote comes from a friend who worked at a hedge fund up until everything went pear-shaped in 2008. His boss (the owner), a workaholic obsessive with middling intelligence, burst into the room one morning and raved to the entire staff about this new revolutionary book he had read over the weekend. My friend was expecting some new insight from Jack Welsh or Warren Buffet or maybe Seth Godin. The boss then told the staff he had just read Atlas Shrugged and wanted to base the company on it.
The fund folded with empty pockets a few months later.
Excellent commentary, especially the last line about Alan Greenspan!
Rand goes in and out of fashion; we just happen to be in an unusual upswing…give it time (or the implementation of really bad policies by our new congress) and it will swing back to the center.
I have read all of Rand's novels in high school and, though I appreciated her writing style and her fantastical vision of a free market utopia, I simply could not understand or agree with her ego-centered moral philosophy.
I understand that perhaps this extreme bent on capitalism and personal triumph over all was simply her exaggerated reaction to years of oppression by the soviets, however I feel her worldview was extremely hazy and blinded by confusion, hatred, and anger at a corrupt system which perverted the ideas of community and interpersonal relationships.
And all throughout high school and even now, all the people who wanted to appear smart and above it all subjected to Rand's idealogy. It is very much like Erich said: all those who don't agree are shunned.
The saddest thing, I think, is that so many libertarians are trying to use Rand as their new idol, stating that a system of government where everyone looks out for themselves is exactly what she professed. When, in fact, such a system would result in chaos and interpersonal battles where the world would degrade into a kind of jungle and everyone would completely forget rights and ideals and morals and look out for number 1.
Maybe that is paraphrasing too much, but I still think too many libertarians confuse her rhetoric and confuse themselves in this era, even though I do agree that the government works daily to hinder our personal growth and freedom.
I'm one who should form my own opinions. I read up on Rand's objectivism, and her bio. I've started reading "Atlas Shrugged" and just a few pages into the novel, I am amazed at how crappy and unrealistic the writing is. The characters are extremely shallow and one-dimensional.
There is one thing I find disturbing in Rand's philosophy and writings. Though never specified, it seems to me that objectivism assumes honesty as a given. Deception and and dishonesty are simply ignore in the rationale.
Iit appears to me that the character, Dagny Taggart, is an idealized personification of what Rand wanted herself be, and Dagny clearly show the signs of sociopathic behaviour.
In real life, those followers of Rand seem perfectly content to ignore about half of her philosophy. Like Lenin, Rand saw no place for religion in business, and was an atheist. but her followers seem to embrace religion, and consider deception to be a useful tool for advancing their agenda.
I don't remember Atlas Shrugged, although I got a good grade on the paper I wrote about it in high school. But I recently (~Y2K) read The Fountainhead, and was struck more by the power of committee than by the futile struggle of the protagonist against it.
But I have a picture of my mother unstoppably reading Fountainhead some years before I was born:
<img src="http://danklarmann.com/ErikaKlarmann/images/1959Fountainhead.jpg">
Most of we who would write about this probably feel like we struggle daily against A Confederacy of Dunces.
Dan: Your mother is very beautiful.
Rand suggests that we are naturally selfish. Not so. http://dangerousintersection.org/2010/08/29/moral…
Here's Phil Donahue interviewing Ayn Rand on the topic of religion. I wonder how many of the Tea Party members know about her disparagement of religious belief.
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Weird how sometimes she actually made sense.
Tom Snyder's interview with Ayn Rand – Part 3
This video contains some of Rand's views regarding altruism and selfishness, including the following:
Selfishness equals self-esteem, whereby you "respect your own mind" and "you guide yourself."
It is not true that "Happiness comes from making other people happy." Rand asks "Why is it good to make others happy but not yourself?"
[In her arguments, Rand has clearly made a straw man argument. Who out there has ever really claimed that anyone has a duty ONLY to other people to the total exclusion of one's self?]
Rand continues: "I say you can make other happy . . . if those others mean something to you selfishly. If you love them then you want to make them happy . . . You don't have to love everybody. You cannot love everybody . . . You can love only those you value and if they contribute to your happiness and you contribute to theirs. That's fine. But each one of you has to be selfish about it."
"The most immoral thing is to attack a man for virtue, for hard work and ambition [such that you make him] feel guilty."
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In this Part II of Tom Snyder's interview of Ayn Rand, she states:
– Universities are destroying America.
– There is no intellectual leadership on the right.
– (6:20) Collectivism and altruism consist of "giving up." They are "disgusting." She is infuriated with Jimmy Carter's suggestion that Americans drive less to deal with the oil shortage. This would be "living with less" and "lowering our standard of living." This is not having "pride in one's country."
"Today you're supposed to be apologize to every naked savage anywhere on the globe because we're more prosperous. Because you've EARNED your money, you have to feel guilty and apologize for it, while he hasn't and doesn't intend to learn from you. He just wants your money. That's what we're being told."
Why are we being told this? Because of Immanuel Kant, who argued that we should do things "of which you get nothing out of it." She claims that students take dope because they lack selfishness, because they are following Immanuel Kant.
Altruists tell us that we shouldn't be happy and that we should sacrifice for others.
[Again, this is a straw man argument. Who in America hasn't stated that you shouldn't take care of yourself, as well as being kind to others? Rand seems to be angry that there is ANY suggestion that we should be decent to others who don't give something back to us.]
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Here is Rand on Phil Donahue's show (Part I of V). She speaks of the dangers of self-sacrifice. Altruism is the basis of communism and nazi Germany, she states. She states that every dictatorship is based on altruism.
If we all became more selfish, there would be no war and we would be "more benevolent as a people" (4:35). For this we need need to be "rationally selfish," which is "a selfishness that can justify one's every action rationally and not the kind of win-washing [sp?] which consists of just indulging your own desires . . . of the moment and there is no innate natural idea, you know."
[This is intriguing. Is this altruism slipping in through the back door in the guise of "rational selfishness"?]
At 5:45, Donahue offers a hypothetical that he is selfish and talented so much that he has a monopoly and he now has dictatorial power over people. She states, "In a free society nobody can become a monopolist or a dictator. The system itself, the free market, will destroy you."
Donahue: How do you explain the big oil companies.
Ayn Rand: President Carter is to blame for insulting and trying to control the oil companies. "The more they get, the more credit to them because that means the country needs it and it pays them . . . and we must say thank you instead of putting or proposing to put a tax on them in order to give the money to the government who does nothing. The government doesn't contribute anything except impediments."
Donahue: But if the oil companies start gouging us, the people can't survive in the free market.
Ayn Rand: (9:06) If the government doesn't interfere, "nobody can become a monopoly. All monopolies are created by a special privilege by government. It's only by an act of government that you can keep competitors out of your field."
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Wow.
As I said, I read Atlas Shrugged decades ago, and wasn't aware of Rand's idealogy until recently. As a result I'm seeing now that what I attributed to "bad writing" was actually due to "bad thinking".
Taken individually, and in moderation, some of her ideas can be applied sensibly. But taken in totality as a belief system, they are truly frightening.
I received this email from a friend today:
After receiving this email, I looked up Rand's position, and this is what I found:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=o…
In light of this passage, the Tea Party does seem to be doing some serious cherry-picking when it comes to Ayn Rand.
What was Ayn Rand’s view on charity?
My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
[From “Playboy’s 1964 interview with Ayn Rand”]
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=o…
Egads. The more I read and hear Ayn Rand's own words, the more morally and intellectually stunted and blindered she seems to be. Not that she didn't have some good points along the way, but I think that she scores her biggest points against straw men: those supposed people who are demanding that she must give up all of her life energies in service of other non-appreciative people who might not reciprocate.
The main problem seems that she has simply made up her theory. It is bad biology and bad sociology and bad political science. Again, I add, she does make some good points here and there, but her rhetoric invites an infantilized society. She entirely ignores the many great accomplishments that have come from collective action. She focuses on excesses and failed experiments and designates them to be the norm.
I have a (very thick and comprehensive) dictionary of philosophy. "Objectivism" does not have an entry.
I asked a philosophy professor in 1985 at Ohio State (visiting my girlfriend…later wife…and tagged along with her roommate to the class) about a point in Rand's philosophy – I don't remember the question, only the response, "That's not philosophy." In my mid-twenties, I had also grown past Rand like many of the commenters here. I hadn't given her any thought in probably eight years but something in that class triggered a memory and a question. I thought the reaction amusing.
I also subscribed to the "Objectivist" newsletter as a teen. It seems in retrospect that her appeal was to mostly teens. But her writings are full of ripe cherries to be picked by folks who never read her non-fiction (or fiction), never saw how bizarre her private life was, never knew her disdain for people she saw as less than what she always wanted to be. Oh, and how capricious that measuring stick was that she used. Disagree and even the inner circle was cut out.
I picked some of my own cherries in my early readings from The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, but discarded them as untenable as I grew older. Still, "Who is John Galt?" was fun to throw out in pseudo-intellectual discussions (usually alcohol was involved) but I couldn't ever get past how unlikeable, unrealistic, and rigid her ideal characters (Roark, Galt) were; so much that whatever message she thought she was trying to send was outstripped by the bad taste of how her characters interacted with each other. And I felt her non-fiction was too smug to be taken seriously, even if, as Mark observed, she made sense at times.
Sure she made up her theory. And created an institute to spread it. One that wishes it had the curb-appeal and following of another legend-in-his-own-mind (L. Ron Hubbard.)
Rand's view on charity is remarkably like the Sharia concept of zakat. The idea is that someone who is prosperous and wealthy should be generous to the less fortunate by sharing their wealth.
Other parts of Rand's philosophy are in line with Sharia, and some parts seem ti mimic aspects of Persian culture. I wonder if she was somehow influenced by Persian Muslim beliefs.
It's easy to always be right if you constantly deny reality in favor of your fantasies.
Here's Ayn Rand's personality and beliefs in a nutshell, published at Think Progress:
"RAND'S PHILOSOPHY: The philosophy, such as it was, which Rand laid out in her novels and essays was a frightful concoction of hyper-egotism, power-worship and anarcho-capitalism. She opposed all forms of welfare, unemployment insurance, support for the poor and middle-class, regulation of industry and government provision for roads or other infrastructure. She also insisted that law enforcement, defense and the courts were the only appropriate arenas for government, and that all taxation should be purely voluntary. Her view of economics starkly divided the world into a contest between "moochers" and "producers," with the small group making up the latter generally composed of the spectacularly wealthy, the successful, and the titans of industry. The "moochers" were more or less everyone else, leading TNR's Jonathan Chait to describe Rand's thinking as a kind of inverted Marxism. Marx considered wealth creation to result solely from the labor of the masses, and viewed the owners of capital and the economic elite to be parasites feeding off that labor. Rand simply reversed that value judgment, applying the role of "parasite" to everyday working people instead. On the level of personal behavior, the heroes in Rand's novels commit borderline rape, blow up buildings, and dynamite oil fields — actions which Rand portrays as admirable and virtuous fulfillments of the characters' personal will and desires. Her early diaries gush with admiration for William Hickman, a serial killer who raped and murdered a young girl. Hickman showed no understanding of "the necessity, meaning or importance of other people," a trait Rand apparently found quite admirable. For good measure, Rand dismissed the feminist movement as "false" and "phony," denigrated both Arabs and Native Americans as "savages" (going so far as to say the latter had no rights and that Europeans were right to take North American lands by force) and expressed horror that taxpayer money was being spent on government programs aimed at educating "subnormal children" and helping the handicapped. Needless to say, when Rand told Mike Wallace in 1953 that altruism was evil, that selfishness is a virtue, and that anyone who succumbs to weakness or frailty is unworthy of love, she meant it."
http://pr.thinkprogress.org/2011/04/pr20110420/
Rand does seem to be the anti Marx. If one assumes that Marx was completely wrong in his philosophy, and that there are only absolute opposites then the forgone conclusion is that the polar opposite of wrongfulness embodies rightousness.
This is, of course, pretzel logic worthy of a Monty Python skit.
I read a great profile on Ayn and her cultish group of followers in a Harper's book review last year. If by some miracle you are not nauseated with all this Rand coverage, check it out here.
Erika: Thanks. I just finished reading that excellent Harper's piece on Ayn Rand.
What is stunningly obvious is that Rand just steps out there and writes what she thinks; I can't help but think that this is much of her appeal, despite the fact that half of it is boorish, dangerous or unsubstantiated. It simply sounds like straight-talk.
She writes dramatically and forcefully–in your face. Lightning and thunder. What other metaphors am I missing? But I can't help but be disoriented by the unimpressive interviews she has given to Tom Snyder and Phil Donahue. She looks meek and almost pathetic in person, and many of her ideas sound trite as she states them in her own voice. No wonder never had a chance to be a politician. Get her behind her typewriter, though, and she becomes a fearless demagogue with an energized readership whose reach is greater than their grasp.