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<A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.25/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City
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Laissez FaireCity Times
June 21, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 25
Editor & Chief: Emile Zola
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ayn Rand, Smeared Again
The Ayn Rand Cult
by Wolf DeVoon
To win an argument, impeach the dead. That's the macabre strategy of
Jeff Walker's 400-page history of Objectivism, entitled The Ayn Rand
Cult. Walker presents himself as an honest scholar. In reality, he's an
intellectual assassin whose mission is to exhume and burn Ayn Rand, body
and soul, as a gesture of allegiance to "respectable" authors like Gore
Vidal.
I'm not a big fan of book reviews, so here's the bottom line. Buy a copy
of Walker's encyclopedic assault on Objectivism. It's packed with
anecdotes, confessions, hyperbole, and self-serving excuses supplied by
Leonard Peikoff, Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, John Hospers, David
Kelley, the late Murray Rothbard, Erika Holzer, Tibor Machan, Albert
Ellis, Joan and Allan Blumenthal, and virtually everyone else who knew
Ayn Rand. Walker's tattletale informants denounce her (and ridicule
Objectivism as a philosophy) with every conceivable slander. Ayn Rand
was incompetent. Ayn Rand was a plagiarist. Ayn Rand was a drug addict.
Ayn Rand was insane. The only people influenced by her novels were naive
adolescents and uneducated fools. Ayn Rand was a hypocrite. Her
scholarship was superficial and inaccurate. She was a fake and a
failure, according to dozens of victims who regret their participation
in a mad "cult" that worshipped a cowardly, whining, deceitful, paranoid
autocrat who systematically abused her family and business associates.
The only nitwit who still believes in Objectivism nowadays is Leonard
Peikoff -- a third-rate student whose grasp of philosophical issues
extends no farther than an undeserved sinecure, jealously milking her
book royalties and film rights for personal gain.
So much for the book review. Now let's talk sense.
The world is a big place. Among the six billion living and five billion
dead, it's easy to find examples of human dignity, sobriety, genius,
creativity, passion, gentle goodness, and an equally broad spectrum of
rottenness. I'm currently living in a Colorado town that happens to be
prosperous and pleasant. I've also lived in South Central Los Angeles
and a dozen other hellholes, including a two-year stint in Federal
prison. Trust me.
The world is a big place. I've seen it from a penthouse in Singapore and
a windswept ditch in Wisconsin, a kampong in Java and the most elegant
nightclubs of Mayfair and Monte Carlo. I've had more than my share of
opportunity, especially as a young man who wanted everything the world
could offer. My mentors were brilliant, flamboyant, courageous,
charismatic, loyal and stern. The six dozen women I loved at various
times were innocent, lascivious, dangerous, shockingly beautiful,
playful, obstinate, and surprisingly tough.
Like Ayn Rand, I disowned my parents and siblings. I worked as a
screenwriter in Hollywood. I met Nathaniel Branden, John Hospers, Milton
Friedman, and a couple hundred other "libertarians." I studied at
prestigious universities that made me want to vomit with disgust,
because they're full of philistines and bureaucrats. I campaigned
against statism, for freedom. I wrote hundreds of thousands of words
that were rejected (or ignored) by Liberty, Reason, The Freeman, The
Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, and every book publisher and
literary agent in the English-speaking world. My film projects were
sabotaged, stolen, vetoed, and panned. It made me into a cold, hard
renegade who despises every word in print, every game show, every film
produced by Hollywood. I live in a world that has categorically shunned
me. Now age 49, I'm struggling to survive as a day-laborer, climbing
steel ladders and carrying heavy crates of equipment to rooftops, so
that suburban restaurants and banks can play Elton John's brainless
greatest hits.
The point here is that I understand Ayn Rand.
In Walker's poison-pen history, Barbara Branden is quoted as saying,
"Ayn would have given anything in the world to find an equal, and
anything in the world -- plus the next three worlds, if there are such
-- to have found a superior intellect." On the next page, Ayn Rand's
attorney Hank Holzer moans that his client "was such a prick... She was
a terrible person to deal with."
Trading Reason for Disneyland
Big surprise. The loneliest person on earth was an asshole. One of
Rand's private letters candidly admits: "I am becoming more anti-social
than I was... I can't stand the sort of things people talk about." It
was no fun being Alissa Rosenbaum in Russia, and less fun being Ayn Rand
in New York City, because she saw the United States of America crumbling
into a childishly vapid playgroup that traded reason for Disneyland and
heroism for Toys R Us.
As proof of Rand's incompetence, Walker mocks her struggle against
despair and depression. "She was obsessed with not being affected by
pain in any fundamental way," according to Nathaniel Branden. "All her
energies were mobilized to deny her suffering."
Edith Efron goes out of her way to help Walker belittle Rand: "There is
no way to communicate how crazy she was... Ultimately everyone who knew
her would ask themselves, 'Is she insane or am I?'... She was a
profoundly manipulative woman. And the flaw it implied in her was not
simply a neurosis but a profound disease." The copy editor for Atlas
Shrugged adds that, working with Rand, "there was never a light
moment... no capacity for simple enjoyment." Comedian Mark Breslin (who
never met Ayn Rand) sniffs that Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are
"utterly, utterly humorless."
Mary Gaitskill says it's simply a case of bad storytelling, concluding
that Rand contrived "an intellectual game that doesn't address the
reader at a more emotionally, spiritually, or psychologically integrated
level." The characters in The Fountainhead "have this kind of sticky,
gooey, pulpy, drama happening for them," but "Atlas doesn't even have
that, so I think [for readers] it's like a third or fourth removal of a
mental response on a low level." Screenwriter John Hill agrees. Atlas
depicts "a grim, humorless universe."
The indictment is complete. Rand was an asshole. She wrote crap.
Or did she?
In a grown-up world, where thoughtful people understand the difference
between the truth of a proposition and an ad hominem attack on the
person who said it, it matters that "Evil requires the sanction of the
victim" (Atlas Shrugged). Ayn Rand never gave her enemies, competitors,
associates, or admirers that sanction -- not even when she was wrong and
they were right. It is undoubtedly true that Rand made mistakes. She
suffered. She was influenced by Nietzsche and Spillane. But none of that
mattered. Her achievement was personal autonomy. It is so rare a human
achievement that many of her contemporaries mistook it for madness.
I was in Al Ruddy's office when he tried to resurrect the deal with Rand
for the film rights to Atlas Shrugged. She was indeed paranoid, refusing
to leave her apartment because "the KGB are trying to kill me!" Maybe
they were. I asked Hospers to intervene. He laughed and said she was
hooked on amphetamines, completely irrational.
Yesterday, I got out of a beat-up truck, dead tired from a week of
brutally hot physical labor, exactly twenty years after John Hospers
laughed at an isolated, troubled old woman. When I slammed the door of
the truck, my feet were in terrible pain and I had to waddle slowly to a
cheap, two-room apartment. "I'm so sick of being rational!" I said
aloud. "I hate being rational!" I shouted to the rest of the
neighborhood, with their new cars and spacious homes. I have to be
rational because my life is at stake on a rooftop, surrounded by power
cables and puddles of stagnant water. Most of my neighbors are making a
six-figure income, doing something they enjoy. They have assets. My wife
and I have nothing, except the imperative to stay rational or lose our
lives. It is unbearably horrid, constantly watching my step on a ladder,
balancing a 50-lb crate of tools. I hate this work. It barely puts food
on the table.
Galt’s Creed
Yet, I often recite Galt's creed: I swear by my life and my love of it,
that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man
to live for mine. It doesn't matter whether Ayn Rand said it as an
original thought, or stole it from Stirner, or found it in a box of
Cracker Jacks. It doesn't matter whether Neil Schulmann publishes my
novel or goes out of business next month. I don't even care if he screws
me out of the film rights, and Queenie and I end up toothless old
beggars in some nightmare of poverty. I'm in debt beyond any hope of
repayment, much of it to personal friends. Anything I earn in the future
belongs to the IRS for back taxes. But for now and forever, there is
something that cannot be taken from me. I own one life -- mine -- in
prison or out, in sickness or destitution or whatever else happens next.
I understand Ayn Rand's personal hell, because she owned her life in
just this same way. The only difference between us is that Rand became a
wealthy celebrity. If it happens to me, I will be just as shy and stern
in public, just as awkward on television and angry about surprise
birthday parties.
What have I "invented" as an author? -- not much. Two make a fire. It
means nothing out of context. The hero says "I like being wrong." At a
crucial moment in the third act, I wrote three words: Time ribbon stop.
Not even a complete sentence.
Queenie and I amuse each other by quoting lines of dialogue from a movie
that was never released: "With or without the fish"... "I licked the
checks and mailed the stamps"... "Rubber noses and dinner at 10." My
website advocates nuking West 57th Street and the Vatican. I angrily
proclaimed that government is impotent and illusory. In G21 World
Magazine, I said that love mocks right and wrong. What sort of
intellectual achievement is that?
Plenty. It's mine. I understand Hank Rearden perfectly. It's mine.
Jeff Walker inadvertently performed a public service by ridiculing Ayn
Rand's ideas. Analyzing her philosophy, he rightly says that "... for an
Objectivist, 'survival' automatically means survival at a fully human,
rational level -- nothing less." Fully me. Fully a creature of my own
making, for better or worse, with the knowledge that I'm probably going
to fail because the deck is stacked in favor of Bill Clinton and George
Lucas.
Of all the snide revelations hurled by Mr. Walker, one was the most
hurtful and most accurate. The Chicago Tribune recently nominated Atlas
Shrugged as the second worst novel of the millennium. "Here is a book
despised by the literati and beloved by the masses," Walker concludes.
True enough. I love Atlas Shrugged. It freed me and kept me free through
30 years of painful exile. Ayn Rand said that reality is real, and that
the unreal bullshit around us is an historical product of evil bastards
like Oliver Wendall Holmes and Gore Vidal.
Rand’s Triumph
I admit it, that Objectivism is a no-frills philosophy that appeals to
marginalized, bad-tempered, socially awkward children. I admit also that
Ayn Rand dimmed my interest in other authors. She made more sense than
the Bible and Richard Nixon. It was as simple as that.
Despite everything I've said or implied in this article, I want to
emphasize that Ayn Rand triumphed in her crusade to short-circuit the
course of human history. See http://www.anarchista.com and read Kari
Freckleton's analysis of Rand's legacy.
Rand used to say "It's earlier than we think" -- but that was 30 years
ago. Don't be surprised by what happens next, when Branden and Peikoff
and others are eclipsed by real-world events.
In the meantime, those of us who revere Ayn Rand as the patron saint of
healthy children sleep peacefully every night. Our lives are governed,
not by Mr. Walker's learned colleagues at the Canadian Broadcasting
Company and The New York Times, but by a simple axiom of no interest to
academic philosophers: that A is A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Walker, The Ayn Rand Cult, Open Court, 1999, xvii + 396 pages.
-30-
from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 25, June 21, 1999
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published by
Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc.
Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar
All Rights Reserved
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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