WHAT WOULD SHE KNOW ABOUT IT?:

SCUD MISSIVES: a review of Letters of Ayn Rand, edited by Michael S. Berliner (Florence King, May 28, 2004, National Review)

If anyone needs a makeover it's Ayn Rand. After her death in 1982, her one-time proteges, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, both published biographies portraying her as an abusive monster who held facts instead of opinions, drove her husband to drink, and held purge trials in her living room whenever one of her acolytes got philosophically out of line.

The centerpiece of both books is Miss Rand's affair with Nathaniel, begun when she was 50 and he 24, and continuing until they were 63 and 37. The story goes that she gathered the Brandens together with her husband, Frank O'Connor, announced that she and Nathaniel wanted to have an affair, and then opened the floor to discussion, which she dominated, analyzing the proposed adultery to prove that it was rational according to the principles of Objectivism, her home-cooked contribution to Western thought.

When the inevitable explosion came, Miss Rand publicly repudiated and denounced the Brandens, who soon divorced. Her think tank, largely their work, fell apart, as did many of her emotionally dependent acolytes, some of whom discussed whether it was rational to assassinate Nathaniel.

No hint of any of this appears in Letters of Ayn Rand, a labor of love by Leonard Peikoff, her leading loyalist (and sole heir under her will, according to Barbara Branden), and Michael S. Berliner, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, newly restored to promote Objectivism. They give us a new, improved Ayn Rand. [...]

Writing to Barry Goldwater about his book, The Conscience of a Conservative, she upbraids him for saying that conservatism rests on faith instead of on reason.

Ms King is always funny and Ms Rand an inviting target, but no one has ever had her number better than that great conservative and man of faith Whittaker Chambers.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 31, 2004 1:52 PM