Ayn Rand and the World She Made

by Anne C. Heller

  O’Connor ceased painting: “Portrait of an Artist,” p. 1.

  O’Connor stopped taking classes: This occurred in May 1966, according to Stephanie Cassidy (author interview, 2007).

  “she insisted that Frank be present”: Author interview with BB, September 15, 2005.

  “That man [Nathaniel] is no damn good!”: TPOAR, pp. 338–39.

  He flew into violent rages: MYWAR, p. 329.

  “I want to leave her”: Author interview with BB, September 15, 2005.

  expanded his popular … lecture: “The Objectivist Calendar,” The Objectivist, March 1967, p. 239.

  he was rehearsing the role: “The Liberty Interview: Nathaniel Branden Speaks,” p. 56.

  visited psychedelic nightclubs: Author interview with Iris Bell, March 8, 2004.

  “Branden was off in a corner”: Author interview with Al Ramrus, February 22, 2007.

  “He was having a slow-motion”: Author interview with Iris Bell, March 8, 2004.

  Yet he did not cut back: TPOARC, RPJ, March 20, 1968, p. 296.

  lurched between impossible choices: TPOAR, p. 338.

  “[I used to race] from my office”: TPOAR, p. 338.

  “not [Nathaniel] the person”: BB during unpublished taped interview with Barbara Weiss, September 25, 1983.

  Again, she urged him to confess: TPOAR, p. 336.

  built small followings: Of one of these disciples, NB’s nephew, Jonathan Hirschfeld, recalled, “[This person] presided over her little universe in the same way that NB presided over his and AR presided over hers, which meant that [she] was handing out points and making people feel uncertain of themselves and insecure. It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t adventuresome. It wasn’t curious. It was filled with an assumption about the negativity of the world, about the decadence of the world, about the corruption of the world” (author interview with Jonathan Hirschfeld, August 25, 2006).

  Prescription drugs, including tranquilizers: Author interviews with Roger J. Callahan, November 4, 2003, and Don Ventura, April 28, 2004.

  “disgusting”: AR said this in a question-and-answer period after a speech called “The Moratorium on Brains,” at Ford Hall Forum on November 14, 1971. As a matter of policy, she opposed state intervention in sexual matters and favored the repeal of sodomy laws then on the books in most states (Chris M. Sciabarra, Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation [Stow, Ohio: Leap Publishing, 2003], p. 8). She was also personally naive. Once, JMB remarked to LP that Rudolf Nureyev, whom she had just seen perform, was gay. LP told AR, and AR came to see JMB. “‘Did you say this?’ she said. ‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘He is a known homosexual and I can see it every time I watch him.’ Her whole demeanor changed, because it was a subject she didn’t know anything about, and she said to me, ‘I can hardly believe it! He’s so well endowed’ “(author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, September 2, 2004).

  “It was a wild time”: Author interview with Kerry O’Quinn, May 20, 2004.

  Some entered into therapy: During a public debate in May 1967, for example, NB answered a question about how he measured psychotherapeutic success this way: “If a homosexual comes in—if he goes out heterosexual and stays heterosexual, that’s a success” (NB and Albert Ellis debate, May 26, 1967, unpublished tape courtesy of MSC).

  relied on a small group of therapists: Author interview with Roger J. Callahan, November 4, 2003.

  an investor: Partnership agreement, courtesy of MSC.

  surrendered his license: Ellen Plasil, Therapist (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985), p. 221.

  “There were those who were extremely hypocritical”: Author interview with Don Ventura, March 19, 2004.

  “unreal” and “utterly impossible”: Albert Ellis, Is Objectivism a Religion? (New York: Institute for Rational Living Press, 1968), p. 288.

  “Am I unreal?”: MYWAR, p. 317.

  later described Rand: Author interview with Albert Ellis, September 12, 2003.

  he published a short book: The book was Is Objectivism a Religion?

  “the excess of a virtue”: BB to Barbara Weiss; taped, unpublished interview with Weiss conducted by BB, September 25, 1983.

  “One of the most astonishing phenomena”: “A Strange Kind of Simplicity,” p. 8.

  Man Also Rises: AR, p. 101.

  “He gave me, in the hours of my own days”: Introduction to the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of TF, p. viii.

  “physical alienation”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 324.

  The letter itself appears: Author interview with NB, April 3, 2008.

  thought it was as diplomatic: TPOAR, p. 340.

  “You bastard!”: TPOAR, p. 340.

  “Face twisted in hatred”: MYWAR, p. 334.

  “Everyone else profits from my

  ideas”: TPOAR, p. 341.

  His paper was the worst: TPOARC, RPJ, November 27, 1967, p. 244.

  rebuffed the offer as offensive: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 317.

  365 accused him of immorality: TPOAR, p. 341.

  “I can’t predict”: TPOAR, p. 341.

  “pretentious, presumptuous”: TPOARC, RPJ, January 30, 1968, p. 283.

  “girl next door”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 12, 1968, p. 369.

  “Appalled by Ayn’s terms”: TPOAR, p. 342.

  Rand expressed hope: TPOAR, p. 342.

  But if he didn’t, she would ruin him: MYWAR, p. 334.

  “NB’s mind worked excellently”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 12, 1968, p. 367.

  gave Barbara the assignment: TPOARC, RPJ, July 13, 1968, p. 378.

  “I do believe”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1967, pp. 324–25.

  “filthy soul”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 8, 1968, p. 351.

  At times, she wept in grief: MYWAR, p. 337.

  a fascinating conjecture: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 337.

  “ought” to do: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 341.

  “at least to the extent”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 322.

  She was too much for Nathaniel Branden: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 323.

  Since she was also the mirror: TPOARC, RPJ, July 8, 1968, p. 361.

  “a real Objectivist hero and

  creative genius”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 324.

  “But I am too much for the role-playing imitation”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 323.

  The first was the publication: TPOARC, RPJ, March 20, 1968, p. 295.

  “our relationship became”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 323.

  The second turning point: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 325.

  “wheeling-dealing” … “intangible pleasure”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, pp. 312, 339.

  general rubric of role-playing: TPOARC, RPJ, March 20, 1968, p. 295.

  Inexplicably, she didn’t question: TPOARC, RPJ, January 30, 1968, pp. 280–81.

  “notary public” soul: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 328.

  “a sexual urge”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 8, 1968, p. 351.

  In mid-July: MYWAR, p. 339; TPOAR, p. 342.

  “I know what this must mean to you”: TPOAR, p. 342.

  So did all communication with Nathaniel: MYWAR, p. 341.

  cut Branden out of her will: “Affidavit of Services,” Probate Proceedings, Will of Alice O’Connor, a.k.a. Ayn Rand, New York County Surrogates Court, November 16, 1983, p. 2.

  “I intend you to be my heir”: TPOAR, p. 343.

  “afraid to say it”: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, March 3, 2004.

  “How could [Ayn] have failed”: TPOAR, p. 344.

  “Get him down here”: TPOAR, pp. 345–46.

  backstairs romance: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 344.

  “even if I were eighty years old”: Author interview with NB, August 10, 2004. That AR was sexually without age appears originally to have been his idea, as when he told her, “You will always be a sexual being” and “You have no equals at any age;” TPOAR, p. 346.

  371 As she spoke, her eyes were glaring: TPOAR, p. 346.<
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  more effectively than her enemies: MYWAR, p. 343.

  “If you have an ounce of morality”: MYWAR, p. 345; TPOAR, p. 347; also, cited in an unpublished letter from Florence Hirschfeld to AR, early 1969, courtesy of Florence Hirschfeld.

  “I believe that he has been attempting to cure himself”: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, pp. 347–48.

  “To say ‘I love you’ “: TF, p. 388.

  out of weakness: TPOARC, RPJ, July 4, 1968, p. 320.

  the period that followed: The final confrontation with NB took place three days before the opening of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and as Soviet Russia began to crush the Prague Spring movement for individual liberty in Czechoslovakia.

  She gave no hint of her sexual history: TPOAR, p. 349.

  “I have broken with Nathan”: OHP, Hank and Erika Holzer, February 9, 2006.

  as her heir apparent: “To Whom It May Concern,” p. 453.

  She also either encouraged: Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden, “In Answer to Ayn Rand,” October 1968, independently published and distributed; “To Whom It May Concern,” p. 348.

  that he cede his half interest: “In Answer to Ayn Rand;” “To Whom It May Concern,” p. 453.

  On August 28, Branden held an NBI staff meeting: MYWAR, p. 350.

  According to his nephew, Jonathan Hirschfeld: Author interview with Jonathan Hirschfeld, August 26, 2006.

  beginning the next day: Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004.

  “We were like mother and father figures”: Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004.

  Rumors “spread like wildfire”: MYWAR, p. 351.

  Barbara and Wilfred Schwartz: TPOAR, p. 350.

  “I am not a teacher”: “To Whom It May Concern,” p. 454.

  To Barbara, she said, “I won’t”: TPOAR, p. 350.

  a sense of liberation: Author interview with BB, June 2, 2008.

  She swore that she would not merely write: TPOAR, p. 351.

  “I never wanted”: “To Whom It May Concern,” p. 454.

  On September 3: TPOAR, p. 351.

  The literary agency declined to participate: MYWAR, p. 355.

  “What happened to property rights?”: MYWAR, p. 357.

  A year later, Ed Nash: TPOAR, p. 349.

  Rand also kept her threat: TPOARC, p. 122, based on copies of AR’s unpublished letters in the Rand archive at ARI.

  According to Holzer’s recollection: OHP interview with Hank and Erika Holzer, February 9, 2006.

  described it differently: “In Answer to Ayn Rand.”

  as she would later dismiss the questions: Robert Hessen remembered: “Sometime later that fall [1968], when Leonard began to give lectures, Ayn agreed to participate in the question periods. Nathan had by now published his ‘Answer,’ with its elliptical last line about its being impossible to carry on a romantic relationship given the age difference. And someone said, ‘Is it true, as Nathan said it was, that you and he had a sexual relationship and that your break was over the end of that?’ And she said, ‘If you could ask me a question like that, what reason would you have to trust my answer?’ It was an ingenious and manipulative answer,” recalled Hessen. “And I thought, Either it’s a rehearsed answer, because it’s very brilliant, it throws the questioner off, or it’s a spontaneous answer, which is even more brilliant. I remained friends with her for the next twelve years, and we never talked about Nathan;” author interview with Robert Hessen, October 17, 2007.

  Yes, Florence answered: Un-mailed, unpublished letter from Florence Hirschfeld to AR, reviewing the points made during their fall 1968 meeting; undated, early 1969, courtesy of Florence Hirschfeld.

  “The thing that really got to me”: Author interview with Florence Hirschfeld, Jonathan Hirschfeld, and EK, August 25, 2006.

  in the October issue: It was labeled May 1968 but was published in October.

  Within a week or two: “In Answer to Ayn Rand.”

  He “did not steal any money from Ayn Rand”: “Interview with Henry Mark Holzer,” p. 6.

  a terse coda: “For the Record,” The Objectivist, May 1968, p. 457.

  he was discredited: MYWAR, p. 368.

  If the author of the greatest book: Author interview with Leonard Hirschfeld, December 15, 2006.

  “Ayn wanted to know”: OHP, Hank and Erika Holzer, February 9, 2006.

  The lawyer phoned NBI tape-transcription reps: JW, citing Keith Edwards, NBI Detroit business rep, The Ayn Rand Cult, p. 45.

  Peikoff notified the representatives: MYWAR, p. 358.

  students had to sign a waiver: TPOAR, p. 357.

  In New York, therapists dismissed patients: Author interview with John Allen, January 3, 2005.

  “He was supposedly handling”: JKT, from taped, unpublished interviews by journalist JW in preparation for a CBC special report on the tenth anniversary of AR’s death, titled Ideas: The Legacy of AR (1992). 19 6 9-1982

  SIXTEEN: IN THE NAME OF THE BEST WITHINUS: 1969–1982

  “When people look back at their childhood”: Ayn Rand, “Introduction to Ninety-Three [by Victor Hugo],” TON, October 1962.

  “an instrument of philanthropic collectivism”: Quoted in “TRB from Washington,” The New Republic, July 19, 1975.

  She removed Branden’s name: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, October 7, 2007.

  tried unsuccessfully to quash: Henry Mark Holzer, “Legal Notice,” The Objectivist, May 1969.

  “How would you compare”: “Ideas in Action,” videotaped interview of Leonard Peikoff by James Valliant, WJM Productions, August 5, 1995.

  “Sometimes she would wipe the floor with him”: Author interviews with EK, July 21 and August 25, 2006.

  “Either you deal with him”: Taped interview with Betty Scourby, conducted by Fred Cookinham, March 30, 2003.

  In turn, loyalists later spoke: 100 Voices, Daniel Sutton, p. 263.

  “If you could ask such a question”: Author interview with Robert Hessen, October 17, 2007.

  scheduled to appear in 1969: “Objectivist Calendar,” The Objectivist, August 1968, p. 496.

  “She was making him rewrite”: Unpublished taped interview with Barbara Weiss, conducted by BB, September 25, 1983.

  “We were always hearing”: Phillip Smith, from taped, unpublished interviews by journalist JW in preparation for a CBC special report on the tenth anniversary of AR’s death, titled “Ideas: The Legacy of AR” (1992).

  “the first book by an Objectivist philosopher”: Ayn Rand, introduction, in Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels (New York: Stein and Day, 1982).

  “It’s so wonderful to see a great, new, crucial idea”: AS, p. 333.

  “number-one man”: Author interview with Molly Hays, February 29, 2004.

  on his Web site: http://www.peikoff.com/op/home.htm.

  at colleges including Hunter, New York University: Unpublished letter from AR to Sidney Hook, undated, 1957. Sidney Hook Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, box 24, folder 27, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.

  In 1987, when he was fifty-four years old: Unpublished letter from Cynthia Peikoff to Sidney Hook, April 16, 1987, and unpublished reply from Sidney Hook to Cynthia Peikoff, April 21, 1987; Sidney Hook Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, box 23, folder 43.

  She also named him an editor

  of The Objectifist:”Objectivist Calendar,” The Objectivist, September 1968, p. 528.

  in which she aptly quoted Victor Hugo: The Ayn Rand Letter, January 31, 1972, p. 42.

  appeared posthumously: Ayn Rand, The Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, Robert Mayhew, ed. (New York: Plume, 2001).

  Also in 1969: The Romantic Manifesto (New York: World Publishing, 1969), p. 45.

  Alan Greenspan arranged: Karen Minot and David Oyerly, “Interview with Henry Mark Holzer,” Full Context, July/August 2001, p. 5.

  “It is not coercion, not the physical force”: Rand seems to have forgotten, or overlooked, th
e fact that NASA had been formed by an act of Congress in 1958 in response to the Soviet Union’s successful, and, to Americans, shocking, launching of Sputnik I and II into space and the consequent fear that America had fallen behind in its technological battle with Russia. In 1960, NASA appointed former Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun to lead the American effort to reach the Moon (Ayn Rand, “Apollo 11,” The Objectivist, September 1969, p. 709).

  a new diamond-and-ruby ring: 100 Voices, the Vaught family, pp. 414–21.

  On Rand’s return to New York: Taped, unpublished interview with Barbara Weiss, conducted by BB, September 23, 1983.

  “Those who suggest we substitute”: “Apollo 11,” p. 717.

  She spoke at the invitation of Colonel Herman Ivey: 100 Voices, Brigadier General Jack Capps, p. 496.

  The speech she gave: Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982).

  In effect, said Colonel Ivey: 100 Voices, Colonel Herman Ivey, p. 493.

  Afterward, Rand, accompanied by Frank: Author interview with EK, July 21, 2006.

  “Men were standing on other men’s shoulders”: Taped, unpublished interview with Barbara Weiss, conducted by BB, September 23, 1983.

  “My impression was”: 100 Voices, Brigadier General Jack Capps, pp. 497–98.

  For the most part, “it was a dream trip”: Taped, unpublished interview with Barbara Weiss, conducted by BB, September 25, 1983.

  couldn’t walk more than a few yards: 100 Voices, Colonel Herman Ivey, pp. 488–89.

  one lung removed: MS, unpublished, taped interview with FB, Minna Goldberg, and MS, conducted by BB, February 20, 1983.

  One day, she pointed: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, March 23, 2004.

  “She was finding it difficult to walk”: Peikoff, from taped, unpublished interviews by journalist JW in preparation for a CBC special report on the tenth anniversary of AR’s death, titled “Ideas: The Legacy of AR” (1992).

  Yet she refused to take walks: TPOAR, p. 383.

  But she was testing their patience: Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, March 23, 2004.

  A translation of the letter: Author interview with Lilyan Courtois, September 5, 2006.

  She had wanted to show: 100 Voices, FB, p. 23.

  When Nora wrote about her love: Letter to Nora Drobyshev, May 5, 1973 (LOAR, p. 657).