Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (33 page)

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. Her high-minded discussion of philosophy was punctured by colorful and occasionally bizarre metaphors. She described contemporary intellectual discourse as “a sticky puddle of stale syrup” and referred to “chickens hiding their heads in the sand (’ostrich’ is too big and dignified a metaphor for this instance).”
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Still, she effectively charged her readers with a world-historical task: her New Intellectuals must challenge and replace the left-leaning supporters of socialism and the welfare state.

For the New Intellectual
drew a terrific blast from Sidney Hook in the
New York Times Book Review
. Hook observed archly, “Despite the great play with the word ‘Reason,’ one is struck by the absence of any serious argument in this unique combination of tautology and extravagant absurdity.” Like the reviewers of
Atlas Shrugged,
Hook focused as much on Rand’s tone as her ideas. He granted that nonprofessionals could write interesting work on philosophy, but not by “substituting denunciation for analysis and mouthing slogans instead of considering problems . . . The language of reason does not justify references to economists with whom one disagrees as ‘frantic cowards,’ or to philosophers as ‘intellectual hoodlums who pose as professors.’ This is the way philosophy is written in the Soviet Union.” Hook could conceive of no possible reason why Rand should be taken seriously as a thinker. Still, his scorn did little to dent Rand’s popularity or the book’s sales.
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Other reviewers made similarly vain attempts to stem the tide of Objectivism. Gore Vidal seconded Hook’s opinion in
Esquire,
calling Rand an unreadable novelist who “has a great attraction for simple
people who are puzzled by organized society.” His censure was mingled with anxiety about Rand’s influence, for Vidal recalled that in his campaign for the House of Representatives she was the one writer “people knew and talked about.”
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Having been earlier scored by leading conservative thinkers, Rand now took a drubbing at the hands of establishment liberals.
Newsweek,
the
New Republic, America,
and the
Christian Century
all piled on, publishing harshly negative reviews of
For the New Intellectual
.

The reaction to Rand fell neatly into a pattern established years before. Since the advent of Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin’s famously anti-Communist senator, liberals had trouble treating conservative ideas as legitimate. A prominent 1955 volume,
The Radical Right,
set the tone by treating libertarianism and anti-Communism as psychological syndromes, an expression of paranoia or status anxiety.
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Accordingly liberal commentators derided Rand and her following as a fringe element with little to contribute to the nation’s intellectual life. But Rand’s popularity appeared impervious to attack by the most esteemed members of the establishment. 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.
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Accustomed by now to negative press, Rand plunged forward with two new projects in 1962:
The Objectivist Newsletter
and a syndicated column for the
Los Angeles Times
. The newspaper column lasted barely a year, when it was canceled by mutual agreement. Rand found it difficult to meet the column’s weekly deadline. Its frequency did, however, encourage her to explore a range of topics that might otherwise have escaped her comment. The
Times
column inspired some of her first writing on American popular culture, an interest of hers since arriving in Hollywood. She wrote a touching obituary of Marilyn Monroe, calling her an “eager child” who projected “glowing innocent sexuality . . . uncorrupted by guilt.”
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According to Rand, Monroe’s suicide signified a hatred of values that was the dominant style of the century. The theme of America’s bankrupt culture was becoming ever more prominent in her writing, fed by her new interest in modern philosophy and the lingering trauma of
Atlas Shrugged
’s reception.

Unlike NBI, which was wholly owned by Nathan,
The Objectivist Newsletter
was a joint undertaking between Ayn and Nathan. The two
ventures were deeply intertwined, sharing the same office space and staff. Barbara was the managing editor, and Nathan’s sister, Elayne Kalberman, came aboard as circulation manager. The newsletter established a path of upward mobility for aspiring NBI students who could now be published as Objectivist writers. Its primary contributors were Ayn and Nathan, but others chimed in with book reviews, essays, and cultural commentary. Rand had final say over all articles and enjoyed editing and shaping submissions. The newsletter fulfilled a dream that dated from her days on the Willkie campaign. Back then she had imagined a publication that would serve to unite opponents of the New Deal and inspire them to fight for capitalism. Twenty years later she achieved that goal.

The introduction of
The Objectivist Newsletter
marked Rand’s redefinition of herself as a public intellectual ready to comment on current events. In the first issue she announced the arrival of Objectivism as a philosophical movement with a unique political viewpoint. “Objectivists are
not
‘conservatives.’ We are
radicals for capitalism,
” she declared.
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The newsletter was a slim publication that typically ranged from four to eight pages in length. Most issues included a lead article by Ayn or Nathan, a book review, a feature titled “Intellectual Ammunition Department,” where reader queries about the application of Objectivist principles to real-life situations were answered, and an Objectivist calendar making note of pertinent activities. Almost all of the books reviewed had a right-wing slant or tended to reinforce Objectivist biases, although the magazine gave a glowing review to Betty Friedan’s
The Feminine Mystique,
calling it “brilliant, informative, and culturally explosive.”
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Other covered titles included the Aristotelian philosopher Brand Blanshard’s
Reason and Analysis
and Ludwig von Mises’s
Human Action
. Reviews were generally evenhanded, mixing praise and criticism, and each concluded with a section that evaluated the book according to Objectivist standards. Through the longer articles by Rand, often reprints of her speeches, subscribers got a firsthand look at her elaboration of Objectivism beyond the outline presented in her novel.

Unapologetic and extreme, the new Rand had a talent for getting headlines. As her ideas spread she became both a media punching bag and a media darling. Mike Wallace was among the first to understand
that Rand was one of the “people other people are interested in.” After her appearance on his TV show, several of his staff members converted to Objectivism. A coworker remembered the transformation of Edith Efron, who “began speaking in a very, very strange way about psychology, art, politics—in a way that I’d never heard before and certainly not from a New York Jewish intellectual. I thought she was going out of her mind.” Soon other outlets recognized Rand’s audience appeal. She began a radio program on the Columbia University station, “Ayn Rand on Campus,” and appeared on CBS’s discussion series
The Great Challenge
. 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.”
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Despite all the attention she attracted Rand was an unwilling celebrity. Even NBI events disconcerted her. She normally made a dramatic entrance from the back of the room, receiving applause as she made her way to the stage. An NBI student seeing her off was surprised when Rand muttered, “I hate doing this. Every time I walk down that long aisle, I feel like a bride getting married.” 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.”
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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.

Nowhere was Rand more popular than on college campuses. Her first appearance before a student audience, at Yale University, was a tour de force. A reporter at the event described the overflow audience Rand
drew, a motley assemblage with “ladies in fur hats or stoles, students in sneakers and shirt-sleeves. There were crew cuts and long-hairs, and beards of various lengths and colors hiding young faces. No smoking signs were disregarded.” Rand spoke forcefully and confidently to her Ivy League audience and particularly relished the question-and-answer session that followed. When an audience member questioned her “slur” of the New Deal, “ ‘It was not a slur’ Rand shot back. ‘I intended it to be a damnation.’”
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She concluded to a standing ovation. The speech put Rand back in a role she had last enjoyed in her Willkie days: the featured speaker, holding forth against all comers.

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. Before long Rand was receiving far more speaking invitations than she could possibly accept; in 1965 alone she turned down more than twenty requests from colleges and universities. She accepted only the most coveted invitations, preferring to speak at Ivy League schools and selective public universities like the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley. After the publication of
For the New Intellectual
she established a relationship with Boston’s Ford Hall Forum, where she delivered an annual address for the next twenty years. One of her greatest triumphs came in 1963, when Lewis and Clark College invited her to campus for its annual Reading Week, assigned
Atlas Shrugged
(among other novels) to all students and faculty, and awarded her an honorary doctorate in humane letters.
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Although Rand was not included in most colleges’ official curricula, she inhabited a shadow world of intellectual resources that students shared among themselves. One young man described his first encounter with Objectivism: “A stunningly beautiful studymate, who had read
Atlas,
asked me a stunning question: ‘is it just that my father, a surgeon, is forced to pay a greater percentage of income in taxes than do other people?’ I had no answer.” Secure in her affluence, this student used
Rand as a defense and vindication of her social position. Rand’s campus speeches were a gateway into Objectivism for many. Her provocative stance electrified audiences and stood in contrast to the more prosaic, measured presentation of ideas students normally heard. After Rand spoke at the University of Virginia, one student said that her speech was the first thing “he’d gotten really excited about in three years in college.” Interest in Rand was contagious. A female student at Brown University was crossing campus when she “ran into a yelling, enthusiastic mob of girls surrounding somebody.” The cause of the excitement was Rand, fresh off her speech “The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age.” Curious, the student began reading Rand and over summer vacation brought her two brothers into the fold.
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Rand’s student followers were drawn to her because she offered an attractive alternative to the mainstream intellectual and political culture of the 1960s. Rand was a system builder in the old style, an unabashed moralist, an ideologue, and an idealist. Objectivism contrasted sharply with the dominant ideas in universities, where most intellectuals had become skeptical of claims to objective truth, preferring to emphasize multiple perspectives, subjectivity, and the conditioned nature of reality. They were, as Rand put it, “opposed to principles on principle.” Philosophy had become insular and esoteric, with mathematical discussions of logic and linguistics dominating professional discourse. By contrast, Rand wrote in a casual style and addressed the ethics of everyday life, the conundrums of money, sex, work, and politics.
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Her ideas spoke powerfully to students who hoped that in college they would study the great questions of existence, and instead found their idealism stifled by a climate of skepticism and moral relativity. As one Objectivist remembered, “I thought that philosophy and psychology held the key to understanding the ‘meaning of life.’ When I took those courses, I found myself studying instead the meaning of words and the behavior of rats in mazes.”
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Objectivism filled in the gaps universities left unattended.