Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (41 page)

As Murray Rothbard knew, trials had a long pedigree in Objectivist society. They took on new importance as Nathan and Ayn’s relationship crumbled. Trials were a way for Nathan to reassure Ayn of his dedication to Objectivism. They were also one of the few ways they could again act as one. Barbara Branden remembered that both Rand and her husband played a pivotal role: “She more than went along. She approved. But Nathan was the instigator of those terrible sessions.”
⁶⁰
Fearing he or she might be next, no one in the Collective dared to question the judgments being meted out.

Through all the purges and breaks, Rand was suffering as much as anyone. During 1967 her relationship with Nathan became purely therapeutic, as he continued to seek her help for his sexual problems. Nathan claimed that he still loved her and wanted to resume an affair with her; he simply couldn’t. Four years into his clandestine affair with Patrecia he claimed to be asexual, unattracted even to desirable eighteen-year-olds, practically a celibate. Rand, for her part, was now reluctant to take Nathan back. His behavior was too confusing, his indifference too hurtful. She plied him with questions: Was she too old for him? Should they call the whole thing off ? Convinced that Rand would disown him and destroy NBI if he rejected her explicitly, Nathan professed his love. The two considered every option to help him. Maybe an affair would help rejuvenate him sexually, they wondered. Rand vacillated on this point, telling him at one point that she could tolerate him taking another lover, then saying it was unacceptable. Nathan vacillated too. One day he talked of Rand as his ideal woman, the next he described a future in which he had a spiritual and sexual relationship with her yet lived his daily life in partnership with a woman of his own age. Patrecia came up frequently, but Nathan denied having romantic feelings for her.

Their discussions were incomprehensible to Rand on any level, but she knew something was terribly wrong. Nathan, once remarkably rational and clear in his conversations with her, was like a different person.
He spoke in circles, contradicted himself, and was unable to state his thoughts clearly. Most distressing of all, when Rand asked Nathan how he felt about her, he responded, “I don’t know.” Nor could he explain his feelings for Barbara or Patrecia. The man Rand hailed as her teacher of psychology was utterly divorced from his inner state. After a year of this Rand was losing hope. “He makes me
feel dead
,” she wrote in her journal.
⁶¹
Then in June 1968 Nathan presented Rand with a letter in which he stated clearly that their age difference made it impossible for him to resume an affair with her.

Nathan’s letter was a devastating rejection not only of Rand, but of the Objectivist philosophy itself. Objectivism taught that sex was never physical; it was always inspired by a deeper recognition of shared values, a sense that the other embodied the highest human achievement. Not only was Rand emotionally crushed, she now worried that Nathan was an inadequate representative of her life’s work. He was caught in the snare of physical attraction, which spoke volumes to his emotional and spiritual confusion. And he had struck hardest at Rand’s deepest insecurities by telling her she was no longer attractive to him.

Even after the letter, Rand clung to the hope of some relationship with Nathan. So quick to break with others who angered her, she went to extraordinary lengths to preserve their connection. “Love is exception making,” she had written in
The Fountainhead
, and now she carved out an exception for the man to whom she had dedicated
Atlas Shrugged
.
⁶²
She and Nathan would continue as business associates, understanding that they would never recapture the personal closeness of their early years. NBI and
The Objectivist
would continue unchanged. Nathan would work on his inability to live by Objectivist principles, and he would agree to give up seeing Patrecia, the source of his emotional troubles. Rand still believed that their relationship was platonic but suspected that Nathan had buried feelings for Patrecia. It was yet another instance of his failing to check his premises or think rationally.

This unstable accord held together, barely, for most of the summer. Ayn and Nathan continued to edit articles together, but the long therapy sessions were over. Nathan began seeing Allan Blumenthal instead. Blumenthal had a medical degree but no formal training in psychology beyond what Nathan taught him. Now he served as Nathan’s confessor. Nathan admitted his love for Patrecia, but not the affair. Rand grew
increasingly frosty after this revelation, which Blumenthal immediately transmitted to her. Still she said nothing publicly. She and Nathan appeared on their way to refiguring a new and more distant relationship as colleagues and business partners. The Collective could sense the tension, but none understood the full dimensions of what was happening in their upper stratum.

It was Barbara Branden who finally called off the charade. The letter of half-truths had done little to ease the pressure under which both Brandens lived. Haggard and sickly, Nathan was deteriorating daily under the weight of his lies. He had told Barbara about Patrecia, making her complicit in both his affair and his rationalizations to Rand. As Rand began to shift her allegiance to Barbara, she was struck by a deep guilt. In August, when Rand announced she planned to make Barbara her legal heir in place of Nathan, she could stand it no more. Barbara gave Nathan an ultimatum: it was time Ayn knew the whole truth, including the complete history of his relationship with Patrecia. If he couldn’t tell her, she would. With a sense of fatalistic relief, Nathan gave his ex the go-ahead.

It was the worst and most violent of Rand’s many breakups. When Barbara told her the full story of Nathan’s relations with Patrecia, Rand was white-hot with fury. She summoned Nathan, cowering in his apartment several floors above. Barbara, Frank, and Allan Blumenthal waited with her. When Nathan arrived, Rand blocked him from the living room, seated him in her foyer, and unleashed a torrent of abuse. He was an impostor, a fake. She would destroy him and ruin his name. In a crescendo of rage she slapped him hard across the face, three times. Nathan sat motionless, absorbing her words and her blows. Years later he and Barbara remembered her parting words verbatim: “If you have an ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health— you’ll be impotent for the next twenty years! And if you achieve any potency, you’ll know it’s a sign of still worse moral degradation!”
⁶³
Then she ordered him out of her apartment. It was the last time the two would meet.

Rand’s anger was boundless. She would never forgive, never forget. More than the fury of a woman scorned, it was the fury of a woman betrayed. For nearly five years, Nathan had lied to Rand about his feelings for her and his relationship with Patrecia. Their hours of intense
conversation and counseling, so painful and taxing to Rand, had been a pretense and a ruse to distract her from his deceptions. In the meantime, NBI had grown from a small lecture series to a national institution. Nathan had become famous and wealthy speaking in Rand’s name. He had a book contract with her publisher and a therapy practice filled with followers of her philosophy. As Rand saw it, he passed himself off as John Galt or Howard Roark—but was worse than any villain she could have conjured. The public face of Objectivism and the one who would carry her legacy forward was nothing more than a contemptible second-hander, unable to practice the principles he preached. He had struck deeply at Rand’s heart and her philosophy, and made a mockery of both.

In the days after Nathan’s confession, Rand moved swiftly to dismantle his businesses and strip him of all association with her and Objectivism. She sent her lawyer to demand that he sign over control of
The Objectivist
to her and deed NBI to Barbara. By week’s end she was no longer speaking to Barbara either because she had attempted to defend Nathan against Rand’s onslaught. Now Rand insisted that NBI be dismantled altogether. Word of the crisis spread rapidly through Objectivist circles. Nathan appeared, ashen-faced, before his staff and announced his resignation, explaining that he had committed grave moral wrongs and Rand had justifiably severed their relationship. Rumors flew wildly. New Yorkers willing to hear the gossip quickly divined the full story of Nathan and Rand’s affair and its aftermath.
⁶⁴

In the NBI offices factions quickly emerged. Some Objectivists found the situation absurd and refused to repudiate Nathan without more information about his transgressions. Others were willing to take Rand at her word. Leonard Peikoff emerged as Rand’s staunchest defender, asking rhetorically if anyone “could
possibly
believe that the author of
Atlas Shrugged
had done anything fundamentally wrong.” Nathan quickly found himself isolated and alone, with Barbara his only prominent supporter. Over the years his arrogant reign over NBI and his aura of superiority had created a deep reservoir of resentment. Now he was shunned by some of his closest friends and relatives.
⁶⁵
He and Barbara began the dreary work of liquidating NBI, splitting the leftover money between them.

The coup de grâce came in the next issue of
The Objectivist
, published in October but datelined May. In a letter addressed “To Whom It May
Concern,” Rand attacked both Brandens. Rand’s statement was rambling and vague, accusing Nathan of financial misdeeds, unspecified deception and manipulation, and failing to live up to Objectivist principles. Her overarching message, however, was clear: “I have permanently broken all personal, professional and business associations with [Nathaniel and Barbara Branden]. . . . I repudiate both of them, totally and permanently, as spokesmen for me or Objectivism.”
⁶⁶
The letter was signed by Leonard Peikoff, Alan Greenspan, Allan Blumenthal, and Mary Ann Sures.

His name was mud where before he had been an admired leader, Nathan fought back with “In Answer to Ayn Rand,” a letter sent to all
Objectivist
subscribers, appended with a postscript from Barbara. Nathan’s letter refuted Rand’s allegations point by point, detailed his dedication to Objectivism, and quoted from earlier statements she had made praising both Brandens. He concluded with a final, breathtaking paragraph in which he explained the true reason for their break: “[I attempted] to make clear to her why I felt that an age distance between us of twenty-five years constituted an insuperable barrier, for me, to a romantic relationship.”
⁶⁷
Even at the end, his Objectivist career ruined and his separation from Rand complete, Nathan skirted the issue, hinting that sexual jealously played a role in the break but failing to acknowledge the full extent of his actions or the relations between him and Rand. Sent out in tandem with Barbara’s statement, his letter suggested that it was Rand alone who had acted inappropriately.

The scandal did much to tarnish Rand’s reputation. George Walsh, then a professor at Hobart College, was organizing an Ayn Rand Caucus within the American Philosophical Association when the breach happened. He explained, “The people that I was gathering together to form the discussion group all fell away. They simply disappeared! They didn’t answer my further letters or they explained that this was too much for them, that it seemed to be something other than it appeared to be, and that personal matters were apparently mixed up in it and they didn’t want to touch it with a 10 foot pole.”
⁶⁸
To Rand’s critics the dramatic collapse of NBI vindicated all they had been saying over the years: her philosophy was fundamentally flawed and morally corrupt. Her longtime antagonists on left and right were delighted. In
National Review
William F. Buckley crowed, “Remember, these were the people who were telling the rest of the world how to reach nirvana. By being like them.”
⁶⁹

It was no coincidence that emotion cracked open Rand’s world. By the time he met Patrecia, Nathan had created a monster out of NBI. Under Nathan’s hand the institute drew forth and magnified the worst tendencies of Objectivism: its dogmatism, encouragement of judgment, rationalization of sexuality, suppression of emotion. Of all these tendencies, it was the last that would boomerang most sharply on Rand herself.

For the dedicated, the break was tantamount to a divorce between beloved parents. Ayn, Nathan, and Barbara had stood as exemplars and role models for their Objectivist flock. They suggested that the ideals of Rand’s fiction could be lived in the ordinary world and that true love and deep friendship were possible. When Ayn and Nathan broke apart many Objectivists were shattered too. One fan sent Rand a heartfelt missive: “Today, when I received a copy of the issue ‘To Whom it May Concern’ I cried.”
⁷⁰
The rationally ordered universe NBI students sought and found in Rand was no more.

PART IV
Legacies