Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (56 page)

2
. Biographical Interview 16, April 19, 1961.

3
. Ruth Hill, Oral History, ARP; Jack Portnoy, Oral History, ARA.

4
. Biographical Interview 17.

5
. AR to Archie Ogden, April 10, 1949,
Letters
, 374; AR to Mimi Sutton, March 20, 1948,
Letters
, 391; AR to Archie Ogden, April 23, 1949,
Letters
, 438.

6
. Biographical interview 17.

7
. Ake and Jane Sandler, Oral History, ARP.

8
. Micky Wright, Oral History, ARP.

9
. Nathaniel Branden,
Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), 51.

10
. Barbara Branden, Objectivist History Project DVD, volume 2, “A Movement Is Launched.” This CD is sold by an organization called The Objectivist Center,
www.objectivistcenter.org
.

11
. Nathaniel Blumenthal and Barbara Weidman, letter to the editor,
UCLA Daily Bruin
, May 8, 1950, Box 1170–6C, ARP.

12
. The incident is described in N. Branden,
Judgment Day
, 94–96. 6. The importance of Matthiessen to the literary left and the controversy surrounding his suicide is covered in Arthur Redding, “Closet, Coup, and Cold War: F. O. Matthiessen’s
From the Heart of Europe,” boundary 2
33, no. 1 (2006): 171–201.

13
. Nathaniel Branden to AR, August 24, 1950, ARP 019–01. 019–01C.

14
. AR to Nick Carter, October 5, 1944,
Letters
, 165.

15
. Rose Wilder Lane to Jasper Crane, March 13, 1963, March–July 1963 Correspondence, Box 4, Hoover NARA; Rose Wilder Lane to AR, undated (Sunday), ARP 143-LO3.

16
. Biographical Interview 16, April 19, 1961; William F. Buckley Jr.,
God and Man At Yale
(1950; Washington, DC: Regnery, 1986), lxvi; George H. Nash,
The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945
(New York: Basic Books, 1976). The centrality of Buckley and Chambers to midcentury conservatism is described in John B. Judis,
William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988); Sam Tanenhaus,
Whittaker Chambers: A Biography
(New York: Random House, 1997). For Neibuhr, see Richard Wightman Fox,
Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1985).

17
. William F. Buckley Jr. to Isabel Paterson, January 7, 1958, “Paterson, Isabel (1958),” Box 6, William F. Buckley Papers, Yale University. Buckley repeated the anecdote (with slightly different spelling) in “On the Right: Ayn Rand, RIP,”
National Review
, April 2, 1982, 380.

18
. These debates are covered in Nash,
Conservative Intellectual Movement;
Jennifer Burns, “Liberals and the Conservative Imagination,” in
Liberalism for a New Century
, ed. Neil Jumonville and Kevin Mattson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

19
. Biographical Interview 17, April 19, 1961. Rand’s perspective on forgiveness is explicated in Tara Smith,
Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

20
. Biographical Interview 16.

21
. Jörg Guido Hulsmann,
Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
(Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 2007), 850–51.

22
. Biographical Interview 16.

23
. The incident is related in Hulsmann,
Mises
, 1002. Hazlitt was upset that Kirk repeated the story and chided him in a letter for spreading falsehoods. Henry Hazlitt 5, Ludwig von Mises Papers, Mises –to Russell Kirk, July 5, 1962. Kirk, Russell, S25, F1,0/1 Institute, Auburn, AL.

24
. Biographical Interview 16.

25
.
Ayn Rand’s Marginalia
, 116, 142; Sylvester Petro, Oral History ARP.

26
. My discussion of Mises’s thought draws on Israel M. Kirzner,
Ludwig von Mises: The Man and His Economics
(Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001); Eamonn Butler,
Ludwig von Mises: Fountainhead of the Modern Microeconomics Revolution
(Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1988); Karen Iversen Vaughn,
Austrian Economics in America: The Migration of a Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Hulsmann,
Mises
.

27
. “Issues: The Unsacrificial Self,” undated notes, ARP 033–19A.

28
. Moreover, Mises continued, monopoly prices, should they ever arise, were not necessarily harmful. If manufacturers restricted the production of monopoly goods, that meant resources were freed for other production. Hulsmann,
Mises
, 431–36.

29
. Richard Cornuelle, Oral History, ARP. Cornuelle went on to author
Reclaiming the American Dream: The Role of Private Individuals and Voluntary Associations
(New York, Random House, 1965). Rothbard’s background and career are described in Justin Raimondo,
An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).

30
. Murray Rothbard, “Two Walters Interview Transcript,” Rothbard Papers, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, AL.

31
. Rothbard to AR, October 3, 1957, “Letters 1957 July–December,” Rothbard Papers.

32
. William F. Buckley Jr., “Reflections on Election Eve,”
National Review,
November 3, 1956.

33
. Biographical Interview 16.

34
. Ibid.

35
. Barbara’s and Nathan’s name change has generated almost as much mythology as Rand’s. Both explain the change as simply a matter of aesthetic preference, rejecting the rumor that Branden is of Hebrew derivation (”ben Rand”) or was deliberately chosen to incorporate Rand’s name.

36
. Robert Hessen, interview with author, December 11, 2007.

37
.
Journals
, 610.

38
. Edward Purcell,
The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1973).

39
.
Journals
, 481.

40
. Rand’s usage of Benzedrine in the 1940s is well documented, and according to several sources, she continued to take a similar prescription on a daily basis until the 1970s. See
Passion of Ayn Rand
, 173, and Anne Heller,
Ayn Rand and the World She Made
(New York: Doubleday, 2009), 304–305.

41
. ARC, 03–58; Leonard Peikoff, Oral History Interview, ARP; Mike Wallace, Oral History Interview, ARP.

42
. Alan Greenspan,
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
(New York, Penguin, 2007), 41. Contrary to Justin Martin in
Greenspan: The Man behind the Money
(Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2000) and Jerome Tuccille in
Alan Shrugged: Alan Greenspan, the World’s Most Powerful Banker
(New York: Wiley, 2002), both of whom portray Nathaniel Branden as playing a major role, Greenspan remembers Rand herself as the most influential in establishing his relationship with Objectivism. Greenspan, personal communication to author, February 27, 2009. Hiram Haydn,
Words and Faces
(New York: Harcourt College, 1973), 259.

43
. Greenspan,
The Age of Turbulence
, 53. Justin Martin,
Greenspan
, 45. The impact of Arthur Burns on Greenspan is described in Tuccille and Justin Martin,
Greenspan
.

44
. Author interview with Martin Anderson, January 1, 2008.

45
. Leonard Peikoff, “My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand: An Intellectual Memoir,”
The Objectivist Forum
, June 1987, 2; Sylvester Petro, Oral History ARP.

46
. Murray Rothbard to Richard Cornuelle, August 11, 1954, Rothbard Papers.

47
. Murray Rothbard to AR, October 8, 1957, Rothbard Papers.

48
. Ibid.

49
. Ibid.

50
. Richard Cornuelle, Oral History, ARP.

51
. N. Branden,
Judgment Day
, 129.

52
. Robert Hessen, interview with author, December 11, 2007.

53
. Ibid., 116.

54
. Frank is described as an alcoholic in his later years by Barbara Branden,
The passion of Ayn Rand
, 272–73, 339, 366, 384, and Nathaniel Branden, My
Years with Ayn Rand
, 330, but this claim has been vigorously disputed by James Valliant in
The Passionof Ayn Rand’s Critics
(Dallas, TX: Durban House, 2005), 141–47. The dispute boils down to the reliability of sources whom the Brandens cite as witnesses to Frank’s drinking habits. Firm diagnoses of the dead are always tenuous, but given Frank’s family history, the pressures he was under, and the testimony of observers, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Frank’s use of alcohol was, at the very least, unhealthy. Anne Heller reaches a similar conclusion in
Ayn Rand and the World She Made
, 494.

55
. Rand,
Atlas Shrugged
, 939. Allan Gotthelf provides a helpful breakdown of the speech in “Galt’s Speech in Five Sentences (and 40 Questions),” in
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
Atlas Shrugged, ed. Robert Mayhew (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009).

56
. Biographical Interview 17.

57
.
Journals
, 480.

58
. After
Atlas Shrugged
was published Rand did write fragmentary notes for one additional novel, entitled
To Lorne Dieterling
. More a therapeutic exercise than a serious attempt at another book,
To Lorne Dieterling
was to feature a female hero struggling to retain a sense of joy against a hostile world.
Journals
, 706–715, 913–927.

59
.
Journals
, 673.

60
. Biographical Interview 18, April 25, 1961; Hiram Haydn,
Words and Faces
(New York: Harcourt College, 1974), 260–61; Bennett Cerf,
At Random
(New York: Random House, 1977), 249’50 Rand’s account differs from Haydn’s in several specific details, mostly on how actively Random House sought her as an author. I draw primarily on Rand’s account since it was recorded closer in time to the actual events and because Rand was privy to negotiations with her agent and Haydn was not.

61
. Mickey Wright, Oral History, ARP.

Chapter 6

1
. Robert Hessen, interview with author, December 7, 2007.

2
. “The Solid Gold Dollar Sign,”
Time
, October 14, 1957, 128. A prime example of a reviewer having fun at Rand’s expense is Donald Malcolm, “The New Rand Atlas,”
The New Yorker
, October 26, 1957, 194. There were a few exceptions to the generally negative assessment of
Atlas Shrugged
, mostly from right-leaning publications. See Paul Jordan-Smith, “Ideas Fill New Work, but Still It’s a Novel,”
Los Angeles Times
, October 6, 1957, E7; John Chamberlain, “A Reviewer’s Notebook: Atlas Shrugged,”
The Freeman
, December 1957, 53–56, M. E. Davis, “Reading for Pleasure: Creeping Collapse,”
Wall Street Journal
, –1957,53 October 10, 1957; Richard McLaughlin, “The Lady Has a Message . . .,”
American Mercury
, January 1958,144–46.

3
. Ayn Rand,
Atlas Shrugged
, 35th anniversary ed. (1957; New York: Penguin, 1992), 429. Subsequent citations are referenced in the text.

4
. R. M. Lynch, Standard Slag Company, Youngstown, OH, to AR November 20, 1957, box 098–03C, ARP.

5
. This theme is developed further in Andrew Hoberek,
The Twilight of the Middle Class: Post–World War II American Fiction and White-Collar Work
(Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2005); Joseph Colin McNicholas, “Corporate Culture and the American Novel: Producers, Persuaders, and Communicators,” PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1999.

6
. Clement Williamson, “Dear Friend,” letter accompanying “Faith and Force” reprint, October 10, 1960, ARP 105–12A.

7
. Algird C. Pocius to New American Library, January 5, 1966, ARP 002–05C. The speech was also reprinted by CF&I Steel Corporation, Management Newsletter, no. 169, July 1966; in the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, October 1, 1960 by Shaker Savings Association; in a pamphlet distributed by Shaker Savings Association, ARP 083–28x.

8
. C. W. Anderson, memo to IRG executives, October 31, 1961, ARP 09–11x.

9
. Clement Williamson to AR, September 9, 1960, ARP 105–12A.

10
. C. W. Anderson to AR, October 2, 1961, ARP 042–02A; R. J. Duncan to AR, May 9, 1961, ARP 108–24A; Joseph Moran to AR, April 30, 1962, ARP 108–24B; AR to John Sullivan, May 18, 1962,108–24A. The two professors were Clarence Walton and Richard Eels. Rand addressed the class in 1961. Richard Eels to AR, July 12, 1961, ARP 108–24C The symposium was intended to address issues raised by William H. Whyte’s
The Organization Man
. Rand’s response to the question “What is or should be the nature of the ‘faith’ subscribed to by modern management?” anticipated her essay “For the New Intellectual.” Ayn Rand, “A Faith for Modern Management,”
Atlanta Economic Review
8, no. 9 (1958): 1.

11
. Granville Hicks, “A Parable of Buried Talents,”
New York Times Book Review
, October 26, 1957, 4–5.
The Times’
positive review of
The Fountainhead
is by Lorine Pruette, “The Battle against Evil,”
New York Times Book Review
, May 16, 1943, 7, 18. Helen Beal Woodward, “
Atlas Shrugged” Saturday Review
, October 12, 1957, 25.