Anne Heller - Ayn Rand and the World She Made

took the document to Goldwater’s temporary office:Author interview with BB, October 14, 2007.

didn’t receive the speech in time:I haven’t been able to find a copy of this speech in the Goldwater archives or among the papers of his senior staff.

imprecision of his language:Ayn Rand, “Check Your Premises: The Argument from Intimidation,” TON , July 1964, p. 26.

“Daisy” television ad:The ad, broadcast by the Democrats in September 1964, showed a little girl sitting in a green field counting the petals of a daisy. A male voice also begins to count—a countdown to a nuclear explosion. The implication was that Barry Goldwater’s stance against a nuclear test-ban treaty with Russia would end in a nuclear war.

“In former campaigns”:Ayn Rand, “Check Your Premises: It Is Earlier Than You Think,” TON , December 1964, p. 49.

March 1964 Playboy interview:“The Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand,” pp. 38–43, 64.

Alvin Toffler:Toffler visited AR’s apartment to conduct the interview. At first, she struck him as “a nice Russian-Jewish grandma.” When he admitted that he had not read AS , she ordered him out and told him not to return until he had read it. After a subsequent, more successful interview, he recalled that his transcriptionist couldn’t decipher her words through her thick Russian accent. Finally, on receiving proofs, she edited not only her answers to his questions but also the questions and his introduction. Toffler wasn’t impressed by her philosophy. “It was like Marxism turned upside down,” he said. But he liked her and invited her to dinner with his wife and guests (author interview with Alvin Toffler, May 27, 2007).

reached two and a half million people:Don Hauptman, “The ‘Lost’ Parts of Ayn Rand’s Playboy Interview,” Navigator , March 2004, p. 9.

attributed the suffering of mankind:NB named these archetypes ( JD , p. 281).

“chief destroyer of the modern world”:Ayn Rand, “Brief Summary,” The Objectivist , September 1971, p. 1091. Interestingly, Nietzsche also hated Kant. In The Anti-Christ , he wrote that Kant and others like him regarded “beautiful feelings” as arguments, “the heaving breast as the bellows of divine inspiration,” and conviction as the criterion of truth. “German decadence as a philosophy—that is Kant!” he wrote in 1895 (trans., H. L. Mencken, 1920).

a “New Intellectual”:“New man” was a popular concept in the Russia of AR’s youth, appearing, for example, in Lenin’s favorite novel, Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? and in Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Chernyshevsky’s new man is, however, a mythic revolutionary struggling to create a collective social order (see New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism , pp. 189–202).

One hundred or so “new intellectuals”:“Born Eccentric,” Newsweek , March 27, 1961. A day or two after the piece appeared, NB distributed an open letter to NBI students urging them to cancel their Newsweek subscriptions (“An Open Letter from NB to Our Readers,” March 22, 1961).

“a glare [that] would wilt a cactus”:“Born Eccentric.”

“the free enterprise system’s Joan of Arc”:“The Curious Cult of Ayn Rand,” pp. 99–102.

by now she made it a point never to read:Author interview with Robert Hessen, October 17, 2007.

“nearly perfect in its immorality”:Gore Vidal, “Comment,” Esquire , July 1961, pp. 24–28.

sitting around “in booths”:“The Book Shelf,” Wall Street Journal , March 24, 1961, p. 10.

326 did read Sidney Hook’s review:Sidney Hook, “Each Man for Himself,” NYT Book Review , April 9, 1961, p. 3.

the children would have starved to death:Nathaniel Branden, “Concerning Ayn Rand’s For the New Intellectual” display ad, NYT , May 28, 1961, p. B14.

had been Barbara Branden’s master’s-thesis advisor: TPOAR , p. 321.

exempted them from challenging him:Author interview with BB, October 14, 2007.

he constructed a point-by-point:“Concerning Ayn Rand’s For the New Intellectual,” p. B14.

“It was almost worth Hook’s review”: MYWAR , p. 248.

proud of his ability: JD , p. 282.

his “failure”:Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004.

Who Is Ayn Rand?: The book was based on a series of talks NB presented on WBAI-FM in New York in 1961.

the Brandens later disavowed it:Michael Etchison, “Break Free!” interview with NB, Reason , reprint, October 1971, p. 1.

“She could hardly complain”: MYWAR , p. 249.

“enormous enthusiasm was expected”:“Objectivism Past and Future.”

“Right and wrong, rational and irrational”:Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, March 23, 2004.

“Judge, and be prepared to be judged”: TVOS , p. 83.

“Moral judgments were required”: Unpublished taped interview with Barbara Weiss, conducted by BB, September 25, 1983.

new emphasis on “sense of life”:Author interview with Jonathan Hirschfeld, NB’s nephew, who spent summers working at NBI and attended social functions. “Every thought implies a value judgment,” AR wrote (January 9, 1954 [JOAR , p. 659]).

“Most people were walking on eggshells”:“Interview with Henry Mark Holzer,” p. 6. In 2006, Holzer told another interviewer, “Sometimes it was like walking on eggshells, and sometimes it was like walking on air” (OHP, Hank and Erika Holzer, February 9, 2006).

“Her idea of encouraging a person”:“Break Free! interview with Nathaniel Branden,” p. 9.

“She was the Evel Knievel of leaping to conclusions”:Author interview with Robert Hessen, November 2, 2007.

“There was very little psychological privacy”:“The Liberty Interview: Nathaniel Branden Speaks,” pp. 38–39.

“his denunciation was much more damaging”:“Ayn Rand and Her Movement,” pp. 7, 8. In 1999, NB disputed this assessment, telling an interviewer, “Ayn took, uh, denunciation, judgmentalism, to a … an intensity that nobody [chuckles] could approach!” (ellipsis and interjection in the original); “The Liberty Interview: Nathaniel Branden Speaks,” p. 39.

a rising academic thinker:JH went on to serve as chair of the philosophy department of the University of Southern California.

“bowled over”:John Hospers, “Memories of Ayn Rand,” Full Context , May 1998, p. 3.

which Hospers praised in depth:Karen Minto, “Interview with John Hospers,” Full Context , May 1998, p. 8.

330 didn’t remember her answer:“Conversations with Ayn Rand,” p. 23.

“which could warm you and freeze you by turns”:“Memories of Ayn Rand,” p. 3.

“She read almost no philosophy at all”:“Conversations with Ayn Rand,” p. 47.

her ideas “had come full-blown from her head”:JH, 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 Ayn Rand (1992).