Anne Heller: Ayn Rand and the World She Made

transferred his paints:Author interview with Don Ventura, March 19, 2004.

An intercom joined the O’Connors’ apartment with the Brandens’:BB, in a taped interview with MS, February 18, 1983.

she tended to have fixed ideas about drawing:“Art and Cognition,” The Romantic Manifesto , p. 49.

She might point out that his colors:Facets of Ayn Rand , pp. 120–21.

she phoned her favorite painter:Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, March 23, 2004.

she asked knowledgable friends:Facets of Ayn Rand , p. 121.

“He is a tiger at the easel”:Facets of Ayn Rand , p. 121.

“It was the only time”:Author interview with Don Ventura, March 19, 2004.

“That’s what she was concerned about”:Author interview with JMB and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, September 2, 2004.

she forbade him to sell his paintings:Author interview with Don Ventura, March 19, 2004; author correspondence with BB, September 17, 2008.

she was discovered:Author interview with Roberta Satro, July 20, 2006. Satro was the on-s ite rental agent for 120 East Thirty-fourth Street and several other Murray Hill apartment buildings in the 1970s; in 1979 or 1980, she came upon Rand putting the painting in a trash can and asked if she could take it home. Rand agreed.

“I’m coming back to life”:JD , p. 314.

was the most important person in the world to him:TPOAR , p. 335.

offered to counsel the unhappy couple:JD , p. 314.

a therapeutic technique that she categorically rejected:“The Benefits and Hazards.”

resented what he later characterized as:“The Benefits and Hazards.”

“kill one’s capacity to be certain of anything”:Nathaniel Branden, “Mental Health versus Mysticism and Self-Sacrifice,” TON , March 1963, p. 9.

341 “Ayn sometimes seemed like a pussycat in comparison”:“The Liberty Interview: Barbara Branden,” p. 52, amended by BB in a note to the author, September 17, 2008.

displaying a seductive mixture:Roy Childs, from taped, unpublished interviews by journalist JW in preparation for a CBC special report on the tenth anniversary of AR’s death, titled Ideas: The Legacy of Ayn Rand (1992).

“so strong on purity”:Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (New York: Signet, 1970), p. 297.

“Omnisciate and inflamminate”:Author correspondence with Robert Hessen, December 8, 2007.

“he would go off on shopping sprees”:Author interview with Robert Hessen, October 17, 2007.

“Nathan had a theory about ‘men as tools’ “:Unpublished, taped interview with Barbara Weiss by BB, September 25, 1983.

typists found her exceptionally fair:Everyone who worked for AR professionally, from June Kurisu in the 1940s to Shelly Reuben in the 1960s, remembered her as scrupulously courteous and careful.

“She didn’t know how he’d been treating us”:Unpublished, taped interview with Barbara Weiss by BB, September 25, 1983.

“broke out into the most beautiful smile”:100 Voices , Shelly Reuben, p. 373.

“I did it myself!”:TPOAR , p. 329.

spent hours a week:“Interview with Henry Mark Holzer,” p. 5.

“Miss Rand, would it be an infringement of your rights”:Unpublished, taped interview with Betty Scourby, conducted by Fred Cookinham, March 3, 2003.

“She had a huge number of young people”:Interview with 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 Ayn Rand (1992).

“The expression on her face”:Author interview with Don Ventura, April 28, 2004.

“frightening, really frightening”:Unpublished, taped interview with Betty Scourby, conducted by Fred Cookinham, March 3, 2003.

“In those days, people worshipped the ground he walked on”:Author interview with Don Ventura, March 19, 2004.

he won disciples:Author interview with Roger J. Callahan, November 4, 2003.

“except for a few blemishes”:TPOARC , p. 221.

He made it clear:“The Liberty Interview: Barbara Branden,” p. 57.

“He was the one who made a crusade”:“The Liberty Interview: Barbara Branden,” p. 57.

“This was before anyone knew”:The call took place on September 13, 1965 (author interview with Lee Clifford, November 5, 2007; letter from Clifford to BB, August 26, 1965, courtesy of Lee Clifford).

only moral giants could possibly pull it off:Karen Reedstrom, “Interview with Nathaniel Branden, Part 2,” Full Context , October 1996, p. 4; Al Ramrus (author correspondence, March 5, 2007). Bill Bucko, an NBI student and the translator of The Mysterious Valley into English, reports two occasions on which NB answered this question. The first time, early in the 1960s, he said, no, it is not possible to be in love with two women at the same time. “Such a man [would be] unclear about his values.” The second time, he answered yes. “How?” asked the questioner. “Get a bigger bed,” reportedly said NB, then added, “It would take a giant of introspection to do so;” reprinted from http://forums.4aynrandfans.com/index, which seems to have been removed from the Web.

“It sounded like bullshit at the time”:Author interview with Ed Nash, January 6, 2005.

sometimes said much the same thing:MYWAR , p. 304. JMB recalled that NB and AR “were [both] going around playing dangerous games. One night a bunch of us were eating in a restaurant and they started a conversation about how [truly] superior people would be able to do exactly what they were doing, which I didn’t buy for a second. But I thought, I can see why they are saying this” (author interview, March 23, 2004).

“No, but you can be half in love”:Reported by Betsy Speicher on http://forums.4aynrandfans.com/index, which seems to have been removed from the Web.

good-looking advertising account executive:Author interview with Iris Bell, March 8, 2004.

encouraged one of his male students:Author interview with Robert Hessen, whom NB urged to date Patrecia, November 2, 2007.

offered her and Larry Scott free marriage counseling:“Ayn Rand and Her Movement,” p. 8; notes on a November 12, 1968, conversation with Larry Scott by Al Ramrus, courtesy of Ramrus. Since conducting marriage counseling while flirting with or sleeping with one spouse would be unethical, both NB and BB point out that the therapy was unofficial and unpaid.

“as if she were entering a temple”:MYWAR , p. 281.

She hadn’t gone to college:JD , p. 290.

Unconditional female admiration:Author interview with Florence Hirschfeld, Jonathan Hirschfeld, and EK, August 25, 2006.

“what Nathan had never had in his life”:Author interview with BB, December 15, 2005.

“You would see an explosion”:MYWAR , p. 288.