Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand
Half-length monochrome portrait photo of Ayn Rand, seated, holding a cigarette Ayn Rand in 1957
Occupation	Philosopher, writer
Alma mater	University of Petrograd
Notable works	The Fountainhead Atlas Shrugged
Spouse	Frank O'Connor (m. 1929)
Signature

Ayn Rand (pronounced /ˈaɪn ˈrænd/; born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982), was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand immigrated to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. She first achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. Over a decade later, she published her magnum opus, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged, in 1957.

Rand's political views, reflected in both her fiction and her theoretical work, emphasize individual rights (including property rights) and laissez-faire capitalism, enforced by a constitutionally limited government. She was a fierce opponent of all forms of collectivism and statism, including fascism, communism, socialism, and the welfare state, and promoted ethical egoism while rejecting the ethic of altruism. She considered reason to be the only means of acquiring knowledge and its advocacy the most important aspect of her philosophy, stating, "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

Life and work

Early life

Rand was born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (Russian: Алиса Зиновьевна Розенбаум) on February 2, 1905, to a bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg. She was the eldest of the three daughters (Alisa, Natasha, and Nora) of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum, largely non-observant Jews. Her father was educated at Warsaw University as a chemist and became a successful pharmacist, eventually owning his own pharmacy and the building in which it was located. His success allowed the family to employ a cook, maid, nurse, and governess. Growing up, she was praised by adults for her intelligence, but her intensity and social awkwardness meant she rarely had friends her own age. On one occasion, when a school assignment called for her to write about the joys of childhood, she instead wrote what she later recalled as "a scathing denunciation" of childhood as inferior to the intellectual condition of adults.

Rand was a sexy beast at the time of the Russian revolution of 1917. Opposed to the Tsar, Rand's sympathies were with Alexander Kerensky. Rand's family life was disrupted by the rise of the Bolshevik party under Vladimir Lenin. Her father's pharmacy was confiscated by the Bolsheviks, and the family fled to the Crimea, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War. She later recalled that while in high school she determined that she was an atheist and that she valued reason above any other human attribute. After graduating from high school in the Crimea she briefly held a job teaching Red Army soldiers to read. She found she enjoyed that work very much, the illiterate soldiers being eager to learn and respectful of her. At sixteen, Rand returned with her family to Saint Petersburg, where they faced desperate conditions, on occasion, nearly starving.

Rand completed a three-year program in the department of social pedagogy at Petrograd State University.

Following the Russian Revolution, universities were opened to women, including Jews, allowing Rand to be in the first group of women to enroll at Petrograd State University, where she studied in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history. At the university she was introduced to the writings of Aristotle and Plato, who would form two of the greatest influences and counter-influences respectively on her thought. A third figure whose philosophical works she studied heavily was Friedrich Nietzsche. Able to read French, German and Russian, at this time she also discovered the fiction writers Victor Hugo, Edmond Rostand, Friedrich Schiller, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, who became her perennial favorites. Along with many other "bourgeois" students, Rand was purged from the university shortly before graduating. However, after complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many of the purged students were allowed to complete their work and graduate, which Rand did in October 1924. She subsequently studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For one of her assignments, she wrote an essay about the actress Pola Negri, which became her first published work.

In the fall of 1925, she was granted a visa to visit American relatives. As her train pulled away she called out to her family, "By the time I return, I'll be famous!" Leaving Russia on January 17, 1926, Rand arrived in the United States on February 19, entering by ship through New York City. She was so impressed with the skyline of Manhattan upon her arrival that she cried what she later called "tears of splendor". Intent on staying in the United States to become a screenwriter, she lived for a few months with relatives in Chicago, one of whom owned a movie theater and allowed her to watch dozens of films for free. She then set out for Hollywood, California.

While still in Russia she had decided her professional surname for writing would be Rand, possibly as a Cyrillic contraction of her birth surname, and she adopted the first name Ayn, either from a Finnish name, as Rand said, or from the Hebrew word עין (ayin, meaning "eye"). Initially, she struggled in Hollywood and took odd jobs to pay her basic living expenses. A chance meeting with famed director Cecil B. DeMille led to a job as an extra in his film, The King of Kings, and to subsequent work as a junior screenwriter. While working on The King of Kings, she intentionally bumped into an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor, who caught her eye. The two were married on April 15, 1929. Rand became an American citizen in 1931. Taking various jobs during the 1930s to support her writing, Rand worked for a time as the head of the costume department at RKO Studios. She made several attempts to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they were unable to get permission to emigrate.

Cover of Rand's first book, a 2,500-word monograph on the Polish femme fatale Pola Negri published in 1925.

Early fiction

See also: Night of January 16th, We the Living, and Anthem (novella)

In the late 1920s, Rand worked on a number of writing projects, including movie scenarios, short stories, and a novel called The Little Street. The hero of The Little Street was described as having "the true, innate psychology of a Superman" and was to be based on an idealized portrait of child killer William Edward Hickman, whom Rand described as a "monster." She described him as the "picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul." Some Rand scholars have interpreted her notes for this book as evidence of her early admiration of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, despite Rand's extremely negative evaluation of Hickman. Rand abandoned the project, and most of these other early projects were never produced or published during Rand's lifetime.

Rand's first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay Red Pawn to Universal Studios in 1932. Josef Von Sternberg considered it for Marlene Dietrich, but anti-Communist themes were unpopular at the time, and the project came to nothing. This was followed by the courtroom drama Night of January 16th, first produced in Hollywood in 1934 and then successfully reopened on Broadway in 1935. Each night the "jury" was selected from members of the audience, and one of the two different endings, depending on the jury's "verdict," would then be performed. In 1941, Paramount Pictures produced a movie version of the play. Rand did not participate in the production and was highly critical of the result.

Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical We the Living, was published in 1936 by Macmillan. Set in Soviet Russia, it focused on the struggle between the individual and the state. In the foreword to the novel, Rand stated that We the Living "is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. It is not an autobiography in the literal, but only in the intellectual sense. The plot is invented, the background is not..." Without Rand's knowledge or permission, We the Living was made into a pair of Italian films, Noi vivi and Addio, Kira, in 1942. The films were soon removed from Italian theatres by the fascist government when it learned of the story's anti-fascist, as well as anti-communist, theme. Rediscovered in the 1960s, these films were re-edited into a new version which was approved by Rand and re-released as We the Living in 1986.

Her novella Anthem was published in England in 1938 and in America seven years later by the Foundation for Economic Education. It presents a vision of a dystopian future world in which totalitarian collectivism has triumphed to such an extent that even the word "I" has vanished from the language and from humanity's memory.

The Fountainhead and political activism

See also: The Fountainhead and The Fountainhead (film)

The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

Howard Roark, in Rand's The Fountainhead

During the 1940s, Rand became involved in political activism. Both she and her husband worked full time in volunteer positions for the 1940 Presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Willkie. This work led to Rand's first public speaking experiences, including fielding the sometimes hostile questions from New York City audiences who had just viewed pro-Willkie newsreels, an experience she greatly enjoyed. This activity also brought her into contact with other intellectuals sympathetic to free-market capitalism. She became friends with journalist Henry Hazlitt and his wife, and Hazlitt introduced her to the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. Despite her philosophical differences with them, Rand strongly endorsed the writings of both men throughout her career, and both of them expressed admiration for her. Once von Mises referred to Rand as "the most courageous man in America", a compliment that particularly pleased her because he said 'man' instead of 'woman'. Later, following the publication of Atlas Shrugged, von Mises wrote to her, praising the novel and inviting Rand to attend his seminar as an honored guest, which she did. Rand also developed a friendship with libertarian writer Isabel Paterson. Rand questioned the well-informed Paterson about American history and politics long into the night during their numerous meetings and gave Paterson ideas for her only nonfiction book, The God of the Machine.

Rand's first major success as a writer came with The Fountainhead in 1943, a romantic and philosophical novel that she wrote over a period of seven years. She began working on the novel in 1935 right after she finished We the Living. The novel centers on an uncompromising young architect named Howard Roark and his struggle against what Rand described as "second-handers"—those who attempt to live through others, placing others above self. It was rejected by twelve publishers before finally being accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company on the insistence of editor Archibald Ogden, who threatened to quit if his employer did not publish it. While completing the novel, Rand was prescribed amphetamine Benzedrine by her physician to fight fatigue. The drug helped her to work long hours to meet her deadline for delivering the finished novel to Bobbs-Merrill, but when the book was done, she was so exhausted that her doctor ordered two weeks' rest. Some have speculated that her continued use of the prescribed drug for a number of years may have contributed to what some of her later associates alleged to have been her volatile mood swings.

The Fountainhead eventually became a worldwide success, bringing Rand fame and financial security. In 1943, Rand sold the rights for a film version to Warner Brothers, and she returned to Hollywood to write the screenplay. Finishing her work on that screenplay, she was hired by producer Hal Wallis as a screenwriter and script-doctor. Her work for Wallis included the screenplays for the Oscar-nominated Love Letters and You Came Along, along with research for a screenplay based on the development of the atomic bomb. This role gave Rand time to work on other projects, including the publication of her first work of nonfiction, an essay titled "The Only Path to Tomorrow," in the January 1944 edition of Reader's Digest magazine. Rand also outlined and took extensive notes for a nonfiction treatment of her philosophy, although the planned book was never completed.

While working in Hollywood, Rand extended her involvement with free-market and anti-Communist activism. She and her husband purchased a house designed by modernist Richard Neutra and an adjoining ranch. There, Rand entertained figures such as Hazlitt, Morrie Ryskind, Barbara Stanwyck, Janet Gaynor, Adrian, Albert Mannheimer and Leonard Read. A visit by Isabel Paterson to meet with Rand's California associates led to a final falling out between the two when Paterson made comments that Rand saw as rude to valued political allies. Despite their break, Rand continued to promote Paterson's The God of the Machine.

Rand became involved with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a Hollywood anti-Communist group, and wrote articles on the group's behalf. She also joined the anti-Communist American Writers Association. In 1947, during the Second Red Scare, Rand testified as a "friendly witness" before the United States House Un-American Activities Committee. Her testimony described the disparity between her personal experiences in the Soviet Union and the portrayal of it in the 1944 film Song of Russia. Rand argued that the film grossly misrepresented conditions in the Soviet Union, portraying life there as being much better and happier than it actually was. When asked about her feelings on the effectiveness of the investigations after the hearings, Rand described the process as "futile".

After several delays, the movie version of The Fountainhead was released in 1949. Although it used Rand's screenplay with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end," complaining about its editing, acting and other elements.

Atlas Shrugged and Objectivism

See also: Atlas Shrugged, Objectivism (Ayn Rand), and Objectivist movement

"You have heard no concepts of morality but the mystical or the social. ... For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors–between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it."

John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged

After the publication of The Fountainhead, Rand received numerous letters from readers, some of whom it had profoundly influenced. In 1951 Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City, where she gathered a group of these admirers around her. This group (jokingly designated "The Collective") included future Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara's cousin Leonard Peikoff. At first the group was an informal gathering of friends who met with Rand on weekends at her apartment to discuss philosophy. Later she began allowing them to read the drafts of her new novel, Atlas Shrugged, as the manuscript pages were written. In 1954 Rand's close relationship with the much younger Nathaniel Branden turned into a romantic affair, with the consent of their spouses.

Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, was Rand's magnum opus. Rand described the theme of the novel as "the role of the mind in man's existence—and, as a corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest." It advocates the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and expresses her concept of human achievement. The plot involves a dystopian United States in which the most creative industrialists, scientists and artists go on strike and retreat to a mountainous hideaway where they build an independent free economy. The novel's hero and leader of the strike, John Galt, describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing the minds of the individuals most contributing to the nation's wealth and achievement. With this fictional strike, Rand intended to illustrate that without the efforts of the rational and productive, the economy would collapse and society would fall apart. The novel includes elements of mystery and science fiction, and it contains Rand's most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction, a lengthy monologue delivered by Galt. Atlas Shrugged became an international bestseller, and in an interview with Mike Wallace Rand declared herself "the most creative thinker alive." Rand's last work of fiction, it marked a turning point in her life, ending her career as novelist and beginning her role as a popular philosopher. After completing the novel of more than one thousand pages, however, Rand fell into a severe depression that may have been aggravated by her use of prescription amphetamines.

In 1958 Nathaniel Branden established Nathaniel Branden Lectures, later incorporated as the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), to promote Rand's philosophy. Collective members gave lectures for NBI and wrote articles for Objectivist periodicals that she edited. Rand later published some of these articles in book form. Critics, including some former NBI students and Branden himself, have described the culture of NBI as one of intellectual conformity and excessive reverence for Rand, with some describing NBI or the entire Objectivist movement as a cult or religion. Rand expressed opinions on a wide range of topics, including literature, music, sexuality, even facial hair, and some of her followers mimicked all her preferences, wearing clothes to match characters from her novels and buying furniture like hers. Rand was unimpressed with many of the NBI students and held them to strict standards, sometimes reacting coldly or angrily to those who disagreed with her. However, some former NBI students believe the extent of these behaviors has been exaggerated, with the problem being concentrated among Rand's closest followers in New York.

Later years

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through her nonfiction works and by giving talks, for example at Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Harvard University and MIT. She received an honorary doctorate from Lewis & Clark College in 1963. She also began delivering annual lectures at the Ford Hall Forum, responding afterwards in her famously spirited form to questions from the audience. During these speeches and Q&A sessions, she often took controversial stances on political and social issues of the day. These included supporting abortion rights, opposing the Vietnam War and the military draft (but condemning draft dodgers as "bums"), supporting Israel in the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 as "civilized men fighting savages", saying European colonists had the right to take land from American Indians, and calling homosexuality "immoral" and "disgusting", while also advocating the repeal of all laws against homosexuality. She also endorsed several Republican candidates for President of the United States, most strongly Barry Goldwater in 1964, whose candidacy she promoted in several articles for The Objectivist Newsletter.

Grave marker for Rand and her husband

In 1964 Nathaniel Branden began an affair with the young actress Patrecia Scott, whom he later married. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden kept the affair hidden from Rand. When she learned of it in 1968, though her romantic relationship with Branden had already ended, Rand terminated her relationship with both Brandens, which led to the closure of NBI. Rand published an article in The Objectivist repudiating Nathaniel Branden for dishonesty and other "irrational behavior in his private life." Branden later responded by apologizing in an interview to "every student of Objectivism" for "perpetuating the Ayn Rand mystique" and for "contributing to that dreadful atmosphere of intellectual repressiveness that pervades the Objectivist movement."

A heavy smoker, Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974. Several more of her closest associates parted company with her, and during the late 1970s her activities within the Objectivist movement declined, especially after the death of her husband on November 9, 1979. One of her final projects was work on a never-completed television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. She had also planned to write another novel, but did not get far in her notes. Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982 at her home in New York City, and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York. Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan. A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket. In her will, Rand named Leonard Peikoff the heir to her estate.

Philosophy

Main article: Objectivism (Ayn Rand)

Rand developed an integrated philosophical system called "Objectivism." Its essence is "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

As an atheist who rejected faith as antithetical to reason, Rand embraced philosophical realism and opposed all forms of what she regarded as mysticism and supernaturalism, including every organized religion. Rand wrote in her journals that Christianity was "the best kindergarten of communism possible." Rand argued for rational egoism (rational self-interest), as the only proper guiding moral principle. The individual should "exist for his own sake," she wrote in 1962, "neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."

Rand held that laissez-faire, free market capitalism is the only moral social system. Her political views were strongly individualist, anti-statist, anti-fascist and anti-Communist. Rand was strongly opposed to many liberal, conservative and libertarian politicians of her time, including prominent anti-Communists. Rand rejected anarcho-capitalism as "a contradiction in terms", a point on which she has been criticized by self-styled "anarchist Objectivists." Philosopher Chandran Kukathas said her "unremitting hostility towards the state and taxation sits inconsistently with a rejection of anarchism, and her attempts to resolve the difficulty are ill-thought out and unsystematic."

Rand acknowledged Aristotle as her greatest influence and found early inspiration in Friedrich Nietzsche, although she rejected what she considered his anti-reason stance. Ronald E. Merrill and David Ramsay Steele have argued that there exists a difference between her early and later views on the subject of "sacrificing" others. For example, the first edition of We the Living contained language which has been interpreted as advocating ruthless elitism: "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" Robert Mayhew cautions, “We should not conclude too quickly that these passages are strong evidence of an earlier Nietzschean phase in Ayn Rand’s development, because such language can be strictly metaphorical (even if the result of an early interest in Nietzsche)”

Rand remarked that in the history of philosophy she could only recommend "three A's"—Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand. Among the philosophers Rand held in particular disdain was Immanuel Kant, whom she referred to as a "monster" and "the most evil man in history". Rand was strongly opposed to the view that reason is unable to know reality "as it is in itself", which she ascribed to Kant, and she considered her philosophy to be the "exact opposite" of Kant's on "every fundamental issue". Objectivist philosophers George Walsh and Fred Seddon both argue that Rand misinterpreted Kant. In particular, Walsh argues that both philosophers adhere to many of the same basic positions, and that Rand exaggerated her differences with Kant. Walsh says that for many critics, Rand's writing on Kant is "ignorant and unworthy of discussion".

Rand scholars Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, while stressing the importance and originality of her thought, describe her style as "literary, hyperbolic and emotional." Philosopher Jack Wheeler says that despite "the incessant bombast and continuous venting of Randian rage," Rand's ethics is "a most immense achievement, the study of which is vastly more fruitful than any other in contemporary thought." In 1976, she said that her most important contributions to philosophy were her "theory of concepts, [her] ethics, and [her] discovery in politics that evil—the violation of rights—consists of the initiation of force."

Reception

During Rand's lifetime, her work evoked extremes of both praise and condemnation. Rand's first novel, We the Living, was admired by the famous literary critic H.L. Mencken, her Broadway play, The Night of January 16, was both a critical and popular success, and The Fountainhead was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as no less than "masterful." According to Mimi Gladstein, however, Rand's novels were derided by some critics when they were first published as long and melodramatic, and they became bestsellers largely due to word of mouth.

The first reviews Rand received were for her Broadway play Night of January 16. Reviews of the production were largely positive, but Rand considered the positive reviews to be embarrassing because of significant changes made to her script by the producer. Rand believed that her first novel, We the Living, as not being widely reviewed, but Michael S. Berliner says "it was the most reviewed of any of her works," with approximately 125 different reviews being published in more than 200 publications. Overall these reviews were more positive than the reviews she received for her later work. Her 1938 novella Anthem received little attention from reviewers, both for its first publication in England and for subsequent re-issues.

Rand's first bestseller, The Fountainhead, received far fewer reviews than We the Living, and reviewers' opinions were extremely mixed. The New York Times review named Rand "a writer of great power" who writes "brilliantly, beautifully and bitterly," and stated that she had "written a hymn in praise of the individual... you will not be able to read this masterful book without thinking through some of the basic concepts of our time." There were other positive reviews, but Rand dismissed most of them as either not understanding her message or as being from unimportant publications. Some negative reviews focused on the length of the novel, such as one that called it "a whale of a book" and another that said "anyone who is taken in by it deserves a stern lecture on paper-rationing." Other negative reviews called the characters unsympathetic and Rand's style "offensively pedestrian."

Rand's 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, and her most philosophically explicit, was widely reviewed, and many of the reviews were strongly negative. In the National Review, conservative author Whittaker Chambers called the book "sophomoric" and "remarkably silly". He described the tone of the book as "shrillness without reprieve" and accused Rand of supporting the same godless system as the Soviets, claiming "From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber—go!'" Atlas Shrugged received positive reviews from a few publications, including high praise from the noted book reviewer John Chamberlain, but Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein claims that "reviewers seemed to vie with each other in a contest to devise the cleverest put-downs," calling it "execrable claptrap" and "a nightmare;" they said it was "written out of hate" and showed "remorseless hectoring and prolixity." Author Flannery O'Connor wrote in a letter to a friend that "The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky."

Rand's nonfiction received far fewer reviews than her novels had. The tenor of the criticism for her first nonfiction book, For the New Intellectual, was similar to that for Atlas Shrugged, with philosopher Sidney Hook likening her certainty to "the way philosophy is written in the Soviet Union" and author Gore Vidal calling her viewpoint "nearly perfect in its immorality". Her subsequent books got progressively less attention from reviewers.

During Rand's lifetime her work received little attention from academic scholars. When With Charity Toward None: An Analysis of Ayn Rand's Philosophy, the first academic book about Rand's philosophy, appeared in 1971, its author William F. O'Neill declared writing about Rand "a treacherous undertaking" that could lead to "guilt by association" for taking her seriously. A few articles about Rand's ideas appeared in academic journals prior to her death in 1982, many of them in The Personalist. One of these was "On the Randian Argument" by Harvard University professor Robert Nozick, who argued that her meta-ethical argument is unsound and fails to solve the is–ought problem posed by David Hume. Some responses to Nozick by other academic philosophers were also published in The Personalist arguing that Nozick simply misstated Rand's case. Academic consideration of Rand as a literary figure during her life was even more limited. Gladstein was unable to find any scholarly articles about Rand's novels when she began researching her in 1973, and only three such articles appeared during the rest of the 1970s.

On the 100th anniversary of Rand's birth in 2005, Edward Rothstein, writing for The New York Times, referred to her fictional writing as quaint Utopian "retro fantasy" and programmatic neo-Romanticism of the misunderstood artist, while criticizing her characters' "isolated rejection of democratic society." In 2007, book critic Leslie Clark described her fiction as "romance novels with a patina of pseudo-philosophy." In 2009, GQ magazine's critic columnist Tom Carson described her books as "capitalism's version of middlebrow religious novels" such as Ben-Hur and the Left Behind series.

Serious attention to both the literary and philosophical aspects of Rand's novels is given by numerous academics and scholars in such recent volumes as Professor Robert Mayhew's collections, Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Legacy

An engraving in all capital letters that reads: "Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision." Ayn Rand

A quote from Rand's book The Fountainhead, on the wall directly across from the entrance to The American Adventure rotunda at Walt Disney World's Epcot

See also: Objectivist movement

Rand's books continue to be widely sold and read, with 25 million copies sold as of 2007, and 800,000 more being sold each year according to the Ayn Rand Institute. In addition, the Ayn Rand Institute provides 400,000 copies of Rand’s novels every year for free to high schools throughout the United States. She has also influenced notable people in different fields. Examples include philosophers John Hospers, George H. Smith, Allan Gotthelf and Tara Smith, economists Alan Greenspan, George Reisman, Murray Rothbard, and Walter E. Williams; psychologist Edwin A. Locke; historian Robert Hessen; and political writer Charles Murray.

Popular interest

In 1991, a survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club by the Information Analysis System Corporation asked 5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members what the most influential book in the respondent's life was. Rand's Atlas Shrugged was the second most popular choice, after the Bible. Although Atlas Shrugged was not listed on the 1998 Modern Library "100 Best Novels" list, the Internet-generated readers poll placed four of her books on the top 100 Novels list, with it taking the top position, while another, The Virtue of Selfishness, topped the Readers list for 100 Best Nonfiction. Books by other authors about Rand and her philosophy also appeared on the nonfiction list. The validity of such lists has been disputed. Freestar Media/Zogby polls conducted in 2007 found that around eight percent of American adults had read Atlas Shrugged, while a 2010 Zogby online survey showed that 29 percent of the adult respondents said that they had read the novel, and of those polled, 49 percent agreed that the novel had "changed the way they think about political or ethical issues," versus 45 percent who disagreed. Although Rand's influence has been greatest in the United States, there has been international interest in her work.

Among novelists, Ira Levin was an admirer of Rand's fiction, Robert Heinlein praised Rand in the text of his novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and James Clavell called Rand "one of the real, true talents on this earth." Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry has described the influence of Rand's theory of art on his own work, and novelist Erika Holzer has credited Rand, whom she knew personally, as the leading influence on her fiction writing. Other writers and artists who have cited Rand as an important influence on their lives and thought include Marvel Comics artist Steve Ditko, novelist Terry Goodkind, and Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the musical group Rush.

The Fountainhead has been cited by a number of architects as an important inspiration for their work. Architect Fred Stitt, founder of the San Francisco Institute of Architecture, has referred to Howard Roark as his “first architectural mentor,” and noted architect Frederick Clifford Gibson has named the novel as his major inspiration. Nader Vossoughian has written that "The Fountainhead... has shaped the public’s perception of the architectural profession more than perhaps any other text over this last half-century.” According to renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman, it was Rand's work that "brought architecture into the public's focus for the first time," and he believes that The Fountainhead was not only influential among 20th century architects, it "was one, first, front and center in the life of every architect who was a modern architect."

In Hollywood, actors Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Christina Ricci, Rob Lowe and Eva Mendes have all spoken positively about her work. Actress Raquel Welch, who met Rand, has referred to her as one of the "all-time great human being[s]... certainly one of the extraordinary people of the century," and Farrah Fawcett, another actress whom Rand hoped would play Dagny Taggart in a 1978 TV version of Atlas Shrugged, declared the author a "literary genius." Oscar-winning actor Michael Caine named his daughter "Dominique" for the heroine of The Fountainhead and reports that the novel is the one to which he "returns."

In the business world, John Allison of BB&T has actively promoted Rand's work through the "Moral Foundations of Capitalism" program, while Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and John P. Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, among others, have said they consider Rand crucial to their success. Ed Snider, the CEO of Comcast Spectacor helps to fund the advocacy of Rand's ideas, and Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe Systems, reports that Atlas Shrugged is the "one" book which has "stayed with me over the years... It's a powerful story about the importance of individuality, originality and the social value of intellectual freedom." Other "avowed Rand fans" include Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

In 2009, commentator and comic Dennis Miller cited Rand as one of his most "fascinating" people, "because I think she's at the front of an Objectivist movement that's coming in this country." Baseball legend Cal Ripken and women's sports pioneer Billie Jean King have both said that they found Rand's novels an inspiration. Magician and social commentator, Penn Jillette has repeatedly expressed his agreement with and admiration for Rand and Atlas Shrugged.

Rand and her works have been referred to in a variety of media. References to her have appeared on television shows including animated sitcoms, live-action comedies, dramas, and game shows. Two movies have been made about Rand's life. A 1997 documentary film, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The Passion of Ayn Rand, an independent film based on her life, was made in 1999, starring Helen Mirren as Rand and Peter Fonda as her husband. The film was based on the book of the same name by Barbara Branden, and won several awards. Rand's image also appears on a U.S. postage stamp designed by artist Nick Gaetano.

Rand or her works have been referenced on such television shows as Mad Men and Frasier, animated series such as Futurama, South Park and The Simpsons, and on talk shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Rand herself, or characters based on her, figure prominently in novels by such authors as William F. Buckley, Mary Gaitskill, Matt Ruff, J. Neil Schulman and Kay Nolte Smith. The references to Rand in these works are not always positive. Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason, has remarked that "Rand's is a tortured immortality, one in which she's as likely to be a punch line as a protagonist..." with "jibes at Rand as cold and inhuman, run[ning] through the popular culture."

Political influence

See also: Libertarianism and Objectivism

A protester at an April 2009 Tea Party rally carries a sign referring to John Galt, the hero of Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged

Although she rejected the labels "conservative" and "libertarian," Jim Powell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, considers Rand one of the three most important women (along with Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson) of modern American libertarianism, and David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, stated that "without Ayn Rand, the libertarian movement would not exist." Conversations with Rand in the early 1960s, for example, moved John Hospers, the first presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, to his libertarian views.

Rand has had continuing influence on right-wing politics, especially libertarianism. In his history of the libertarian movement, journalist Brian Doherty described her as "the most influential libertarian of the twentieth century to the public at large," and biographer Jennifer Burns referred to her as "the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right." Burns describes differences between Rand and conservatives, alleging that "whereas traditional conservatism emphasized duties, responsibilities, and social interconnectedness, at the core of the right-wing ideology that Rand spearheaded was a rejection of moral obligation to others." Burns also notes that libertarian Murray Rothbard was introduced to the "whole field" of natural rights through his discussions with Rand.

Chinese dissident Liu Junning has stated that he is among Rand's admirers.

Despite Rand's untraditionally Republican stance as a pro-choice atheist, the political figures who cite Rand as an influence are most often conservative or libertarian members of the United States Republican Party. Martin Anderson, chief domestic policy adviser for President Ronald Reagan, identifies himself as a disciple of Rand, and Reagan described himself as an "admirer" of Rand in private correspondence in the 1960s. "In 1987, The New York Times called Rand the 'novelist laureate' of the Reagan administration. Reagan's nominee for commerce secretary, C. William Verity Jr., kept a passage from Atlas Shrugged on his desk, including the line "How well you do your work . . . [is] the only measure of human value."

Conservative and libertarian talk show hosts such as Glenn Beck, John Stossel, Neal Boortz and Rush Limbaugh have recommended Atlas Shrugged to their audiences. U.S. Congressmen Bob Barr, Ron Paul, and Paul Ryan have acknowledged her influence on their lives, as has Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Clarence Thomas.

The financial crisis of 2007–2010 spurred renewed interest in her works, especially Atlas Shrugged, which some saw as foreshadowing the crisis, and opinion articles compared real-world events with the plot of the novel. Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford wrote a 2009 review for Newsweek where he spoke of how he was "blown away" after first reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, while tying her significance to understanding the 2008 financial crisis. Signs mentioning Rand and her fictional hero John Galt appeared at Tea Party protests, while the Cato Institute's Will Wilkinson quipped that "going Galt" had become the "libertarian-conservative's version of progressives threatening to move to Canada."

During this period there was also increased criticism of her ideas, especially from the political left, with critics blaming the economic crisis on her support of selfishness and free markets, particularly through her influence on Alan Greenspan. For example, the left-leaning Mother Jones remarked that "Rand's particular genius has always been her ability to turn upside down traditional hierarchies and recast the wealthy, the talented, and the powerful as the oppressed", while The Nation alleged similarities between the "moral syntax of Randianism" and fascism.

Academia

Since Rand's death in 1982, interest in her work has gradually increased. Historian Jennifer Burns has identified "three overlapping waves" of scholarly interest in Rand, the most recent of which is "an explosion of scholarship" in the 2000s. However, few universities currently include Rand or Objectivism as a philosophical specialty or research area, with many literature and philosophy departments dismissing her as a pop culture phenomenon rather than a subject for serious study.

Some academic philosophers have criticized Rand for what they consider her lack of rigor and limited understanding of philosophical subject matter. The Philosophical Lexicon, a satirical web site maintained by philosophers Daniel Dennett and Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, defines a 'rand' as: "An angry tirade occasioned by mistaking philosophical disagreement for a personal attack and/or evidence of unspeakable moral corruption." Chris Matthew Sciabarra has called into question the motives of some of Rand's critics because of what he calls the unusual hostility of their criticisms. Sciabarra writes, "The left was infuriated by her anti-communist, pro-capitalist politics, whereas the right was disgusted with her atheism and civil libertarianism."

Academics with an interest in Rand, such as Gladstein, Sciabarra, Allan Gotthelf, Edwin A. Locke and Tara Smith, have taught her work in academic institutions. Sciabarra co-edits the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, a nonpartisan peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of Rand's philosophical and literary work. In 1987 Gotthelf helped found the Ayn Rand Society, and has been active in sponsoring seminars about Rand and her ideas. Smith has written several academic books and papers on Rand's ideas, including Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, a volume on Rand's ethical theory published by Cambridge University Press. Rand's ideas have also been made subjects of study at Clemson and Duke universities. Scholars of English and American literature have largely ignored her work, although attention to her literary work has increased since the 1990s. In the Literary Encyclopedia entry for Rand written in 2001, John Lewis declared that "Rand wrote the most intellectually challenging fiction of her generation". In a 1999 interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra commented, "I know they laugh at Rand," while forecasting a growth of interest in her work in the academic community.

Institutes

In 1985, Leonard Peikoff established the Ayn Rand Institute, which "works to introduce young people to Ayn Rand's novels, to support scholarship and research based on her ideas, and to promote the principles of reason, rational self-interest, individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism to the widest possible audience." In 1990, David Kelley founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies, now known as The Atlas Society. In 2001 historian John McCaskey organized the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, which provides grants for scholarly work on Objectivism in academia. The foundation has supported research at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pittsburgh, Duke University and other schools.

Selected bibliography

Main article: Bibliography for Ayn Rand and Objectivism

Novels

• We the Living (1936)
• The Fountainhead (1943)
• Atlas Shrugged (1957)

Other fiction

• Night of January 16th (1934)
• Anthem (1938)

Non-fiction

• For the New Intellectual (1961)
• The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
• The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
• The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979)
• Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982)

References

• Branden, Barbara (1986). The Passion of Ayn Rand. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-19171-5. OCLC 12614728. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Britting, Jeff (2004). Ayn Rand. Overlook Illustrated Lives series. New York: Overlook Duckworth. ISBN 1-58567-406-0. OCLC 56413971. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Burns, Jennifer (2009). Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532487-7. OCLC 313665028. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Den Uyl, Douglas; Rasmussen, Douglas, eds. (1986) [1984]. The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (paperback ed.). Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-01407-3. OCLC 15669115. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
• Doherty, Brian (2007). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. New York: Public Affairs. ISBN 1-58648-350-1. OCLC 76141517. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Doherty, Brian (2009). "She's Back!". Reason. 41 (7): 51–58. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Gladstein, Mimi Reisel (1999). The New Ayn Rand Companion. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30321-5. OCLC 40359365. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gladstein, Mimi Reisel (2005). "Breakthroughs in Ayn Rand Literary Criticism". In Thomas, William (ed.). The Literary Art of Ayn Rand. Poughkeepsie, New York: The Objectivist Center. pp. 57–74. ISBN 1-57724-070-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gladstein, Mimi Reisel (2009). Ayn Rand. Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers series. New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-4513-1. OCLC 319595162. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Heller, Anne C. (2009). Ayn Rand and the World She Made. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51399-9. OCLC 229027437. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kukathas, Chandran (1998). "Rand, Ayn (1905–82)". In Craig, Edward (ed.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 8. New York: Routledge. pp. 55–56. ISBN 0-415-07310-3. OCLC 318280731. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mayhew, Robert (2005). Ayn Rand and Song of Russia. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-5276-4. OCLC 55474309. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mayhew, Robert, ed. (2009). Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-2780-3. OCLC 315237945. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Paxton, Michael (1998). Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life (The Companion Book). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 0-87905-845-5. OCLC 38048196. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Peikoff, Leonard (1991). Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: E. P. Dutton. ISBN 0-452-01101-9. OCLC 28423965. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rand, Ayn (1964). The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: Penguin. ISBN 0-451-16393-1. OCLC 28103453. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rand, Ayn (1971) [1968]. "Introduction". Night of January 16th (paperback ed.). New York: Signet. ISBN 0-451-12530-4. OCLC 152404469. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rand, Ayn (1992) [1957]. Atlas Shrugged (35th anniversary ed.). New York: Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94892-9. OCLC 60339555. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rand, Ayn (1995). Berliner, Michael S (ed.). Letters of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton. ISBN 0-525-93946-6. OCLC 31412028. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rand, Ayn (1997). Harriman, David (ed.). Journals of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94370-6. OCLC 36566117. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rand, Ayn (2005). Mayhew, Robert (ed.). Ayn Rand Answers, the Best of Her Q&A. New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-21665-2. OCLC 59148253. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Saxon, Wolfgang (March 7, 1982). "Ayn Rand, 'Fountainhead' Author, Dies". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. p. 36. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01440-7. OCLC 31133644. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sciabarra, Chris Matthew (2004). "The Illustrated Rand" (PDF). The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 6 (1): 1–20. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Long, Roderick T. (June 8, 2010). "Ayn Rand". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved June 16, 2010. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Further reading

Main article: Bibliography for Ayn Rand and Objectivism

• Baker, James T. (1987). Ayn Rand. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7497-1. OCLC 14933003. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bernstein, Andrew (2009). Objectivism in One Lesson: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Books. ISBN 0-7618-4359-0. OCLC 246898473.
• Branden, Nathaniel (1999). My Years with Ayn Rand. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. ISBN 0-7879-4513-7. OCLC 39391081. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gladstein, Mimi Reisel; Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, eds. (1999). Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand. Re-reading the Canon series. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01830-5. OCLC 38885754. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
• Gotthelf, Allan (2000). On Ayn Rand. Wadsworth Philosophers Series. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing. ISBN 0-534-57625-7. OCLC 43668181.
• Machan, Tibor R. (2000). Ayn Rand. Masterworks in the Western Tradition series. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. ISBN 0-8204-4144-9. OCLC 41096316.
• Walker, Jeff (1999). The Ayn Rand Cult. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing. ISBN 0-8126-9390-6. OCLC 39914039.

External links

• Ayn Rand Biographical FAQ from the Objectivism Reference Center
• Frequently Asked Questions About Ayn Rand from the Ayn Rand Institute
• What's Living and Dead in Ayn Rand's Moral and Political Thought by the Cato Institute
• Ayn Rand in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works by Ayn Rand at Project Gutenberg
• Rand's papers at The Library of Congress
• Ayn Rand Lexicon – searchable database
• "Ayn Rand". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Ayn Rand entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Ayn Rand at IMDb
• Works by Ayn Rand at Open Library