"My personal life," wrote Ayn Rand, "is a postscript to my novels; it consists of the sentence: 'And I mean it.' I have always lived by the philosophy I present in my books -- and it has worked for me, as it works for my characters. The concretes differ, the abstractions are the same."
One thing I do not understand is the attitude "I don't care about Ayn Rand's personal life; it's her philosophy that's important to me." That attitude, for me, flies in the face of Rand's own 'And I mean it' sentiment. She did mean it. Or, as she put it:
that courage and confidence are practical necessities, that courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one's own consciousness.
So I've always been fascinated by Ayn Rand's life, and with good reason: Ayn Rand regarded Objectivism as a philosophy for guiding one's life, containing a system of ethics it was actually practical and possible to follow. Unfortunately the most prominent (or the only prominent) biography of Ayn Rand is Barbara Branden's The Passion of Ayn Rand. As author James Valliant has shown, The Passion of Ayn Rand is, in his words, a "monument to dishonesty."
Valliant does an excellent job of demolishing the Branden book, but has yet to convince everyone. So I'd like to add my two cents, in the form of three problems I've found in The Passion of Ayn Rand -- two of which I've seen mentioned nowhere else, and as for the third...well, I think Jim Valliant wasn't hard enough on Barbara Branden.
1. There's an incident in her book (in chapter 30, related on page 377 of the first edition) in which Barbara Branden is attempting to contact Ayn Rand's sister Nora, in Leningrad. It was 1982 and the Soviet Union was still intact.
Before telephoning, I had checked with American authorities on Russian affairs, to be certain I would say nothing that might endanger Nora with the Soviets. I was told, "There will be three of you on the telephone: the Russian woman, yourself -- and the GPU."
I doubt very much that anyone from the GPU listened in on that phone call, or that any American "authorities" warned anyone about the GPU at all. Not in 1982. That there might have been secret police creeps listening in on a call from America to Russia I do not doubt, but the GPU name was dropped in 1934.
Ayn Rand left Russia in 1926, never to return. I can imagine that perhaps she retained the habit of referring to the Soviet secret police as the GPU. Why Barbara Branden would ever do so I have no idea. That any "American authorities" above the rank of Barney Fife would do the same, almost fifty years after the name change, beggars belief. It is simply not credible.
2. In chapter 26 (page 310 of my edition), Barbara tells us:
It was during those years, from the publication of Atlas Shrugged throughout the sixties, that an influx of new people, drawn to Ayn by her novel and by NBI -- people who predominantly were accomplished adults rather than youngsters beginning their careers -- began to enter the circle of Ayn's friends.
Among the names mentioned are economist Murray Rothbard and historian Robert Hessen, and again, Barbara Branden's version can be challenged. Rothbard himself, as well as his colleague and eventual Objectivist, George Reisman, placed their first meeting as having occurred in 1954, years before Atlas Shrugged's was publication in October 1957 (Reisman was in fact introduced to Rand by Rothbard, as was Robert Hessen).
So: at least two of the names we're given actually met and were associating with Rand before the publication of Atlas Shrugged; in 1954, not "the sixties." (An odd coincidence is that Nathaniel Branden made the same boner about Rothbard in his Judgment Day.)
Are these two examples trivial? I can almost hear the accusations now.The book purports to be a biography: names and dates should be the bread and butter of biography, and the author should get them right. If not, we're talking about incompetence. But if getting easily verified facts wrong in a nonfiction book is trivial, then I have to wonder what's trivial and what's important, and how the matter is to be decided. And if such blunders are left in the book, why should it enjoy its reputation as "carefully researched" or -- as I fear too many readers see it -- as authoritative?
3. The book has an index entry for Frank O'Connor which reads "signs Rand's movie review, 364." Reading page 364 (in chapter 30), we find this sentence:
She still referred to him as a hero from her novels -- she subjected him to the indignity of signing his name to a review of Lillian Gish's The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me which she had written -- but that part of her life not spent on writing for The Objectivist and struggling with the dilemma of understanding Nathaniel, now once more revolved around Frank.
James Valliant has already dealt with Rand's "dilemma of understanding Nathaniel" in the early seventies: there wasn't one. Unless Rand began lying to herself in her own journals, after their 1968 break she suffered no such dilemma of understanding, as Valliant has demonstrated.
On the question of whether Frank O'Connor signed a movie review actually written by Ayn Rand, I think Jim Valliant actually goes too easy on Barbara Branden! Here are his words:
Although Ms. Branden asserts -- without evidence -- that it was Rand who really wrote the article on film history with O'Connor's by-line published in The Objectivist, Rand nowhere is said to have credited her husband with any great achievement (apart from the aid he rendered to Rand herself) or major career goal. (The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, page 157)
Actually, if we look at the review itself, we have all the evidence we need to come away with a harsher judgment of Barbara Branden. It appeared in the November 1969 issue of The Objectivist, and can be found on page 743 of my bound volume of that journal as it was published by Palo Alto Book Service in 1982 (the one available from the Ayn Rand Book Store seems to be the same size as mine, but I haven't seen it).
At the head of the page labelled "Books," we read: "Lillian Gish: The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me by Lillian Gish with Ann Pinchot," and, near that title, "Reviewed by Frank O'Connor (as told to Ayn Rand)."
Now, I know two things about this already: Ann Pinchot wrote the Gish book, and Ayn Rand wrote the review of it. Nobody is fooling anyone else (nor does anyone seem to be trying to), and nobody is being subjected to any "indignity," not Lillian Gish by Ann Pinchot and not Frank O'Connor by Ayn Rand.
"As told to" is a pretty common publishing term, in use for decades, and on some prominent material, too. Check out the by-line, for example, for The Autobiography of Malcolm X," or this definition provided by Yahoo! Education: " Written by a professional author based on conversations with the subject: an as-told-to memoir."
The simplest and most likely explanation is that Frank O'Connor, who was not a professional writer, had his views about the Gish book and the early film industry -- an industry in which he was employed for a number of years -- and discussed them with his wife, Ayn Rand, who was a professional writer. She then put them into written form, the result of which was published in The Objectivist with the "as told to" line. What part of Occam's Razor is the problem here?
Are we to be told that this too is trivial? That it's not part of an attempted smear or is actually just an understandable error? How honest such an "error" can be is doubtful, in my view: on page 281 (chapter 24) we are informed that after earning a graduate degree, Ms Branden was "working in the editorial department of St. Martin's Press." And yet she doesn't know, or presumes her readers won't know, what "as told to" means. That Barbara Branden wouldn't know, after having worked in the editorial department of a publishing house, again strains credibility.
Enough is enough.
"American authorities" warning people about the GPU -- in 1982. (Hey, better watch out for those Chekists!) Getting dates wrong about people moving into and out of Ayn Rand's life -- in what is, after all, a purported biography. Vicious accusations made in spite of easily found evidence to the contrary. Distortion after distortion, on top of everything James Valliant wrote about in his book.
The Passion of Ayn Rand has been in print for twenty years. Too many people are "informed" about Ayn Rand and about Objectivism from this book. It was made into a movie for Showtime, and, according to amazon.com, there are at least 20 books which cite this one. We still need a satisfactory Rand biography. It's time for the final nails to be driven into this one's coffin.