News-Pilot from San Pedro, California • 54

te-N-07t1 xiD uiiiu Nho is Ayn Rand? Biography says it best rr THE PASSION OF AYN RAND Barbara Branden (Doubleday 995) perilously close to a hermetic system of causes and effects a total and mechanistic logic pervading the universe that contradicts her assertions of free will A world of Randian heroes would not only fail to reproduce itself but it would also find itself bound in chains of mechanistic rationality Such objections to Rand's philosophy might seem to disparage her achievement But in fact like ever great thinker she transcends her contradictions In a world in which most novelists lack any coherent philosophy at all her work looms as a major triumph Barbara Branden's own triumph is to show in full human detail the sources both of this achievement and its notable but ultimately venial flaws By excluding the domain of procreative sexuality she misses the altruistic and unconditional love at the very core of the human experience Indeed the uniquely prolonged helplessness of human offspring means that parental love is indispensable to human life and development Ignoming the altruistic aspect of family and business life Rand also misunderstands the role of religions that uphold the unselfish moral codes essential to productive families and enterprises Launching a false duality of her own she asserts an inexorable divorce between reason and religion and asserts the identity of Marxism and Christianity collectivism and altruism a view shared ironically by Marxist Liberation theology In addition Rand fails to comprehend that her rationalism comes George Gilder is the author of Wealth and Poverty "GET TO KNOW US" OFFER 0 -r1111 F2o) EOM important writers and thinkers she was also one of its less sensitive human beings Her obtuseness reached a climax in her sexual relationship with Nathaniel Bran-den when she brought her husband Frank O'Connor and her friend Barbara Branden together to endorse her heroism and rationality in seeking an affair with Barbara's husband Rand maintained that the belief in an irrational sex drive unrelated to philosophical principles was similar to the Marxist belief in the primacy of matter Just as Rand asserted that the material achievements of entrepreneurs reflect a spiritual creativity akin to the greatest of artists she contended that her desire for Nathaniel's young body reflected an exalted morality When 10 years later she in her 60s he in his 30s he finally rejected her body she took it as a philosophical betrayal She rejected him her leading apostle and protege and began a bitter vendetta that lasted to the end of her life Rand's basic incomprehension of familial and sexual realities undermined all her life and works Her all-consuming rationalism rejected all relationships that werenot rationally chosen all love that was not earned by virtue all actions that were not motivated by self-interest and personal happiness This philosophy collapses instantly in the context of a family the personal fabric of every society and economy Families depend on the acceptance of unchosen commitments and relationships They depend on altruism: service unearned by proved virtue or assured reward to children and relations Although Rand's mother in Russia sold her last jewels to buy Ayn's tickets to America and Ayn's relations in Chicago agreed to accept her sight-unseen and supported her for a year after she arrived and even though O'Connor married her chiefly to give her citizenship as her visa ran out Rand persisted in her claim that she owed nothing to others When she grew rich and famous she virtually ignored her relatives and treated Frank with callous disregard The recognition that the altruism of her unchosen relatives and Frank had saved her would have created a "contradiction" between her life and her philosophy and such a contradiction she could not tolerate In her novels she simply avoids the problem by excluding families altogether Although she exalts sexual pleasure to a virtually religious pinnacle in her philosophy her heroes nad heroines are all childless: copulating abstractions that give birth to rationalizations rather than two tits through all the early horror and chaos of the Bolshevik Revolution the brutal expropriation of her fa ther and other shopkeepers the murder and dismemberment of the Russian royalty and their children Then through a series of dramatic events stirringly told by Branden Rand finally made her way to the United States which had served for her as a promised land ever since her first encounter with the movies of Cewcil De Mille After several months with relatives in Chicago she traveled to Hollywood where through an amazing series of coincidences she was adopted as a protege by De Mille himself But after a few years as a screenwriter she found herself struggling through the Great Depression in an intellectual environment in which the Soviet charnel house she had managed to escape was widely seen as the last great hope for humanity She resolved to tell the world what she knew of the reality behind thq fatuous dream The result was a series of prophetic novels manifestos and the creation of her own philosophy Objectivism Any Rand's greatness stems from the fact that unlike the scores of other intellectual refugees from the East and defectors from communism from George Orwell to Arthur Koestler she understood from the beginning that the source of the evil was the ideology of socialism itself Unlike other critics of the morality of socialism moreover she never imagined for a moment that the system could work She believed that socialism was evil and that the very essence of its evil was the suppression of the individual heroism and creativity that is indispensable to all human progress Unlike other defenders of capitalism she did not indulge the claims that it is somehow amoral and in a sense less idealistic than socialism She knew that capitalism could not prevail unless its superior morality as well as efficiency was recognized and acclaimed From the early struggles of this penniless immigrant with faltering English and hated views to the long trials of The Fountainhead rejected by 12 publishers released in niggling printings of a few thousand demolished by most critics and finally discovered by a tide of readers that continues in flood 30 years laters and on to the similar ordeal and triumph of Atlas Shrugged Rand's life story is one of the great sagas in the history of literature With the help of long quotes from Rand that at times give the book the feel of autobiography Branden triumphantly rises to the occasion of telling it Branden's work also dramatizes the flaws in Rand's philorphical 0114 (4 the -aceptury's i Buy 6 donuts and get 6 free! For a limited time only with coupon only at participating Donut Inns! George Gilder Her coffin bore a dollar sign six tall her first best seller celerated a rape her masterwork ars a dedication naming both her usband and a young lover 25 years er junior Entirely dominant in er own marriage and the creator some of literature's most forceful eroines she fervently upheld a ode of male supremacy and hero -orship a lifelong atheist and en--my of faith she expressed a persisent belief in a "benevolent niverse" Through a life fraught with conradictions she denied the logical possibility of contradiction and dismissed as morally depraved anyone who dared to persist in disagreement with her She was in some ways a monster as well as a prodigy Yet by relentlessly attacking the "unspeakable evil" and creative impotence of socialism at the time of its greatest ascendancy and by celebrating the moral and practical imperative of capitalism at its nadir la books that commanded the fealty of millions she was one of the great benefactors of the modern world Her masterpiece Atlas Shrugged stands as the most important novel of ideas since War and Peace Yet this implacably intellectual work was first roundly hated and condemned and then obdurately ignored by America's intelligentsia The book was saved for posterity by the word of mouth of masses of mostly non-intellectual readers who continue to buy her novels at the rate of some 300000 copies a year and read them over and over for inspiration and guidance Who was Ayn Rand? The answer emerges at last in a superb biography written with much of the sweep drama and narrative momentum of the great works of Ayn Rand herself and with the psychological insight and sensitivity that forever eluded her The author is Barbara Branden for 19 years Ayn Rand's closest friend Also the former wife of Nathaniel Branden Rand's lover and leading apostle she brings to the biography unique insights into the sexuality of this great writer Working with some 50 hours of biographical tapes she achieves a remarkable balance of intimacy and objectivity in telling the tempestuous story of a flawed but heroic woman who bore the moral defense of capitalism on her back like Atlas for nearly two decades and never shrugged Born in Petrograd in 1905 as Alice Rosenbaum daughter of La Jewish' pharmacist? Rand' Med ra US a er er ier od ol en ni' ra Pos mis wh agr SOff a "mu pot( of i eel( imp dir the one mo( ged nOV1 Yet wor con( nor( The by I of who the year for eme raph swe( men Rani choll that is Ayn form Ram she I insig grea W( biogr rema and pestu role defer like ar Bo Alice Jewh 1 OM Buy 6 Donuts Get 6 Free Donuts must be of equal value One coupon per customer May not be used with any other coupon or promotion Most Donut Inns Open 24 Hours DeflUT cUlon Marina Del Rey 4700 Admiralty Way On Boys Market) Hawthorne 11873 Hawthorne tin Boy's Market) Expires 7-31-86 la Inn Buy 6 Donuts Get 6 Free Donuts must be of equal value One coupon per customer May not be used with any other coupon or promotion Most Donut inns Open 24 Hours DONT cUlan Marina Del Rey 4700 Admiralty Way (in Boys Market) Hawthorne 11873 Hawthorne On Boys Market) Expires 7-25-8E I WIN Buy 6 Donuts Get 6 Free Donuts must be of equal value One coupon per customer May not be used with any other coupon or promotion Most Donut Inns Open 24 Hours Dalin cUlon Marina Del Rey 4700 Admiralty Way (In Boys Market) Hawthorne 11873 Hawthorne tin Boys Market) Expires 7-25-86 I -3 Thi Daily IrvotoP4ows-Pilot Fri July 1 8 1986 131.