AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE

Fountainhead. Atlas Shrugged. We the Living. Anthem… Time was when rattling off Ayn Rand’s works was passe. Everyone (who was any kind of ‘intellectual’) knew about all of them, had read some of them. Today one needs to spell out: Ayn who? The Stiglitzes and Friedmans stride the stage now… and yet The New York Times reports a spurt in the sale of Atlas Shrugged bringing the novel up to #33 among amazon.com’s top-selling books in January 2009 (a steep fall from the second-to-the-Bible status in the 1991 Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club survey). And, horrors, this renewed popularity is linked with the subprime-mortgage-related meltdown. Whether this indicates Rand’s continued relevance today or mere grasping of the straw by a drowning economy would be worth examining. For as Rand commented against the acclaim in 1934 for her Night of January 16^th:“they fail to note its theme”, this sudden rise in popularity would make her turn in her grave!

For non-Randians, this needs some clarification. Atlas Shrugged is a story of industrial and other leaders ‘withdrawing their minds’ from being exploited by a ‘socialist’ government. Atlas shrugs and watches as the world rolls off his shoulders… no where near the institutionalized greed that led Lehman Brothers and a host of others (along with the multi-billion dollars bailout) down the drain.

The theme of, the book, in Rand’s own words, is "the role of man's mind in existence," referring to it as a mystery novel, "not about the murder of man’s body, but about the murder – and rebirth – of man’s spirit." It advocates the core of her philosophy of Objectivism with its many facets, like individualism, reason, the market economy and the helplessness of governments. Atlas Shrugged began with negative reviews (Gore Vidal is said to have described its philosophy as "nearly perfect in its immorality.") but achieved popularity in later years. One critic had also written that those who appreciate Rand’s work are far outweighed by those who range “from hysterically hostile to merely uncomprehending." It appears that the ‘uncomprehending’ have risen again.

But it is the relevance of Randian thought that is beyond-the-obvious (and, ‘uncomprehending’) that has led to the present publication. Interestingly, two biographies of Rand have been released within a short time of each other: the book under review here by Anne C. Heller and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, By Jennifer Burns (Oxford University Press 2009), bringing out the stark fact that Randian thought is and will be relevant many years to come. Heller has brilliantly managed to include the controversies, the anguish of the young writer-thinker, the growth through the Russian revolution, the wide-eyed travel across the Atlantic, the quest for recognition in the United States – not to forget the complex ideology about individualism/capitalism/democracy. There are summaries of Rand’s various works also in easy reading style in the 567 pages of text, followed by 109 pages of ‘Notes’, 12 pages of Bibliography, 25 pages of Index and 2 pages each of Acknowledgments, Abbreviation Key, and Permissions. With an account that flits between Rand’s formative years and the excitement of success up to the fateful 6^th of March, 1982, Heller shows what made Rand (warts and all) tick then, and why it continues to do so now.

While reviewing a biography, one tends to concentrate on the subject rather than on the author – and much more so when the subject is an intellectual colossus of a different time, different world. And when there is not much more that can be revealed about her. The wonder of the book is the consolidation of Rand’s thinking and her tumultuous life (born at the time of the Bloody Revolution of 1905, dislocated during the Bolshevik revolution, working her way through the labyrinths of Hollywood and her brush with Cecil B. DeMille and her subsequent success, criticism against her that ranged from intellectual plagiarism to irrational reaction to the mildest criticism) all in a single volume without making it sound like one of the Hundred Great Lives.

Heller says it all when she says: At heart [Rand] was a 19^th-century novelist illuminating 20^th-century social conflicts.  Her novels and the best of her essays are well worth reading now, when issues of wealth and poverty, state power and autonomy, and security and freedom still disturb us; and when she concludes her introductory chapter with: Gallant, driven, brilliant, brash, cruel, as accomplished as her heroes, and ultimately self-destructive, she has to be understood to be believed.