Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (52 page)

65
. Elsie Robinson, “Listen World: So This Is Communism!,”
Philadelphia News
, July 8, 1936.

66
. M. Geraldine Ootts to AR, April 5, 1937, ARP 073–06X.

67
. O. O. McIntyre, “New York Day by Day,” syndicated column, June 9, 1936.
We the Living
did better overseas and in 1942 was even pirated by an Italian filmmaker, who made it into a two-part movie,
Noi Vivi
and
Addio Kira
. Rand was originally outraged by the theft but then pleased to learn the film had been banned by Italian authorities as antifascist. R. W. Bradford has cast doubt on this claim, suggesting Rand embellished the story for dramatic effect or misunderstood the film’s history. After suing for lost royalties she eventually recovered a print of the film, which she partially edited and rewrote. In 1988 a posthumous “author’s version” with English subtitles was released as
We the Living
.

68
. Roosevelt quoted in Alan Brinkley,
The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War
(New York: Knopf, 1995), 10, and David Kennedy,
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 104.

69
. AR to Ruth Morris, July 2, 1936, ARP 98–3C.

70
. Rand’s letter is quoted in John Temple Graves, “This Morning,”
Citizen
(Asheville, N.C.), August 26, 1936.

71
. Alan Brinkley,
Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression
(New York: Knopf, 1982).

Chapter 2

1
. Biographical Interview 11, February 15, 1961.

2
. Biographical Interview 11. Rand’s division of the world into two types of people closely followed the analysis of Ortega y Gasset in
Revolt of the Masses
, which Rand read during this time. Ortega y Gasset emphasized a distinction between mass-man, “who does not value himself . . . and says instead that he is ‘just like everybody else,’ “ and the select individual, “who demands more from himself than do others.”
Revolt of the Masses
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 7.

3
. Biographical Interview 10, January 26, 1961.

4
. See discussion in Walter Kaufmann,
Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), especially
chapter 3
. Nietzsche’s phrase is on 109. There is a long-running discussion among Rand scholars about the extent and meaning of her connection to Nietzsche. The evidence of his influence on her is incontrovertible, but many scholars focus on Rand’s explicit rejection of Nietzsche’s Dionysius and her dislike of
The Birth of Tragedy
, arguing that
she experienced only a brief “Nietzsche phase.” According to Leonard Peikoff, “By her early thirties, AR had thought herself out of every Nietzschian element.” Quoted in
Journals of Ayn Rand
, ed. David Harriman (New York: Penguin, 1997), ix. Similar arguments about Nietzsche’s transient influence are found in essays by Merrill, Mayhew, and Milgram in Robert J. Mayhew, ed.,
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
We the Living (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), and Chris Matthew Sciabarra,
Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 103. These scholars share Rand’s understanding of Nietzschean ethics as solely a call for the strong to dominate the weak. What is attributed to Nietzsche in this formulation may in fact stem from other writers Rand read during this time, including Ortega y Gasset, Oswald Spengler, Albert Jay Nock, and H. L. Mencken, Nietzsche’s first American interpreter and a particular Rand favorite. I agree that there are many differences between Rand and Nietzsche, most strikingly her absolutism as opposed to his antifoundationalism. Yet I approach the question of influence from a different angle, focusing primarily on Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values and his call for a new morality. From this perspective, though Rand’s reliance on Nietzsche lessened over time, her entire career might be considered a “Nietzsche phase.”

5
.
Journals
, 77, 84, 87. Rand identified the aphorism from
Beyond Good and Evil
she intended to use in her introduction to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the novel: “It is not the works, but the
belief
which is here decisive and determines the order of rank—to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning— it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.
The noble soul has reverence for itself
.” Quoted in Rand,
The Fountainhead
, 50th anniversary ed. (1943; New York: Penguin, 1993), x.

6
.
Journals
, 78.

7
.
Journals
, 79, 80.

8
.
Journals
, 78.

9
.
Journals
, 93, 187.

10
. Second-Hand Lives notebook, ARP 167. An edited and revised version of this quotation can be found in
Journals
, 80. It is notable that Rand spoke openly here about Christianity as an exemplar of the ideals she opposed, rather than altruism.

11
.
Journals
, 81; AR to Newman Flower, April 12, 1938, ARP 078–14X.

12
. Biographical Interview 11.

13
. Rand’s comments on Spengler have been excised from her published
Journals
but can be found in First Philosophical Journal, ARP 166–02X. Skepticism about democracy was common among intellectuals across the political spectrum. See Edward Purcell,
The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientifi c Naturalism and the Problem of Value
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973).

14
. This reference is deleted from page 81 of Rand’s published
Journals
but can be found in notebook “Second-Hand Lives,” December 4, 1935, 13, ARP 167–01B. Her reference to racial determinism was not unusual for her time and place, although it is sharply at odds with her later rejection of race as a collectivist concept.

15
.
Journals
, 84, 80.

16
.
Journals
, 74.

17
.
Journals
, 93. In her early notebooks characters are listed by names that Rand ultimately changed (e.g., Everett Monkton Flent became Ellsworth Monkton Toohey and Peter Wilson became Peter Keating). For clarity’s sake, I refer to all characters by their final, published names, just as I refer to “Second-Hand Lives” as
The Fountainhead
.

18
.
Journals
, 142. As her note suggests, Rand’s claim to have taken only general inspiration from Wright’s life is false, for many specific incidents from his career surface in
The Fountainhead
. Roark’s Stoddard Temple closely resembles Wright’s famous Unity Temple, conceived as “a temple to man.” As does Roark, Wright had a model for a sculpture pose on the construction site of Midway Gardens. Both incidents are described in Wright’s autobiography, which Rand read while researching her novel. Frank Lloyd Wright,
Autobiography of Frank Lloyd Wright
(New York: Longmans, Green, 1932), 154, 184.

19
. Laski notebook, ARP 086–20X. These politically incorrect musings about women are not included in the published versions of the notebook, found in
Journals
, 113–15; “Second-Hand Lives,” March 28, 1937, 85, ARP 167–01D. Rand’s use of the term “nance,” contemporary slang for a homosexual man, does not appear in the published version of these notes, found in
Journals
, 109. Merrill Schleier investigates Rand’s presentation of masculinity and gender in “Ayn Rand and King Vidor’s Film The Fountainhead: Architectural Modernism, the Gendered Body, and Political Ideology,”
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
61, no. 3 (2002): 310–31, and
Skyscraper Cinema: Architecture and Gender in American Film
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).

20
. Biographical Interview 11.

21
. Biographical Interview 11.

22
. Documents are in ARP 136–25b, also reprinted in Jeff Britting,
Ayn Rand
(New York: Overlook Press, 2004), 54.

23
. Rand’s last contact from her family came at the beginning of 1939, when they exchanged telegrams marking the New Year. Anna Borisnova to AR, January 3, 1939, postcard 475, Russian Family Correspondence, ARP.

24
. According to members of the O’Connor family, Rand had an abortion in the early 1930s, which they helped pay for. Rand never mentioned this incident, but it accords with her emphasis on career and her unequivocal support for abortion rights. Anne C. Heller,
Ayn Rand and the World She Made
(New York: Doubleday, 2009), 128.

25
. Biographical Interview 11.

26
. Ibid.

27
. See, for example, Garet Garrett and Bruce Ramsey,
Salvos against the New Deal
(Caldwell, ID: Caxton Press, 2002); George Wolfskill and John A. Hudson,
All but the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Critics
(London: Macmillan, 1969). Usually termed the “Old Right,” Roosevelt’s political opposition is described in Sheldon Richman, “New Deal Nemesis: The ‘Old Right’ Jeffersonians,”
Independent Review
1, no. 2 (1996): 201–48; Murray Rothbard,
The Betrayal of the American Right
(Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007); Leo Ribuffo,
The Old Christian Right
(Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1983); Justin Raimondo,
Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement
(Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008); John E. Moser,
Right Turn: John T. Flynn and the Transformation of American Liberalism
(New York: New York University Press, 2005); James T. Patterson,
Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in
Congress 1933–1939 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1969); Paula Baker, “Liberty against Power: Defending Classical Liberalism in the 1930s,” unpublished paper. Recently historians have begun to trace the connections between this Old Right and the postwar conservative movement. See Gregory L. Schneider,
The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution
(New York, Rowman and Littlefield, 2008); Donald Critchlow,
The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Kimberly Phillips-Fein,
Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Ronald Reagan
(New York: Norton, 2009); Joseph Lowndes,
From the New Deal to the New Right
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).

28
. Although it did not become widely used until the 1950s, “libertarian” was in circulation prior to the New Deal. It emerged after Roosevelt popularized a new understanding of “liberal,” the term formerly used by advocates of limited government. The first prominent figures to identify as libertarians were H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock. See H. L. Mencken,
Letters of H. L. Mencken
, ed. Guy Forgue (New York: Knopf, 1961), xiii, 189; Albert Jay Nock and Frank W. Garrison, eds.,
Letters from Albert Jay Nock, 1924–1945 to Edmund C. Evans, Mrs. Edmund C. Evans and Ellen Winsor
(Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1949), 40. The careers of both and their relation to conservatism are discussed in Patrick Allitt,
The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 141–52. Paterson’s views are covered in Steven Cox,
The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2004).

29
. Rand to the
New York Herald Tribune
, February 9, 1937, ARP 09905X.

30
. George Wolfskill,
Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League 1934–1940
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962),
chapter 4
.

31
. Ultimately produced on Broadway in 1940,
The Unconquered
was a resounding flop that closed after six performances. Britting,
Ayn Rand
, 56.

32
. The connection between
Anthem
and Stephen Vincent Benét’s “The Place of the Gods” is well established, but there is no documented link between Rand and Zamyatin. Still, the similarities between the two are striking. For the argument that Zamyatin influenced Rand, see Zina Gimpelevich, “ ‘We’ and ‘I’ in Zamyatin’s
We
and Ayn Rand’s
Anthem,” Germano-Slavica
10, no. 1 (1997): 13–23. A discussion of Rand’s relationship to Benét and a rebuttal of her connection to Zamyatin can be found in Shoshana Milgram, “
Anthem
in the Context of Related Literary Works,” in
Essays on Ayn Rand’s
Anthem, ed. Robert Mayhew (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 119–171.

33
. AR to Marjorie Williams, June 18, 1936,
Letters
, 33.

34
. Biographical Interview 11.

35
. Biographical Interview 13, February 26, 1961.

36
. See AR to Knopf, June 24, 1938, and Knopf to Ann Watkins, October, 25, 1940, 137–25F.

37
. Charles Peters,
Five Days in Philadelphia: The Amazing “We Want Willkie!” Convention of 1940 and How It Freed FDR to Save the Western World
(New York: Public Affairs, 2005).

38
. Details on Willkie’s early career are from Erwin C. Hargrove,
Prisoners of Myth: The Leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933–1990
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially 46–47, and Steve Neal,
Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984).