Category: Politics, Religion & Money

When Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics a couple of months ago, I said it’s time to leave Milton Friedman behind. Now somebody at Newsweek is wondering the same thing I am about Ayn Rand. Can her ideas survive the economic crisis?

Ayn Rand, full of her fetishes and obsessions, sure wrote some strained and stilted dialogue in her screenplay for The Fountainhead, which was expertly directed and photographed, yet is anything but a typical 40’s Hollywood movie.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/DEC/Fountainhead2.flv 480 360]

Here is an excerpt from the novel, taken from the scene where Dominque follows Howard to his room:

He asked: “What do you want?”
She answered: “You know what I want,” her voice heavy and flat.
“Yes, but I want to hear you say it. All of it.”
“If you wish.” Her voice had the sound of efficiency, obeying an order with metallic precision. “I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin, your mouth, your hands. I want you — like this — not hysterical with desire — but coldly and consciously — without dignity and without regrets — I want you — I have no self-respect to bargain with me and divide me — I want you — I want you like an animal, or a cat on a fence, or a whore.”

Hey, that’s quite an offer. The free market at work! Ayn Rand wrote a couple of great trashy novels, with literary and political pretensions. College boys ate it up, and somehow her aspirations were legitimized beyond Hollywood. I say embrace Rand as the romance novelist she was, who obsessively painted portraits of her idealized leading man, and stop giving credit for her work being anything more than that.

Ayn Rand was a romance novelist. L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer. They each decided that they had profound things to say, and Rand came up with a pseudo-philosophy she called Objectivism, while Hubbard dubbed his pop psychology Dianetics. But in my opinion they both wrote nothing but fiction for their entire careers. (Hubbard’s novella “Fear” is excellent and memorable.)

As a young adult I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I considered both books to be ripping good yarns, and I enjoyed them a lot, but I can’t say they had a lasting influence on me. I thought Rand’s ideas and ideals were interesting, but extreme and extremely silly. It’s obvious that her views were based on her having been a creature of her place and time. Rand was from Russia, born before the 1917 revolution. Objectivism is simply the opposite of Collectivism. Anti-Communism. I was amazed when I later realized how wide an influence she had. Even Alan Greenspan is, or was, a devotee.

Whenever somebody adheres closely to somebody else’s singular vision of the world, and how they wish it to be, and they’re so strong in their insistence that they’re onto some big truth, all I can think of is how wanting and uncertain they must have been when they latched onto it.

What confounds me the most about the followers of Ayn Rand is that she dished out her views in the form of two romance novels, complete with seduction fantasies and torrid love scenes. A woman desiring one man! Not just any man, but her ideal man! Yet she gives herself to another, who professes his undying love while knowing he isn’t worthy of her. Two people who understand one another instantly and completely! Destined to be together! Yet denying their destiny until they have earned the right to be joined, and then they attack each other like animals in heat. Why isn’t this aspect of Rand’s writing given more attention? It’s all great stuff, but it’s schoolgirl stuff. I suppose there’s some humor in that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Dean Kamen come closest to matching Ayn Rand’s standard of ability, drive, and independence. Nerds all.

Before continuing, go back to this item and watch the clip from the movie adaptation of The Fountainhead. OK, done? Now read this passage from the book, depicting the first scene in the video.

She saw his mouth and the silent contempt in the shape of his mouth; the planes of his gaunt, hollow cheeks; the cold, pure brilliance of the eyes that had no trace of pity. She knew it was the most beautiful face she would ever see, because it was the abstraction of strength made visible. She felt a convulsion of anger, of protest, of resistance — and of pleasure.

He stood looking up at her; it was not a glance, but an act of ownership. She thought she must let her face give him the answer he deserved. But she was looking, instead, at the stone dusty on his burned arms, the wet shirt clinging to his ribs. The lines of his long legs. She was thinking of those statues of men she had always sought; she was wondering what he would look like naked.

See what I mean? The whole book is like this. More from Ayn Rand coming up.