100 Voices


Robert Campbell

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Robert,

No doubt McConnell did ask these, and other people, about Frank's drinking habits. (Incidentally, I don't think Anne Heller says Ilona Smithkin was a source. Burns implies she was.)

That their responses weren't published and the official story is still that the bottles were used for mixing paint suggests that Barbara got it basically correct.

According to Peikoff, the source was "a cleaning woman." Actually, Eloise was Rand's full-time cook and housekeeper of 17 years and appears to have been a fairly sophisticated person.

Peikoff said:

I believe, if you want some idea of objectivity in biography, the source of that was … story, so far as I can pin it down, was a cleaning woman who found empty liquor bottles in his studio after he died. He used those bottles to mix paints in.

However, Peikoff, according to Valliant, later said that Eloise was upset, feeling that she had been misquoted. Valliant said Eloise was "hopping mad." How does he know this?

I'll mention that Valliant implied that 100 Voices was going to support PARC. I haven't finished reading it, but I don't get that impression thus far.

-Neil Parille

Keep it up Neil aka Javert: the fate of the world may just ride on these important issues.

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My guess is that many orthodox O'ists don't care all that much about Frank per se. What troubles them is that Frank was married to the perfect (i.e., most rational) woman, and logic tells us, in a Spock-like manner, that the spouse of the world's most rational woman should be deliriously happy. He should have no need and therefore no desire to "escape" via excessive drinking.

Ghs

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[....]
Umm, he was certainly not an alcoholic—uh, I gather that that’s a charge that’s been raised against him. I saw that man regularly day and night. In my entire life, I saw him have too much to drink once. And the manifestation of it was that he overtipped the waiter, which Ayn Rand asked him in some length why he did… I defy an alcoholic to survive 20 minutes in her apartment!

I believe, if you want some idea of objectivity in biography, the source of that was … story, so far as I can pin it down, was a cleaning woman who found empty liquor bottles in his studio after he died. He used those bottles to mix paints in.

Eloise Huggins (the "cleaning woman") and Don Venture were Barbara Branden's sources on this issue.

Ilona Royce Smithkin was added as a source by Anne Heller.

Was it too much to expect Scott McConnell to ask each of these individuals about Frank's drinking—and to publish their answers?

Barbara Branden said not a boo in Passion about bottles found in Frank's studio after his death. She said that the housekeeper took out "rows" of bottles each week. The post-mortem-find story was first told in Peikoff's Q & A at the Ford Hall Forum in 1987. Nathaniel Branden, in both versions of his memoir, says that Frank's studio "was discovered to be filled with empty liquor bottles" after his death. (A poor housekeeper, Eloise would have been, if that had been true.) In Judgment Day Nathaniel quotes Elayne as the source of this information, but in MYWAR the purported quote from Elayne no longer includes that statement. According to both versions of NB's memoir, AR was said by Elayne to have been the source of the idea that the bottles were used to mix paints. See pg. 373 JD, 330 MYWAR. I don't trust NB's quoting Elayne as a source on that. Where did Elayne get the information, as she was no longer associated with AR by the time of Frank's death?

Don Ventura was Barbara's source (her only cited source) -- not named in Passion -- for Frank's supposedly heading straight for a bar in the Murray Hill area and drinking on afternoons and evenings when NB and AR were sharing the bedroom in 1955. Barbara never named Ventura as her source on that story, or even said that her source was a sculptor, until after PARC was published. The McConnell interview with Ventura was conducted February 9, 1999, more than 6 years before PARC was published.

Here's the passage in which Barbara refers to the witness she later identified as Ventura:

pp. 272-73

Frank was always vague about what he did when Ayn and Nathaniel were together. "I went for a walk," he would say. Or, "I saw a movie." Or, "I dropped into the bar at the Mayfair Hotel for an hour or two; I know some of the men who go there, and we talked." It was not until years later that the truth about how Frank spent that afternoon and evening each week was revealed. He did go fo a walk--just as far as the bar he frequented. He did visit with some of the men at the bar: they were his drinking partners. Frank had always enjoyed a drink or two in the evening--his powerful martinis were guaranteed to elicit gasps at the first sip by an unsuspecting guest--but now his drinking began to be a way of life, an escape from an intolerable reality.

A friend of Frank's [Ventura]--now a recovered alcoholic--who sometimes joined him for the drink or two which became three and four and five and more, was convinced that Frank was an alcoholic. None of the friends Frank shared with Ayn were aware, during these years, that he drank to excess. But much later, his drinking was to become a painful and explosive source of friction between Ayn and Frank.

The 100 Voices interview begins thus:

Scott McConnell: How did you meet Frank O'Connor?

Don Ventura: I met him around 1962 [my emphasis], when we studied at the Art Student's League together. Our friendship grew from us both being artists. I was a sculptor and Frank was a painter.

On what basis would people expect McConnell to have had a clue that Ventura was Barbara's supposed source for Frank's 1955 supposed drinking habits?

--

Re Ilona Royce Smithkin, Neil notes in a post following Robert's that Burns was the one who cited Smithkin, not Heller. However, Burns doesn't cite Smithkin as a source specifically on Frank's drinking but instead on his problem with his hands.

[Note the placement of the footnote referencing Smithkin.]

pg. 222, text:

In 1966 [Frank was elected] vice president of the [Art Students] League. This vote of confidence came just as Frank's artistic career was cut short by the decline of his body. Stricken by a neurological disorder, by the end of 1967 his hands shook so badly he could paint no more. 22 Once playful and witty, Frank now became sharp and snappish. He withdrew to the sanctuary of his studio, where he drank his days away.

pg. 332, note 22:

Don Ventura, Oral History, ARP; Ilona Royce Smithkin, Oral History, ARP. Anne Heller suggests that Frank may have suffered from Dupuytren's syndrome, which is often linked to alcohol abuse. Anne C. Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 357.

The interviews do clear up where Burns got the information about Frank's hands shaking, although Burns apparently thinks this would have been due to Dupuytren's, which isn't a neurological disorder. On the Doubleday site, Heller said that the Blumenthals recalled Frank's operation as having been for Dupuytren's. So it looks like he had two problems with his hands.

Ellen

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Ellen,

If McConnell didn't ask Ventura about Frank's drinking, he most certainly asked Eloise. What did she say?

Since Ventura is alive and well, McConnell could have called Ventura up on the phone for clarification post-PARC. I imainge that he asked everyone who know Frank socially about his drinking habits.

Whether Frank drank to excess before the 60s is up in the air as far as I'm concerned given that DV didn't meet Frank until '62. That being said, given that AH and JB both follow the lines of BB's book on this, there is good reason to suspect that Frank did drink to excess going back to the 50s. I suspect there are additional sources.

-Neil Parille

Edited by Neil Parille
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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm rather new to studying this very old conflict, but I thought that one area of contention was whether or not Barbara Branden ever met with Ayn Rand at her apartment circa 1981. About a year or two ago, I remember hearing or reading an interview that I thought was done by Valliant which seemed to deny that Barbara met with Ayn Rand again. In 100 Voices, Cynthia Peikoff confirmed that Rand met with Barbara. I also remember reading something by Peter Schwartz that seemed to imply that Barbara meeting Rand again was untrue or unsubstantiated.

Partial reposting from MSK:

Posted 19 August 2006 - 09:10 PM

Robert,

Here is the full paragraph on "arbitrary" from the review by Peter Schwartz of The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden, which was an Untitled Letter included as a separate insert in The Intellectual Activist of August 20, 1986:

Schwartz said:

It is only in this context that the question can be raised of whether to believe any of the concrete factual allegations Mrs. Branden makes about Ayn Rand's behavior. When the truth of such allegations rests entirely upon the testimony of the author (and of unnamed “friends” she regularly cites), one must ask why she is to be believed when she has thoroughly destroyed her claim to credibility. It is very easy to accuse the dead of almost anything. I could readily assert that Ayn Rand met with me at dawn on the first Thursday of every month to join me in secret prayer at a Buddhist temple—and who could disprove it if I maintained that no one else knew about it? Epistemologically, conclusions reached by a categorically non-objective method have the status of the arbitrary. They are not true and not false, but are, rather, entirely outside the cognitive realm—because they are not genuine attempts at cognition. Admirers of Ayn Rand need not—and should not—feel compelled to try to rebut each and every concrete charge made by Barbara Branden (and others who are sure to follow). Let the authors of any such charges first establish their credentials as honest, objective reporters intent on presenting the truth, not on trying to salvage their own sadly wasted lives.

Does anyone have this original statement by Schwartz? Would they be willing to fax me a copy?

- Randall

Edited by Randall
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Posted 19 August 2006 - 09:10 PM

Robert,

Here is the full paragraph on "arbitrary" from the review by Peter Schwartz of The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden, which was an Untitled Letter included as a separate insert in The Intellectual Activist of August 20, 1986:

Schwartz said:

It is only in this context that the question can be raised of whether to believe any of the concrete factual allegations Mrs. Branden makes about Ayn Rand's behavior. When the truth of such allegations rests entirely upon the testimony of the author (and of unnamed “friends” she regularly cites), one must ask why she is to be believed when she has thoroughly destroyed her claim to credibility. It is very easy to accuse the dead of almost anything. I could readily assert that Ayn Rand met with me at dawn on the first Thursday of every month to join me in secret prayer at a Buddhist temple—and who could disprove it if I maintained that no one else knew about it? Epistemologically, conclusions reached by a categorically non-objective method have the status of the arbitrary. They are not true and not false, but are, rather, entirely outside the cognitive realm—because they are not genuine attempts at cognition. Admirers of Ayn Rand need not—and should not—feel compelled to try to rebut each and every concrete charge made by Barbara Branden (and others who are sure to follow). Let the authors of any such charges first establish their credentials as honest, objective reporters intent on presenting the truth, not on trying to salvage their own sadly wasted lives.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

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I was able to find the complete statement by Peter Schwartz and I consider this part very interesting:

"Ultimately, what real difference is there if any of the factual allegations made by Barbara Branden—or anyone else of her ilk—happen to have actually taken place? Ayn Rand’s glorious achievement is her philosophy and her literature. They stand as her testaments, as the only testaments her life requires. If Miss Rand were alive today, she would certainly not deign to reply to Mrs. Branden’s attacks. She would simply point—as Howard Roark did in the Stoddard Temple trial—to the evidence of her work. Her books are what she should be judged by. Read them—or reread them—and then decide for yourself whether or not a philosophy that holds reason as an absolute and that views man as a heroic being is worth living by."
- Peter Schwartz, TIA (August 20, 1986)
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I was able to find the complete statement by Peter Schwartz and I consider this part very interesting:

"Ultimately, what real difference is there if any of the factual allegations made by Barbara Branden—or anyone else of her ilk—happen to have actually taken place? Ayn Rand’s glorious achievement is her philosophy and her literature. They stand as her testaments, as the only testaments her life requires. If Miss Rand were alive today, she would certainly not deign to reply to Mrs. Branden’s attacks. She would simply point—as Howard Roark did in the Stoddard Temple trial—to the evidence of her work. Her books are what she should be judged by. Read them—or reread them—and then decide for yourself whether or not a philosophy that holds reason as an absolute and that views man as a heroic being is worth living by."
- Peter Schwartz, TIA (August 20, 1986)

I have that "review," but not in front of me. As I recall, somewhere in the same article, Schwartz refers to the Brandens as "lice." The sort of malevolent hatred shown in that epithet is representative of the intellectual quality of most of Schwartz's writing.

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Reviews of 100 Voices have begun to appear on amazon.com.

With the exception of a fairly short one by Neil, they are all unreservedly adulatory.

Harry Binswanger even contributed a review.

If one did not already have a variety of reasons to suspect selective editing in 100 Voices, this kind of praise from ARIans would suffice to make it a plausible hypothesis.

Robert Campbell

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Two footnotes.

Both are to Allan Gotthelf's interview, on the same page (p. 336).

First, about John Herman Randall, Jr.:

149 John Herman Randall, Jr.., is a well-known historian of philosophy and author of Aristotle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), which Ayn Rand reviewed positively in The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963.

Second, about Brand Blanshard:

150 The distinguished Idealist philosopher, whose book Reason and Analysis (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1962) was reviewed in The Objectvist Newsletter, February 1963.

Anyone want to guess who reviewed Reason and Analysis?

Robert Campbell

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There is an interview (p. 132) with a Prof. Ake Sandler who taught political science at Los Angles State College and met Rand in the early 1950s.

Q. Did any of your students carry on her ideas?

A. Yes. I know one who wrote books and I think was very much influenced by her

.

There is no footnote explaining who this student was. I'm wondering if it was Nathaniel Branden.

-Neil Parille

Edited by Neil Parille
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Two footnotes.

Both are to Allan Gotthelf's interview, on the same page (p. 336).

First, about John Herman Randall, Jr.:

149 John Herman Randall, Jr.., is a well-known historian of philosophy and author of Aristotle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), which Ayn Rand reviewed positively in The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963.

Second, about Brand Blanshard:

150 The distinguished Idealist philosopher, whose book Reason and Analysis (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1962) was reviewed in The Objectvist Newsletter, February 1963.

Anyone want to guess who reviewed Reason and Analysis?

Robert Campbell

Robert, this stuff is just bush league and the hilarious thing is that ARI could've left it all behind if Peikoff hadn't decided to be mulish about Harriman's book. They could have righted their ship, but now it is taking on serious water.

Jim

P.S. I'm guessing Nathaniel Branden reviewed Reason and Analysis...

Edited by James Heaps-Nelson
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Neil,

Jennifer Burns is not entirely clear, but she used the Ake Sandler interview in the Ayn Rand Papers as a source, she says that his students started to visit Ayn Rand at her home in Chatsworth, and Nathan Blumenthal makes his appearance at just that point in her book (pp. 135-136).

Robert Campbell

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I'm guessing Nathaniel Branden reviewed Reason and Analysis...

Jim,

He sure did.

I remembered that Nathaniel Branden had written that review.

But, even if I hadn't, the evasive footnote 150 would have reminded me.

Robert Campbell

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I'm guessing Nathaniel Branden reviewed Reason and Analysis...

Jim,

He sure did.

I remembered that Nathaniel Branden had written that review.

But, even if I hadn't, the evasive footnote 150 would have reminded me.

Robert Campbell

Of course ARI does what Ayn Rand did not by refusing to give authorship credit to Nathaniel Branden. They can't even adopt Rand's standards when it come to pre-1968 Objectivist writings...

Jim

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I looked at the interview of Ruth Beebe Hill (who knew Rand and continued to rent her California ranch until 1971). In Heller's book there is reference to Hill reporting (among other things) that: (1) Rand saw a UFO; (2) Rand left the ranch house quite dirty; and (3) Rand's friendship ended with Hill because Hill demanded to listen to a sample of Branden's tapes before being an NBI rep. These items are not mentioned in 100 Voices (I assume that, at the least, she was questioned about the last time she met Rand).

So while the book is valuable, it should be used with caution.

-Neil Parille

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I looked at the interview of Ruth Beebe Hill (who knew Rand and continued to rent her California ranch until 1971). In Heller's book there is reference to Hill reporting (among other things) that: (1) Rand saw a UFO; (2) Rand left the ranch house quite dirty; and (3) Rand's friendship ended with Hill because Hill demanded to listen to a sample of Branden's tapes before being an NBI rep. These items are not mentioned in 100 Voices (I assume that, at the least, she was questioned about the last time she met Rand).

So while the book is valuable, it should be used with caution.

-Neil Parille

LOL Neil, I haven't always agreed with what you've had to say or with your emphasis, but I've learned a lot by reading your posts.

Jim

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Here's another example of partisanship in the McConnell book.

McConnell interviews John Ridpath, who certainly deserves inclusion in a book of this type.

But Ridpath is also a fierce zealot. Lindsay Perigo surely wishes he had written one of the concluding comments:

those who seek to diminish her, to characterize her negatively are—to paraphrase Nietzsche's condemnation of Christianity—a rebellion of everything that crawls on the ground, against that which has height. (p. 360).

Ridpath describes Rand's funeral and burial, both of which he attended.

The funeral:

At the last moment, I was asked to join the security detail at the entranceway to identify people we didn't want present, so they could be turned away. No such people turned up. (p. 360)

No mention of who "such people" were. Or of who did the asking.

The burial:

Kipling's poem If was read, and then the coffin and its yellow blanket of flowers was slowly lowered. (p. 360)

Another strategic employment of the passive voice.

It enables the reading to be mentioned, without naming the reader.

Ridpath may have adopted these turns of phrase himself. But if that was the case, McConnell should have helped the reader out with a couple of footnotes.

Robert Campbell

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Robert,

Although I don't know that the editing done by McConnell was on the Mayhew level, until we hear the originals I think we have to reserve judgment.

Based on, say, the Fitts review of PARC, I think things are moving backwards.

-Neil Parille

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The reason Miss Rand thought the terrifically juicy Raquel Welch might fit the role of Dagny Taggart was for the same sort of reason she thought the awkwardly stiff Gary Cooper fit the role of Howard Roark, or that long, didactic courtroom speeches make for good screenwriting:

She had no real aesthetic sensibility for film or plays -- two genres that demand lots of dramatic compression in their construction -- and she hadn't a clue when it came to casting.

Her admirers sometimes forget that she was a novelist, first and foremost.

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I believe, if you want some idea of objectivity in biography, the source of that was … story, so far as I can pin it down, was a cleaning woman who found empty liquor bottles in his studio after he died. He used those bottles to mix paints in.

I get the impression from this statement that the cleaning woman found quite a few liquor bottles in Frank's studio -- else why would a rumor about his drinking have begun at all? Mixing paints or not mixing paints (and I don't believe Peikoff's story for a second), why would there have been so many liquor bottles to begin with?

How much paint could he have been mixing?

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Welcome to OL Mr. Economides:

Shall we beware of Greeks bearing posts?

Where do you hale from?

Are you a student or economic slave for the state?

Adam

Edited by Selene
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Excellent review by Gordon Burkowski on Amazon --

http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A295QNQI7NGWO3/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp

Money quotes:

If you're looking for 100 voices in greater harmony than this, you'd best purchase a recording by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

there is testimony from lots of people on the periphery, and you hear about people at the centre of the action: but you don't see that visual centre in the words of the people who were there.

You see, McConnell is not the only person who has talked to many of these interviewees: a number of them also spoke to Anne Heller. And sometimes we know their opinions of Rand from sources not connected to this book. So we can do comparisons, and the results are most enlightening

In short, the issue is not: Did the 100 Voices say the things in this book? I'm sure they did. The real question, in the light of comparison with Heller and other sources, is: What else did they say?

To be blunt, McConnell's editing cannot be trusted. I suspect that reader response to this book may parallel the reactions to James Valliant's attack piece on the Brandens, which is now out of print: initial wild enthusiasm followed eventually by deep and irreversible buyer remorse.

-Neil Parille

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I believe, if you want some idea of objectivity in biography, the source of that was … story, so far as I can pin it down, was a cleaning woman who found empty liquor bottles in his studio after he died. He used those bottles to mix paints in.

I get the impression from this statement that the cleaning woman found quite a few liquor bottles in Frank's studio -- else why would a rumor about his drinking have begun at all? Mixing paints or not mixing paints (and I don't believe Peikoff's story for a second), why would there have been so many liquor bottles to begin with?

How much paint could he have been mixing?

These would have been found years after Frank stopped painting due to health reasons, although of course the bottles could have been years old.

-Neil Parille

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Thank you so much Neil:

Yes, superior review review by Gordon Burkowski on Amazon.

I am reading the Heller book now, having read the Burns book. What constantly surprises me about how the Objectivist Orthodox folks have been consciously unobjective in their revisionist history of Ayn. I am sadly amused by the intellectual prostitutional gymnastics that have to be performed by Peikoff and his minions. To diminish Ayn's greatness by engaging in the totalitarian behavior a la the soviet communists in suppressing facts, internal purity trials and the creation of unpersons is despicable.

A perfect example, is the "affair." I have a very good friend who has a thirty (30) year marriage which has included a lover within the relationship. The devotion of the two married people is just about perfect. Furthermore, one of the persons has a lover who lives with them. All of them are friends and the house functions perfectly. There are no children which I believe is part of what allows the total relationship to work so well.

Why this cannot be accepted by the Keepers of the Flickering Flame is frankly beyond me. The truth will win out. The damage will continue.

Adam

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