Little Known Interview with Nathaniel Branden about Judgment Day


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Little Known Interview with Nathaniel Branden about Judgment Day

I came across this on YouTube and couldn't believe it.

This is a book tour interview with NB in 1989 when he came out with Judgment Day, way before he revised it to become My Years With Ayn Rand. He was still married to Devers at the time.

Very interesting interview. Rather than comment, I'll let you enjoy a Nathaniel still in his 50's in his own words.

Just one thing. I wish I had seen this before all those long forum wars over the Valliant book.

Michael

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Thanks for that find Michael. I have never seen that before.

I have a question you might know the answer to. Why was Nathan's book revised? I've read only the first edition.

-Joe

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He said that? He wasn't. Maybe in his head only. Barbara did her research in the early 1980s and likely was done with it by mid-1984 (if she then took 18(?) months for the writing and the publisher another 6). I think Nathaniel went to his files in early 1986 and that was mostly his research for a memoir basically not needing to call up a bunch of disparate people.

--Brant

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Barbara took four years to do the actual writing of The Passion of Ayn Rand. I even read somewhere (probably in Passion itself) she said these were the happiest four years of her life.

She told me she did not have much contact with Nathaniel to do her book, that he wanted to reserve some things for his own. Nathaniel is right about that.

Also, this was one of their bad phases. In the video, Lamb asked NB when the last time he had spoken to Barbara was and he said about a year ago. So they were still on the outs.

I told Barbara that one of the reasons I pursued her and not NB to get next to in O-Land was that I thought she was a better writer. That's true, but I was going on gut feelings. Now that I am studying fiction writing for real, I clearly see that she was.

Just look at the difference in the character arcs in The Passion of Ayn Rand and Judgment Day (or the later version). Barbara's handling of character arc is masterful whereas NB's is not very exciting. Barbara has a greater sense of throughline over the long haul than NB does. Suspense. Surprise. The cliffhangers. Reversals and reveals. Just sheer storytelling values.

On a good note, NB said in the video that resilience versus rigidity was a theme that ran through JD. I like that. I really like it, too.

But I kind of feel bad for him because he kept hammering how his writing in JD was his best and would have been recognized by Ayn, Barbara, etc., as such. He sounded too hungry. I know he must have been studying fiction writing on the side, too, because he referenced the hero's journey (in discussing therapy) and talked about it in the same terms they do in fiction writing instruction material.

(With a quibble. He made it seem that the hero's journey has something to do with a heroic vision of life the way he and Rand meant it. That's just not accurate. The hero's journey is a universal event template in the minds of everyone like an archetype. At root, it means leaving the known, going into the unknown, dealing with new experiences and coming back richer for the effort.)

And all I can say is that his writing style was all right. Readable and fairly interesting. That was mostly due to the story, though. The story itself (both the story of him and Rand and the stories of him and his other women) was far more interesting than the writing, which I can call competent, but not special.

Michael

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Not disagreeing with you in the slightest about Barbara's outstanding writing ability, but a quibble about her taking four years to write PAR. That's only true if the research and writing were all mixed up together. I read or heard somewhere that there were two distinct phases of making PAR. She decided late in 1980 to do the bio. It had to be ready for the publisher not any more than five years later. No way she sat down in 1980 and started writing except perhaps for some preliminary notes and outlines. Sure she had a lot in her head to begin with. PAR is part memoir. JD is essentially all memoir. Barbara reveled in the natural plot structure that was Ayn Rand's life. When she really got going in the writing I cannot imagine her stopping and starting for another bunch of research, just tweaks. You want to be at that stage in your own mental world as much as you can. I wonder if it's something like childbirth.

Nathaniel was a strong narrative writer in JD.

--Brant

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Not disagreeing with you in the slightest about Barbara's outstanding writing ability, but a quibble about her taking four years to write PAR. That's only true if the research and writing were all mixed up together. I read or heard somewhere that there were two distinct phases of making PAR.

Brant,

I'm going from memory, but she said she followed Rand's advice to OUTLINE OUTLINE OUTLINE and this kept her stuck during the writing phase for the longest time. She enjoyed it and it felt like writing, but she wasn't actually writing. So one day she packed up her outlines and sat down and just wrote. Then she found her voice and from that point on it flowed.

I'm thinking about those four years. Now I'm divided. Since this is memory, I have to check my emails, Barbara's posts here on OL (and the other forums) and probably The Passion of Ayn Rand. That's too much work for the moment just to settle something like this.

But my antenna is primed so when I look over stuff (I'm doing a thing on Rand's fiction writing style, so I'm looking), I will be looking for this.

As to NB as a narrative writer in JD, like I said, he was all right. In my view, he was pulp fiction level. (I'm talking style.) At best, he was therapist case-story level.

In Hollywood screenwriting instruction material, they call his style "on the nose." This means he says what it is on the surface and nothing more. (This phrase is used mostly in reference to dialogue, but it serves here.) There are no subtexts, metaphors, nuanced pacing, alliterations and other poetic elements, etc. And like I said, no standard storytelling elements like reversals and reveals. No whetting of reader appetite. No lead-ups to great catharsis. Not that I remember. It's been about 10 years since I read JD.

Think about it. Wouldn't NB's story about him and Rand make a better movie than Barbara's? He goes through an awkward coming of age, succumbs to great temptation, surfs on top of the world and falls into tragedy and humiliation, then comes through it all in a redemption story at the end. And fucks a lot of chicks along the way. :smile:

This would be a wonderful movie, a tearjerker in several places, and I bet it would be successful.

But you won't get it from his book. The agony and ecstasy are just not there. He says it, but not in a form you can feel.

As a storyteller, he was certainly no Barbara Branden.

:smile:

Nor Ayn Rand.

For me, in terms of his talents, it's enough for him to be what he was--Rand's chief philosophy promoter during the NBI phase and a cutting-edge innovator in psychotherapy and self-esteem. The best, in fact.

Michael

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Remember that L.A. Times obit photo of Branden? Watch this interview closely. After the first 10 to 15 minutes, Branden apparently realizes that the interviewer, Brian Lamb, is not hostile and is not shooting loaded-questions at him. He becomes more animated and loquacious. From about 22 minutes in, to around 32 minutes (If I have the times right), he is breaking into smiles after practically every answer that he gives. NONE look even remotely like the rather bizarre photo of him used in his obituary by the L.A. Times, and reprinted worldwide in other media. So is the L.A. Times photo real, or has it been altered, "Photoshopped."?

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Whatever that photo it was completely atypical of Nathaniel Branden and gross misuse of editorial power for an obituary. So too was the over-emphasis on Ayn Rand, as if there wouldn't have even been an obit except for his association with her. That I've never even held an issue of the "LA Times" in my hands much less read it doesn't mean I haven't known for decades it was/is a left-wing liberal swill machine outhouse delivering crap everyday to people who actually pay for it.

--Brant

it's a wonder

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