The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism

[Ellen Stuttle]

And speaking of Valliant's relying on Walker, and then not even getting Walker right (see Neil's comments on the break between Rand and the Holzers):

Valliant's source on the break with Kay Nolte Smith is Walker. Here is what Walker says on that:

[TARC, pg. 35] Kay Nolte Smith was excommunicated in the mid-1970s for making unauthorized changes to a few lines of dialogue for a public performance of Rand's play Penthouse Legend (Night of January 16th). Smith concedes she shouldn't have done so but insists it was not a big deal. For that one mistake she ws drummed out, 15 years of prior devoted association notwithstanding.

Here's the story as embroidered by Valliant:

[PARC, pp. 75-76] In the 1970s the Smiths produced an off-Broadway revival of Rand's play, Penthouse Legend. When the play had been originally produced under the title, [sic] The Night of January 16th, [sic] about forty years previously, Rand had waged a difficult battle to keep her dialogue intact. This history was well known to the Smiths.

Presumably, they also knew that Rand had convinced Jack Warner himself to order Gary Cooper to deliver each word of Rand's screenplay for The Fountainhead. Rand had even threatened to dissociate herself from the production if The Fountainhead was not shot exactly as written.

Such a famous reputation might be counted on to provide caution to those who would take liberties with this author's text. Not so with Kay Nolte Smith and her husband, who, in an act exhibiting unbelievably reckless judgment, changed the dialogue in their production of Penthouse Legend without authorization from Rand. (57) In such an instance of systematic and personal betrayal, a break was at least understandably in order, simply on the basis of their callous indifference to Rand's personal history, if not to her artistic integrity.

Footnote 57 reads:

[PARC, pg. 400] 57. T.A.R.C., pg. 35, [sic] Miss. [sic] Smith refused the author's request to be interviewed in 1983.

Re Kay Nolte Smith's refusal to be interviewed in 1983, he gives no indication what in particular he asked her to be interviewed about; nor does he state the circumstances of his asking for an interview. In 1983, according to Valliant's report of his own history of interest in Objectivism, he was at most 20 years old and was working for a campus newspaper:

[PARC, pg. 5] Nathaniel Branden was the first of Rand's former associates with whom I became personally acquainted. In 1982, the year of Rand's death, I was a teenager attending the University of California at San Diego. (8) Because of my interests, a campus newspaper sent me to Beverly Hills to interview Nathaniel Branden at his home. [The footnote explains that the name of the school was given incorrectly as "the University of San Diego" in NB's Introduction to MYWAR.]

Valliant provides no compelling reason why Kay Nolte Smith might have been interested in being interviewed at that time by a college youngster working for a campus newspaper. Nor can the date be a typo for 1993, unless he was asking Kay to be interviewed from beyond the grave (she died in '91 or '92, I forget which).

[EDIT: In post #29 below, Brant Gaede corrected my memory of when Kay died. It was in September 1993. This is also the month of death given by Jeff Riggenbach in his "Ayn Rand's Influence on American Fiction," JARS, Vol. 6, No. 1, Fall 2004. (JR writes: "[....] Venetian Song saw print a few months after its author's death at 61 in September 1993.") So possibly the date "1983" is a typo for "1993."]

He says nothing to indicate that he asked Phil Smith, who's still alive, for any details about the play. However, in the course of one of the threads on this website, Barbara sent an email to Phil asking what happened. (If anyone reading this remembers what thread Phil's reply is posted on, please point me there and I'll edit to provide a link. [EDIT: See MSK's post #30 below for a link to material on the Rand/Smiths break and other issues.])

According to Phil, what was changed was all of one line of dialogue which was dropped at the actor's request because it was getting an inappropriate laugh. Phil didn't specify what the line of dialogue was. My bet is that it was something the character Guts Regan says which included an expression the connotations of which have changed since the play was written -- something like "queer" or a similar word used in a context which conveyed implications, to a mid-70s audience, which Rand hadn't intended.

I see nothing indicating that Valliant was concerned to find out what the exact details were before drawing the conclusion that Kay (and Phil, although it was Kay who made the change) were engaging in "systematic and personal betrayal." How exaggerated a way of describing the incident.

Ellen

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Edited January 25, 2007 by Ellen Stuttle

[Neil Parille]

Ellen,

Here is Dr. George Reisman on apparently the same incident:

"Many years ago, there was a young actress to whom Ayn Rand gave the responsibility of directing a production of her play The Night of January 16th. Toward the close of the play's run, an actor prevailed upon this young woman to allow him to alter one of Ayn Rand's lines in one of the play's last performances. When Ayn Rand learned of this, she was furious and completely ended her relationship with this young woman, who had been in her inner circle for several years. Ayn Rand attached the highest value to her every word and would never agree to her words being altered by anyone, let alone made to represent the opposite of what she said. "

From his Amazon.com review of Mayhew's Ayn Rand Answers (and also on his blog, I think).

To the extent that Valliant has a point here (that Barbrara Branden should have mentioned this) I don't see how it helps his case that the Brandens' description of Rand's interaction with her "inner circle" is unfair.

[Rodney]

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but in a memoir, or a bio based on personal experience, there is no presumption that you are proving anything and need to "corroborate" every point and anecdote. A personal account by someone who has lived the events portrayed is a primary source. It is up to the reader to examine all the evidence to decide how reliable a primary source is.

The writer of a memoir is not saying "This is what happened, and I'll prove it." He or she is saying "This is what happened as I remember it."

It is up to the historian to judge the credibility--referring to all the evidence and drawing on his general knowledge of what is likely given what we know of human motivation and people's struggles and inevitable failures along the way.

Not to mention lapses in a recollection that one might be innocently inclined to trust a bit too much.

Edited January 24, 2007 by ashleyparkerangel

[Brant Gaede]

Kay Nolte Smith died of lung cancer in September 1993. I remember this because my Father died of lung cancer the previous month.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If anyone reading this remembers what thread Phil's reply is posted on, please point me there and I'll edit to provide a link.

Ellen,

I started a thread way back when called PARC Fallacies. I dealt with this issue in the post called Ayn Rand – Kay Nolte Smith break. You can find all the links there.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Brant,

Thanks for the correction re the date of Kay's death. JR says the same (September 1993) in his article "Ayn Rand's Influence on Popular Fiction," JARS, Vol. 6, No. 1, Fall 2004. I edited the post accordingly.

MSK,

Thanks for the links. There's lots of material in those earlier threads, but I tend to lose track of where they are. ;-)

Ellen

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[Mike Hardy]

OK, I've printed out the long initial post in this thread and will

read it.

I've read some parts of Valliant's book and not others. My

impression _so_far_ is that probably he successfully

convicts Nathaniel Branden of the things Branden already

confessed to in _Judgment_Day_, except that Valliant is

explicit about them. Branden stops somewhat (not much)

short of explicitness in saying that power lust was a big

part of his motive in his NBI carreer.

I was rather puzzled by Valliant citing what he says are

contradictions in Barbara Branden's book (I still have to

dig her book out of storage to check for myself). They're

just the sort of thing I'd have expected a dishonest biographer

NOT to do. Eventually it occurred to me: Valliant works every

day in a setting in which it makes sense to construe

contradictions in someone's story as evidence of dishonesty.

It must be habitual for him. But this is a quite different

setting.

Maybe this thread will incite me to have another go at getting

through Valliant's book. -- Mike Hardy

[Neil Parille]

Mike,

When the Brandens (allegedly) contradict themselves it's proof that they are lying; when their accounts are consistent, it's proof they are lying; when they only have their accounts as evidence for something, you need more proof; when other people corrobate their accounts, it's further proof that they are out to get Rand.

Welcome to life on planet Valliant.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mike,

I want to add a little comment. PARC is shot through and through with inaccuracies, outright lies, misleading omissions, absurd speculations that defy credibility, etc., and world-class sucking up to Rand, Peikoff, etc., that far exceeds admiration (all the while relying most heavily on the research of Jeff Walker of The Ayn Rand Cult fame). If a "conviction" has to be based on that, it says a lot about who is "convicting," both the so-called prosecutor and the so-called jury.

But hey. Don't let me influence you...

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; I thought the ARI folks thought The Ayn Rand Cult was an awful book. But Valliant uses TARC as one of important sources. Is this a case of using any weapon you can find?

[Neil Parille]

Chris,

I think it's worse than that.

For most incidents Valliant discusses he doesn't have any evidence that undercuts anything either of the Brandens say, so he just looks for something that he can cite that gives the impression that there is some other "version" out there. He did this with the Blumenthals and the Holzers using TARC, as I show. And look at many of his irrelevant footnotes, such a Schwartz's article on libertarianism or books/articles concerning constitutional intepretation in the Holzer case.

Edited January 27, 2007 by Neil Parille

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Chris,

Actually it is a case of laziness. The Walker book is very well researched, one of the best out there. (That still does not excuse the gross errors and malice by Walker.)

Also, Valliant did not want to interview Objectivist people ARI does not approve of, so he relied on the interviews Walker made with them. Whenever you see a quote from such a person in PARC, it is usually from an interview by Walker (rarely from their own published works).

Michael

Edit. I want to keep a comment from another forum available for later use (and make it available to OL readers), so here is as good a place to put it as any. The comment is by Ted Keer and it is here. A quote from it is given below (he is discussing the cover of PARC and started by correcting a first impression he had of Rand reading a book):

Actually, there is no book pictured, I mistook Rand's lapel and the unidentifiable blown-up top of a woman's head for the pages of a book. (Rand may still be glancing at a book, or something before her on a table.) The original picture, credit Whit Hancock, 1966, p 188 of my copy of PARC shows Rand's head below NB's waistline, him with tie obscured by someone else's head. A person whom I suppose to be LP is in the upper right.

The cover, however, shows the top of Rand's head above NB's waisteline, his tie miraculously restored to unity, (All five other people in the original having been cropped out) the context of a party with many different discussions taking place having been deliberately dropped, with the changed waist-line perspective of NB placing him twice as close to Rand on the cover as in reality.

In its real context, any reasonable observer would assume from the original picture that NB was listening to the words of a person to his right, his hand to his chin in polite concentration. He was not close to or listening to Rand. The manufactured cover, with all others absent, makes it appear as if Branden and Rand are alone, that he is within her body-space but turned away looking at no one, as if in evasion.

... would this doctored photo be admissable as evidence in court? Would it not, even if admitted to be a composite, be reasonably described as prejudicial toward NB? I was an editor for my College newspaper and did advertisement layout work for a few years for a now defunct minor publishing company. I know what I see on that cover as an editor. What would an officer of the court see?

I found the alterations of the picture thus described to be a visual indication of Valliant's rhetorical style. (I happily engaged in some airbrushing in the quote... )

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

This sounds like what was done in Stalin's Russia where people who had been purged would be removed from pictures. Shoddy would be a complement.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I've read some parts of Valliant's book and not others. My

impression _so_far_ is that probably he successfully

convicts Nathaniel Branden of the things Branden already

confessed to in _Judgment_Day_, except that Valliant is

explicit about them. Branden stops somewhat (not much)

short of explicitness in saying that power lust was a big

part of his motive in his NBI carreer.

Although I don't disagree that there was an element of what might loosely be described as "power lust" in Nathaniel's desire to remain at the helm of NBI, the description leaves out the depth of the conflict he was in.

Nathaniel himself believed that he should respond to Ayn Rand in the way that she believed he should respond. He believed her theory of sex. The fatal trap for all of the principals, except Patrecia, in the circumstances was their all believing -- Ayn Rand first and foremost -- that her theory of sex was correct and that therefore IF Nathaniel Branden was a moral giant he would continue wanting to go to bed with Ayn Rand despite his age/her age, her years of depression, her nagging him, her desire to keep the affair secret (she wouldn't even get a separate apartment), his wish for some youth and joy. Think about it, especially the guys on the list, suppose you were told, and believed, that you should be romantically inclined toward a woman 25 years your senior to whom you once had been attracted sexually but who was now aging, becoming bitter, had relied on you for help during a bad depression, kept analyzing your every action ("Why aren't you being spontaneous?") and meanwhile there was a young, vital partner with whom you could feel buoyant and free...

How well would you have dealt with the situation?

Ellen

Edit: Spelling error

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Edited January 28, 2007 by Ellen Stuttle

[Chris Grieb]

Ellen; Just reading your post has me depressed. I sure Branden responded the same way.

[Rodney]

Despite my opinion of the book, I don't see anything wrong with the cover concept and execution, and in fact had guessed something of the sort had been done. You choose and compose pictures to suggest a book's theme, and this can entail artful manipulation of visual elements, including photos. Everyone is presumed not to normally judge a book by its cover.

(Usually, authors have little input into cover art [at least in my experience], but in this case I think the authors designed or closely directed the creation of the cover. I must say they chose a bad picture of Rand.)

Edited January 27, 2007 by ashleyparkerangel

[Rich Engle]

The cover...

It's perfect for the purpose intended. It has a retro look. It has NB looking very serious, and contemplative. He kind of looks like Perry Mason or something. Then there's Ayn, showing the wear of the relationship, something along that line. He's in the upper left, she's below. Classic tension.

Couldn't have been done better, given the marketing idea. That's not the point.

[Guyau]

Neil,

This is only an aside to your topic. You have mentioned that you do not have John Hosper's articles concerning his acquaintance with Ayn Rand. I still have an issue of Liberty magazine in which Professor Hospers recounts his conversations with Miss Rand. This is in Volume 4, Number 1 (Sept 1990) of Liberty. I don't know whether this publication is available in libraries.

Hospers had philosophy conversations with Rand over the years 1960 to 1962. In this memoir, he relates their discussions concerning free will, determinism, causality, identity, logic, language, necessity, contingency, possibility, skepticism concerning existence of the physical world, and analytic philosophy. These recollections are interesting to have as a companion to Rand's subsequent, nonfiction writings, especially her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology in expanded second edition.

In his memoir, Hospers also relates the personal side of his relationship with Rand. The evening event at which he was parted from Rand and her circle was by chance the evening that President Kennedy announced his naval blockade of Cuba.

[i was then almost 14 years old. My father was a civilian employee of the Air Force, where he worked in War Plans. He had been called to the base---a SAC base---earlier that day. As the President announced his decision to the world (Hospers reports Rand's single-word response: "Good"), my father was waiting in the War Room with the high brass. Those days of that autumn were a time of unspeakable danger for human kind, a level of acute total danger that has fortunately never returned.]

In 1968 Hospers received a phone call from Nathaniel Branden and Rand. She had heard that Hospers was presenting her philosophy in his classes, and she seemed grateful.

Stephen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Rodney,

I have nothing against altering photos for book covers, especially when they depict the theme of the book. The Photoshopping of the original photo certainly does that.

I would only see an intent of dishonesty if it had been presented as being the photo itself. Obviously it was not—the images were merely used for a book cover. The way the cover struck me at first sight was as a composite of two different photos. The fade of the bottom of NB gives that impression away.

Aesthetically, I think it is a horrible concept and execution, but for other reasons. I don't like the tone of red or the inclusion of the other bland colors. (The "black and white thinking" symbolism is completely lost. In this respect, the back of the book is far superior.) As you mentioned, the photo of Rand is a very poor one. To my eye, it makes her look dorky and clunky, not at all the morally pristine genius he tried to portray in the book, nor an innocent victim of an alleged "spiritual rapist." NB looks like anything but that alleged "spiritual rapist." Neither look like they were caught in their essential aspects. The photo looks like one of those we all have of ourselves that we do not like to show to others because the expression is ugly and not how we normally are.

There is no point to the transparency in the title rectangle that allows NB's coat and tie to bleed through, nor the spot of white bleeding through above the "T" in the word "Critics." The font choice and layout is decent, but not great. I could go on and on. I consider this cover basically as mediocre work where the execution did not quite come off.

What struck me, though, was the method used in doing it. I would have missed it if Ted had not pointed it out. The manner in which a photo was removed from its original context where NB is merely conversing at a party and Rand is at a table at the same party is altered to another meaning entirely. The new meaning is to denigrate NB and show Rand innocently studying something. This is very similar to the method of Valliant's rhetoric where he constantly divorces facts from their true context and puts a Branden-bashing Rand-praising spin on them. I found this parallel interesting.

In the text, he alters reality to suit his thesis. The same method is used in the visual composition of the book cover (and I don't know if he was the brains behind that composition). But, at least, the method of altering reality was consistent between the book's text and the way the cover was created.

That consistency is one plus I can give the thing...

Michael

[Laure]

I am one of the few people here who is "pro-PARC" to a large extent. I don't want to get into a big dispute, but I feel like I should at least say my piece. Ellen Stuttle asks, "How well would you have dealt with the situation?" I agree it was a difficult situation, but one thing I would not have done is to lie to Rand for four years!! There is a lot of blaming Rand for expecting too much of Branden, and it isn't fair. It is not her fault if she expected him to behave like a grown-up and he wasn't capable of it.

I thought the cover photo was good. It is photochopped, but just to remove some people's heads and move the 2 subjects closer together so it would look better on the cover. Branden looks a bit shifty and shady, just what Valliant is trying to show in the text as well.

[RAY THOMA$]

Neil:

I think people spend too much time over unimportant details (such as Rand using a Remington-Rand typewriter to come up with a name) and not enough time on her philosophy itself. I'm about as near as possible to being an Objectivist, without being one. I spend my time using most of her philosophy in running my life. But there are places where she and I diverge. Which doesn't mean I don't respect her philosophy itself. That's one reason I call myself a "rational individualist," rather than an Objectivist.

Her personality aside, I find logic in most of what she says, with the possible exception of places where she starts with an erroneous premise (which I usually won't discuss, since I don't claim to be an Objectivist). Even so, finding Objectivism changed my life considerably and opened my eyes to things that previously confused me terribly. I don't care if she had an affair or ran a "collective" in her own life. I think her use of the word "collective" was a big joke on her part. In any case, I think it is her philosophy that counts. In any case, a good article.

RAY THOMA$

[Rodney]

I agree it was a difficult situation, but one thing I would not have done is to lie to Rand for four years!!

In the same situation, at that age I probably would have--possibly longer and worse. Judge for yourself what that means with regard to my attitude to the truth and to AR, and whether a book such as PARC might be written about me.

Concerning the cover (which I agree is not too good), another book called The Dark Side of Camelot featured a bust photo of JFK and his grotesque reflection in the hood of a car.

Edited January 27, 2007 by ashleyparkerangel

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Laure,

I have no problem with your formulation, except I personally think it is fair to blame Rand for the part that belongs to her. We probably disagree on what that part is. I fully appreciate you speaking your piece in such a civil manner.

That aside, my beef is not with any criticism of NB's behavior during that time (I admit, 4 years is an awfully long time), nor even criticism of his viewpoint in his books. NB himself admitted that anger had caused an undue bias and rewrote JD to remove some of it. It is reasonable to conclude that what is left is biased toward his own perspective and critical of Rand. I personally find this normal—just like I find Rand's views critical of NB normal. In every failed marriage or love affair I have ever been close to, I have never seen the view of one of the parties to be uncritical of the other. Maybe somebody out there is like that. I have never seen it.

Why should NB or Rand be exempt? Both knew many things about each other that nobody else did and both were terribly hurt in their respective manners. All this has been discussed ad nauseam and, like with a good soap opera, all viewers have their favorite viewpoint.

My beef is with Valliant's concept of trying to "defend Rand's honor" with lies and rhetorical manipulations. There are plenty of both in PARC. That book is a travesty of Objectivism. Don't Rand's works teach that reality should not be faked? I find it highly ironic that faking reality is precisely the method Valliant most used to "defend" the founder of Objectivism. It is even more ironic that this shortcoming is ignored by some of those who profess to be Rand's staunchest followers.

I also find that Rand's notes to herself at her most vulnerable time in life do not flatter her at all. All the yapping by Valliant in the middle of them in PARC do not hide this, except to the more orthodox Objectivists. This is borne out by comments all over the Internet. But if you look, you will see that Rand's enemies are really starting to have a field day with those notes. This is going to get much worse and more widespread as the Atlas Shrugged movie nears.

The best defense against such criticism I can think of is not outright denial, sidestepping, misrepresentation, "the big lie," or saying that it's all the fault of the Brandens (as PARC contains in abundance). All of that will be hooted down abundantly (and correctly) in the press. As always, I find the naked truth the most effective manner to combat the lies and distortions her enemies use (her enemies are terrible at twisting Objectivist ideas out of shape), even when that truth shows her in an unfavorable light. Contrary to detracting from her, objective truth highlights the grandeur of her achievements.

Notice that Rand's books continue to outsell by far every other Objectivist's works on Objectivism, despite the fact that very few people I know of—outside of orthodox Objectivists—really approve of the affair. But even orthodox Objectivists certainly do not practice that kind of arrangement in their own lives. The attitude toward the truth (the fact of the affair) I have most encountered by people who like Rand's work is a sort of gossip-like curiosity allied to indifference. If pressed, they say they would never do that and would not want that for their children. That certainly doesn't stop them from buying and reading Rand's works and being influenced by them.

The same thing applies to the whole litany of complaints against her: authoritarian, practicing psychotherapy without proper qualifications, poor scholarship, etc. The grandeur of her works outshines all of that and makes it unimportant. One strong proof of this is the steady book sales, year after year.

Notice also that lies tend to bury her critics. The best researched book against Rand, The Ayn Rand Cult by Jeff Walker, is so full of malice and wrong information that it is dead as a cultural force against her and Objectivism. Sales are minimal and only hardline Rand-haters take the bile seriously. If Walker had stayed with the naked truth, it would have survived the initial splash and would have kept public focus on several issues that need work. (Ironically, this book was one of Valliant's main references.)

This is a long subject. Stay tuned. There is one hell of a list coming. Neil's article was just an appetizer.

Anti-PARC is not anti-Rand, not by a long shot. I think anti-PARC is very much pro-Rand.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Michael,

What an excellent post (above.) Very well done. My compliments.

Ellen

___

[Mike Hardy]

and meanwhile there was a young, vital partner with whom you could feel bouyant and free...

How well would you have dealt with the situation?

Ellen

Edit: Spelling error

___

Ellen, is the little "Edit" postscript referring to the fact that you

misspelled "buoyant"? Are you testing us to see if we can spot

that? -- Mike