The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism, Part IV


Neil Parille

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It's interesting to note Ayn Rand's career and its expressed success: After years of struggle and effort she got The Fountainhead published and sold the rights to the screenplay. She started in Hollywood by meeting DeMille right off the bat and then her world contracted almost purely to her writing. Then her place in the world expanded exponientially to moving to California and moving in Hollywood's highest circles and associated others as a famous author writing screenplays and another great novel. After The Fountainhead was made into the movie her world contracted again as she got out of her screenwriting contract to devote herself full-time to Atlas Shrugged. But after the novel was published her world did not once again expand as it had previously. Logically, perhaps, she should have been queen of the world since Atlas was much the greater novel. Maybe she was run over by her own psychological inertia and ended up depressed consequentially.

--Brant

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Nathaniel Branden gave a speech at the 10th anniversary of Reason in which he said that in a real sense Ayn Rand died after she finished Atlas. She was unable to do more than outline another novel. It is worth noting that Harper Lee the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" has been unable to write another book

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Brant; I think that Ayn Rand was desperate to prove to herself that she was right to keep Lenny around.

Why? It was LP who was latched onto her, not vice versa. He re-enforced and enforced all her publc suppositions and was still her "friend" when most of her friends were gone. If AR can be described as the Godfather of Objectivism, LP is Mr. Barzini, but not "sleeping with the fishes."

--Brant

Edited by Brant Gaede
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I wrote:

(Quote: Parille) As Valliant tells us, Rand was sincere about Branden’s concern about the “age issue” and gave him a number of “outs” about it. According to Valliant, Branden refused, at most giving “’non-verbal’ signals” to Rand “which . . . he does not specify.” (PARC, p. 140.) (Incidentally, in the pages cited by Valliant, the words “non-verbal” and “signal” do not appear.)

On page 372 (which Valliant doesn't cite), Nathaniel Branden writes that he gave Rand "contradictory signals."

(Quote: Branden) If Ayn is "insane," I told myself, I have contributed to it. By giving contradictory signals. By not letting her know the limits of my feelings for her at the start of our affair. By not holding her to the original agreement of "one or two years at the most." By feeding her grandiosity from the day we met.

Judgment Day isn't searchable on Amazon, but MYWAR is. The word "non-verbal" (I assume it's one word rather than two) doesn't appear in the book. In this paragraph, Branden does specify the "contradictory signals" he gave Rand.

So we have another example of a ValliantQuoat.

-NEIL

____

Edited by Neil Parille
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Brant; I think that Ayn Rand was desperate to prove to herself that she was right to keep Lenny around.

Why? It was LP who was latched onto her, not vice versa. He re-enforced and enforced all her publc suppositions and was still her "friend" when most of her friends were gone. If AR can be described as the Godfather of Objectivism, LP is Mr. Barzini, but not "sleeping with the fishes."

--Brant

[edit]: It's not Barzini, but Luca Brasi. The big guy enforcer who got it near the beginning of The Godfather.

--Brant

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In connection with this tread about Ayn Rand isolating herself and only seeing the collective I was reflecting that Rand never wrote or talked about Jane Jacobs. Bill Klein in his wonderful lectures on Environmental Ethics talks about Miss Jacobs. The Death and Life of American Cities was published in 1961. Miss Jacobs lived in the New York City at this time. Miss Jacobs and Miss Rand would not have agreed on every issue but I think they would have had a great deal to talk about but I suspect some member of the Collective said Jacobs was a looter and that ended that.

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Chris GrieB: "I suspect some member of the Collective said Jacobs was a looter and that ended that."

What reason do you have for saying that? I don't think you intend it, but you insult both the Collective and Ayn Rand -- the Collective as being unable to perceive value in writings that are of mixed value, and Rand for blindly accepting the arbitrary judgments of others. Rand doesn't require my defense on this score, but as contrary evidence about the Collective, various members praised Arthur Koestler to Rand, and defended Sidney Hook despite his attack on For the New Intellectual.

Barbara

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[...] With the exception of the chapter concerning the 1968 split, I think I've critiqued almost all of Valliant's book.

Almost? *weary sigh*

I was never much into textual exegesis as such, which is one of the many reasons I gave up on graduate school. (That, and the prospect of kissing faculty ass for anywhere from twelve to fifteen years, until I somehow got tenure.)

I made an exception, due to the subject matter, for this series of essays, which have been well constructed. Even that exception, though, is wearing out its welcome, at least for me.

Nothing personal is meant here toward Parille — but if this proceeds to a fifth installment that gets into contention over whether or not Rand actually hurled imprecations about Nathaniel being impotent, and for how long, I think I might finally ... well, hurl.

(And, no, I'm still not buying PARC. I have enough from other sources, including this series, to decide two points already: That Valliant is not being intellectually honest. And that his hard-bound tabloid writing isn't worth lavishing this much exegesis on, rather than letting it sink sedately and unremarked from the remainder tables into the recycling shredders.)

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just posted this on my blog:

________________________

James Valliant first brought to the larger attention of the Objectivist world Allan Gotthelf’s finding that Ayn Rand’s name could not have originated from a Remington Rand typewriter because typewriters with name “Rand” were not produced until several years after Rand’s first use of her name.

I think that Valliant makes too much of this mistake by Barbara Branden. In any event, Valliant also raises suspicions about Rand’s first name and her father’s name in Branden’s biography:

. . . it is interesting to observe that Ms. Branden uniformly names Rand’s father “Fronz” while all other sources and scholars are in agreement that his name was “Zinovy.” Ms. Branden does not reveal her source for this naming. Perhaps Ms. Branden is attempting to draw more dubious “patterns” between Rand’s father and her husband, Frank O’Connor (whose given name was “Francis”) . . . . Ms. Branden translates Rand’s Russian name as “Alice,” while scholars as diverse as Sciabarra and Binswanger normally render it “Alyssa” or “Alisa” . . . . at least “Alice” is how her name appeared on her 1926 passport. (PARC, pp. 389-90.)

Valliant’s suspicions are misplaced. Concerning Rand’s father’s name, Branden reports that Rand called him “Fronz” in her taped interviews. In addition, Adam Reed pointed out:

In footnote 10 on page 389, you speculate on Barbara Branden's motives for giving Ayn Rand's father's first name as 'Fronz,' 'while all other sources and scholars are in agreement that his name was 'Zinovy.' You speculate, 'Perhaps Ms. Branden is attempting to draw more dubious "patterns" between Rand's father and her husband, Frank O'Connor.' But it so happens that my parents were born in ethnically Jewish families in the Russian Empire in 1909 - and they and my other relatives had different native-sounding first names in different languages. For example, my father was Tsvi in Hebrew, Hersh in Yiddish, Genrik in Russian and so on. It was the Yiddish name that was used in everyday life within the family, even though they talked to each other much more often in Polish (or German or Russian) than in Yiddish. So it would not have been unusual if Ayn's father were named Franz/Fronz in German/Yiddish and Zinovy in Russian; Zinovy would have been on official documents examined by scholars and Fronz would have been Alyssa's father's name in childhood memories recounted by Ayn Rand to Barbara Branden.

Reed also discovered that:

The archives of the Jewish community of Saint Petersburg mention the couple Fronz Zakharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum (see http://kobieta.gazeta.pl/wysokie-obcasy/1,53662,2806632.html (in Polish) - presumably Alyssa Rosenbaum's parents.

Concerning “Alice,” Branden also reports that Rand said that this is what her family and friends called her in Russia. It should be remembered that Branden did not have access to Russian archives or Rand's letters to her family when writing her biography.

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It looks like Neil got the Brave and True Blue Few riled up again at Siberia Passion. If anyone is interested in a laugh, here is the thread.

What's particularly funny is Perigo's dance and prance in useless rhetoric. (Sing, sing, sing to the choir.) What's even funnier is his constant denials that he reads OL, especially seeing how he comments on stuff here at times.

Liars of the world, unite!

:)

(OK, OK. That was a cheap shot. I just can't help lampooning the behavior patterns I observe between now and this dude's Commie past.)

Michael

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It's interesting that Rand made public accusations of financial and professional misconduct, yet offered no evidence to support her claims. It's not what I would call heroic, of even virtuous according to Objectivism. In fact, it sounds like something that a villain from one of her novels might do -- publicly smear someone with unsupported accusations while hiding her true motives for doing so, and then, when challenged by those she smeared, offer no evidence or apology.

And it's even more interesting that, decades later, Valliant, after apparently having unlimited access to Rand's archived documents, provided no evidence to support her claims.

Are there any other sources of information available? Did Valliant make any attempts to interview any of Rand's lawyers or accountants about whether or not her accusations were accurate, and whether they had documentation to prove it? Did either of The Brandens™ keep copies of the books or other financial documents? If so, could they be reviewed or released for public inspection? If so, it would be fun to see how Objectivists from the various camps would respond to them.

Has there been any news yet, Neil, on your being allowed access to the Rand archives? I wanted to mention that if you ever do get in, I think that you should pay very close attention to whether or not you're looking at actual original, unaltered documents versus reproductions. Judging by the behavior of some of the people associated with the ARI, I wouldn't put it past them to edit what they allow you to see, including possibly digitally "airbrushing" the documents.

Also, I haven't had time to indulge in the entertainment value of closely following the SOLO-Valliant comedy routine, so, what's been going on? Is Valliant still suffering from an illness which prevents him from responding to your criticisms of his sloppy research? Has he or any of the silly infants at SOLO responded lately with anything of substance to your analyses (as opposed to, say, whining that it's not important at all that Rand appears to have made up a bunch of false shit to publicly hurl at her ex-lover while hiding the real reason for her break with him)?

J

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Jonathan,

Valliant is still apparently quite ill. I haven't heard anything from him or the Archives about access.

I don't know if any accountants who worked are still alive, but Valliant does mention certain documents in the Archives such as BB's business plan and some correspondence. Valliant said in PARC that he couldn't verify NB's numbers, but didn't say whether he asked to examine these documents (if they exist).

-NEIL

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Henry Holzer, who was Rand's lawyer in 1968, and was her assistant in creating "To Whom it May Concern," has since said publicly that there was no evidence whatever -- none -- that Nathaniel was in any way financially dishonest in any of his dealings with Rand and/or the Objectivist.

Barbara

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(Quote: Parille) Valliant repeats Rand’s claim that Branden’s proposal was only a “projection” and adds “without the draw of NBI’s ‘star’ lecturer, Nathaniel Branden, which as she says were based on NBI’s past performance, were of little value.” (PARC, p. 120.)

Yet a few pages before, Valliant says:

(Quote: Valliant) Rand's novels were really the only advertisement NBI ever needed. While the lectures at NBI -- including those of Leonard Peikoff and Alan Greenspan -- provided important applications and amplifications of Rand's ideas, it was her novels which recruited the students at NBI, not vice versa. . . . Whatever the quality of the work done ay NBI, it was Rand who had pulled the students through the door in the first place--every time. (PARC, pp. 88-89.)

-NEIL

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