News: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns


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News: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns

I just received an email from LFB announcing that Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns will be released in mid-October. There is a long review on the site (presumably by Jim Peron) and I was graciously granted permission to post it here:

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (review and order page)

It is an odd review as the reviewer has many restriction about this book, including a beef about the title. But he also says the book is fascinating. This review presents some really good information for those who eagerly await Ms. Burns's book. Below are some excerpts. If you want to read the full review (and it is well worth reading), go to the link above.

One very important point is that LFB is now taking orders for a huge discount. The original price is $27.95, but LFB is offering it for $18.00. You can order it at the link above.

Ayn Rand has become fashionable again. The current crisis has inspired a second look at Rand’s prophetic novel, Atlas Shrugged. And there is renewed interest in Rand herself. But any study of Rand is sure to create controversy. And Jennifer Burns’ new study of Rand’s politics is sure to do the same.

. . .

Burns certainly does not appear to be an Objectivist or libertarian herself. If she is, then she did a good job of hiding it.

. . .

For the most part, Burns has assembled a book that will interest anyone who was influenced by Ayn Rand.

. . .

Anyone who actually cares about the impact of Ayn Rand on the political scene will, however, love this book, even if they have quibbles with the author in various areas. What each reader gets out of the book will depend on their interests. But I can state some of the areas that I found most interesting.

Early in the book Burns discusses the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on Rand. Clearly the first edition of Rand’s semi-biographical novel, We the Living, had strong Nietzschean elements to it, elements that Rand purged when the book was reissued two decades later. Burns explores the extent of Nietzsche’s influence and she documents it. One of the virtues of Burns book is that she had access to the full collection of the Ayn Rand Archives.

Under the influence of Rand’s heir, Leonard Peikoff, the archives were off-limits to many scholars for years. Peikoff has a history of wanting to protect Rand’s reputation, even if that means giving facts short-shift. That Burns had full access to Rand’s papers is a good sign for future Rand-related scholarship—though Burns does warn that scholars who were involved in “Objectivist controversies” may still find themselves barred from seeing the papers.

Because of her access, Burns was able to document the influence of Nietzsche on Rand. One of the great modern myths, regarding Rand, is that she emerged from Russia with a fully formed philosophical system, at least in all the essentials. Burns is able to document that Rand was in the process of forming her ideas over a period of decades. And while I found her discussion of Nietzsche’s influence on Rand fascinating, I thought she should have given equal emphasis to the whys and hows of Rand shifting away from Nietzsche.

. . .

Burns places the evolution in Rand’s views to her dealings with a wide-range of Americans as part of her campaigning for Wendell Willkie. But it is clear that this shift was well in place by the time the campaign took place. It may be that her experiences with “middle America” cemented those changes, but I doubt that the campaigning was the prime reason for them.

Burn’s also clarifies the obsession that conservative William F. Buckley had with Rand. And that was mainly over the matter of religion. Buckley, being religious, decided he had to make war on the non-believer, Ayn Rand. Buckley laid the foundations for the Religious Right in America, the most noxious element that conservatism has faced in a very long time. He may have helped revive the Right, with his magazine National Review, but he also turned the Right into what it has became today. One could argue that the last President Bush was Buckleystein’s monster; a president so awful that even Buckley was unhappy with his own creation.

Buckley decided that a fusion of politics and religion was necessary and saw Rand, quite correctly, as a major obstacle to his goal. Yet, today, it is precisely that fusion of church and state that has alienated so many Americans from the Right, especially after the last eight years.

. . .

Another area of interest was the detailed discussion of Ayn Rand’s relationship with Isabel Paterson. Paterson had been something of a mentor to Rand, but the two had a bitter parting of the ways. It is often assumed that Rand was probably responsible. But the facts don’t support that thesis, not in this reviewer’s opinion. While there were certain philosophical differences that couldn’t be glossed over, the relationship only broke after Rand’s success.

After reading Burns, I concluded that the break was primarily the fault of Paterson. Paterson, who had considered herself to be Ayn’s teacher, saw the duo in a competition with their works. She also was convinced that Ayn’s optimistic take on the success of The Fountainhead, before it was even published, was naïve at best. But when Rand’s book, and Paterson’s work, The God of the Machine, were published, it was Rand who raced ahead in sales. Rand had said she would only consider the book a success when it sold 100,000 copies. Paterson thought that wildly optimistic. The Fountainhead is still selling that many copies each year, 60+ years after its publication.

Paterson became increasingly unpleasant as Rand succeeded. My personal impression, from the descriptions offered by Burns, is that Paterson was not happy that the student had surpassed the teacher.

. . .

I should also briefly mention that I also found the section dealing with the reception of Atlas Shrugged fascinating to read. Many of us have long heard of the vicious and unfair reviews that Rand had to endure. Burns lays many of them out for inspection. Most have heard of the vile review that William F. Buckley solicited from Whittaker Chambers, a review that Chambers was reluctant to produce, but did so upon Buckley’s repeated urging. But few have read in detail how pervasive similar reviews were. Rand’s thesis was grossly distorted in review after review. One consequence, in my opinion, was that Ayn became far less tolerant of what she perceived as hostile questions. When one is the victim of intentional distortions it is often tempting to assume that all distortions of one’s views are maliciously motivated, even when that is not the case.

One other area that I found of significant interest is Burns discussion of the various problems surrounding Rand documents made public by the Ayn Rand Institute, Leonard Piekoff’s organization. There has been a great deal of controversy over indications that ARI doctored documents. Some of this doctoring was admitted by ARI, which asserted that they merely made clarifications consistent with what Rand had intended to say. Burns, who has seen the originals, says this is not the case.

She does say that the letters of Rand, that have been released, “have not been altered; they are merely incomplete.” But the same is not true for other works of Rand, including her Journals. Burns writes, “On nearly every page of the published journals an unacknowledged change has been made from Rand’s original writing. In the book’s foreword the editor, David Harriman, defends his practice of eliminating Rand’s words and inserting his own as necessary for greater clarity. In many case, however, his editing serves to significantly alter Rand’s meaning.” She says that sentences are “rewritten to sound stronger and more definite” and that the editing “obscures important shifts and changes in Rand’s thought.” She finds “more alarming” the case that “sentences and proper names present in Rand’s original …have vanished entirely, without any ellipses or brackets to indicate a change.”

The result of this unacknowledged editing is that “they add up to a different Rand. In her original notebooks she is more tentative, historically bounded, and contradictory. The edited diaries have transformed her private space, the hidden realm in which she did her thinking, reaching, and groping, replacing it with a slick manufactured world in which all of her ideas are definite, well formulated, and clear.” She concludes that Rand’s Journals, as released by ARI, “are thus best understood as an interpretation of Rand rather than her own writing. Scholars must use these materials with extreme caution.”

The bad news is that “similar problems plague Ayn Rand Answers (2005), The Art of Fiction (2000), The Art of Non-Fiction (2001), and Objectively Speaking (2009).” Burns says all these works were “derived from archival material but have been significantly rewritten.” Rand scholars have long suspected such manipulation of documents; Burns confirms it with evidence she herself saw.

. . .

Jennifer Burns has produced a fascinating work. It is the first serious study of Rand’s ideas that had full access to Rand’s own papers. As such it is valuable.

As I have written in my airbrushing thread, ARI has been hell-bent on rewriting history by trying to delete the Brandens from it. Presumably, the idea was to present a false image of Rand during a few decades to ensure that Rand's ideas would endure. After that time, the truth could come out. I believe I even read something from Binswanger to this effect.

What has happened is that Rand's works have stood on their own, far surpassing anyone's efforts to attack or protect them. The truth about the affair with Nathaniel came out. Both Barbara and Nathaniel have sold gazillions of books (much more than ARI scholars).

The point is that Ayn Rand did not need anyone to lie about her to the public. All the lying did was tarnish the Objectivist subcommunity with a deepening image of cult and bonehead. I would go so far as to say that Rand's works continued to sell despite the lying, not because of it.

If anyone deserves the credit for Rand's current best-selling status decades after she died, I think that honor goes to President Barack Obama. He should even get a commission on sales. :)

I hope Ms. Burns's work, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, will become a huge success. I know I will be promoting it at times.

Michael

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Michael; Thanks for the review of "Goddess of the Market". I'm getting ready to order Ann Heller's book, I may also order Goddess. Thanks for the comments about the editing of Rand. This is like the desecration of Cortland in "The Fountainhead".

Edited by Chris Grieb
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Michael,

I am pleased to learn that LFB will carrying the Burns book. At Free Minds (where Anne Heller was scheduled to speak; she had to cancel because she had the flu) LFB was promoting Ayn Rand and the World She Made but not Goddess of the Market.

I suspect that Jim Peron expresses irritation with the book because he thinks Dr. Burns is a religious conservative. The title would also suggest charges of cultism in Rand-land, which he has sought to rebut.

The book will be worth the price of admission simply on account of documenting Rand's early attraction to Nietzsche and confirming that her unpublished journals, lectures, and Q&As have been bowdlerized by their ARIan editors.

Robert Campbell

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Because of the way Rand's papers have been handled, Leonard Peikoff and his ilk will be increasingly contemned in the years ahead. The only way for the Ayn Rand Institute to salvage this situation is to preserve the originals and make them available to legitimate scholars. I'm assuming the Institute is the custodian.

--Brant

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I recently read Jeff Britting's authorized biography of Rand. A direct comparison with Barbara Branden's book is not entirely fair to Britting, as he is a solid writer but not a great stylist, and the text is brief (just over 120 pages, with lots of pictures).

There are good things about the book, including the abundance of purty pictures. But Britting retails all the myths of origin that have become customary at ARI. He uses the word "altruism" to describe what the teenage Ayn Rand decided she was against; that is grossly anachronistic, because Rand did not identify her target as altruism until the late 1930s. He insinuates that other elements of her mature thought were already formed, well in advance of any documentary evidence to that effect.

As you might expect, he also declares that Ayn Rand taught Leonard Peikoff philosophy; Dr. Peikoff apparently contributed nothing to the dialogue.

The best part of Britting's treatment covers the period from around 1920 to the completion of The Fountainhead. Many of the sources are in Russian (Rand's early pamphlets about movies and "Amerikanskii Kino-gorod," and the letters to and from her family), which means they got no attention until the 1990s. And there seems to be less weight of expectation on Britting's shoulders. He mentions that her family sent her money, and Anna Rosenbaum comes out as a much more sympathetic figure than Galina Petrovna. (He did manage to leave out Nicholas Lossky, though.)

Britting cites Barbara Branden's interview tapes with Rand, but not The Passion of Ayn Rand. Will any future biography do this? (He also lists Mr. Valliant's opus in the back, though he doesn't cite it, and didn't use anything from it.)

Robert Campbell

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The only way for the Ayn Rand Institute to salvage this situation is to preserve the originals and make them available to legitimate scholars. I'm assuming the Institute is the custodian.

--Brant

Actually, the Estate of Ayn Rand (controlled directly by Leonard Peikoff) is in charge of the Archives. I don't know whether anyone there is on the payroll of ARI, but even if some are, the Estate is a distinct entity.

So ARIans who find the bowdlerizing embarrassing are in a really awkward spot.

Robert Campbell

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According to the ARI website, Jeff Britting, the archivist, is an employee of ARI.

Nobody else from the Archives is listed. So either they are employees of the Estate, or they are not full-time.

Robert Campbell

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Hello all,

I agree the secrecy around Rand’s legacy has probably damaged more than helped her. As a historian, I learned long ago that most people who make history have complicated personal lives. What makes

Rand distinctive are her ideas and the extraordinary impact she had on her readers.

Like you, I hope that my book will mark a new era of openness at the Ayn Rand Archives, because there are many facets of Rand awaiting further explanation.

For the record, I’m not a religious conservative!

Jennifer

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Jennifer:

Welcome. I have enjoyed your work for about four years. Discovered your work through local radio while I was in Virginia five years ago.

If you were a religious conservative, you would still be an excellent historian. However, I have always appreciated disclosure by an author, speaker etc. as to

their underlying philosophy.

When I was teaching rhetoric at the City University in New York, I was attending NBI. I was clear with my students that I believed "x" and no one would be

penalized by believing in all the other letters of the alphabet.

Adam

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Michael:

I think she is a Wiccan!

Adam

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Come on guys, give the lady a break. Who cares what her personal ideology is -- is 'academic historian' an ideology? :-):

She's written a book which gives Rand more publicity and exposure and that's a plus [assuming it turns out to be a good and perceptive book] for those of us who simply want to be part of the debate.

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Hello, Jennifer,

You have done the readers and critics of Rand's work a great service by revealing the editing of her unpublished manuscripts by those charged wirh preserving her legacy.

I've been aware of this unethical practice since 1986. At that time, Leonard Peikof, in a small newsletter he published, included a few brief excerpts from unpublished material of Rand's -- and he remarked, quite casually, that he had edited the excerpts. I jumped a foot when I read this. Over the years since, I have often been painfully aware that Rand was being edited. I am very familiar with her literary style and with her ideas, and I have been made uneasy by formulations attributed to her in ARI publications that did not ring true, and by the omission of issues I knew she had written about. But I had no proof, and so I could do nothing either to reveal or to stop the bowdlerizing of her work.

Perhaps now, with your book, this shameful practice will end. At least, it will be known.

Barbara

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Come on guys, give the lady a break. Who cares what her personal ideology is -- is 'academic historian' an ideology? :-):

Just having some fun, Phil.

It was Jim Peron who seemed to think that Jennifer Burns is a religious conservative.

Robert Campbell

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Sciabarra has documented some significant editing discrepancies between Rand's journals as excerpted in The Intellectual Activist and as later published in the book. I can't get the link to work, but if you Google "Bowdlerizing Ayn Rand" it will come up. I've found some less significant discrepancies between her correspondence with FLlWright as preserved on microfiche at the Getty Center and as published in the book.

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Peter,

Here's the Sciabarra link

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/essays/liberty.htm

In addition, Roger Bissell caught an instance of editorial intervention into Ayn Rand Answers right here at OL.

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5707&view=findpost&p=52354

Have you published anything about the Wright correspondence? You really should...

Robert Campbell

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I've put this up on one or another of the Objectivist forums, but here's another copy.

1. Eugene Masselink, Wright's secretary, to AR, 31 December 37, p. 110

As printed:

I am sorry for this late reply to your letter of the 12th which arrived while Mr. Wright was in the East. He has now left for a several month sojourn in the Arizona desert so there will be no opportunity for you to see him.

Original [To "Mr. Rand"]:

Please forgive this late reply to your letter of the 12th which arrived here while Mr. Wright was in the east [no capitalization]. He has now left for several months sojourn in Arizona and there will be no opportunity for you to see him.

Unimportant, but still hard to understand, as the alterations don't save space or make the text read any more clearly.

2. Wright to Rand 18 November 38, p.111:

Printed:

...Both items obtrude themselves disagreeably on the imagination, and he is not very convincing anyway. Will try to sometime see you in New York and say *why* if you want me to do so.

Original:

...Both obstruct themselves disagreeably [no comma] and he is not very convincing. Will try to fine [sic] time to see you in New York and say why [no emphasis] if you want me to do so.

Here Berliner is doing Wright a favor, as "obstruct" is simply the wrong word, but I'd rather think that Wright or his secretary made a typing mistake than that he would use a split infinitive.

3. Telegram, p. 111:

The original says "ROARKE"; the last sentence says "YOU WOULD", not "YOU'D", and she gives her address. The reply is dated the 21st, not the 22nd as in the book, and says "SORRY [no comma] MR. WRIGHT HAS ALREADY LEFT FOR ARIZONA DESERT."

The spelling is presumably a mistake on the operator's part rather than an earlier version of Rand's because Wright's earlier letter had used the familiar spelling. The telegram and reply are on what looks like a typewritten sheet, not a telegram form.

4. Wright to Rand, 23 April 44:

This and the letter of 14 January 46, quoted on p. 116, are for one reason or another not in Wright's archive.

5. Rand to Wright, 14 May 44:

Printed pp 113 - 114:

So far, it looks as if I will win the battle, and the book will be preserved on the screen. I am willing to take the chance, because my producer's enthusiastic.

Original:

So far, it looks as if I will win the battle [no comma] and the book will be preserved on the screen. I am willing to take the chance, because my producer's appreciation of the book is genuine, intelligent and enthusiastic. ["go east" in the next paragraph is not capitalized in the letter as it is in the book.]

This is the really puzzling one, as the changes are a disservice to Rand. The comma, as I learned grammar, really shouldn't be there, so she knew English better than whoever put it in. The bigger change later on makes her out to be a more careless, slangy writer than she was, and less thoughtful about the movie project's prospects.

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Peter,

Thanks for posting these.

Many of the changes are puzzling, to say the least.

In his review of Robert Mayhew's book on Ayn Rand and Song of Russia, Steve Cox complained that dialogue from the movie was hardly ever quoted correctly.

Robert Campbell

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On Jennifer Burn's beliefs I agree with Phil. On the editing of Ayn Rand this is just disgusting. The Leonard Piekoff Institute folks really are dwarfs who think they are trying to save a giant.

I have ordered Jennifer Burn's book from Amazon along with the Ann Heller book.

Edited by Chris Grieb
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On Jennifer Burn's beliefs I agree with Phil. On the editing of Ayn Rand this is just disgusting. The Leonard Piekoff Institute folks really are dwarfs who think they are trying to save a giant.

I have ordered Jennifer Burn's book from Amazon along with the Ann Heller book.

Dear All,

Looks like there is such great interest in this topic, I will think about blogging on it at greater length sometime soon.

Reidy:

Great work comparing the Wright/Rand correspondence. I don’t know why they altered Wright, but it might have been at the bequest of his Estate. In terms of changing Rand’s reply, one reason for this may be her revised estimate of the producer, who disappointed her, so perhaps the editor didn’t want her in print with three words of praise, only one. As I write in my book Goddess of the Market, the letters are more intact than the journals. But I am sure those of you looking into it will pile up more discrepancies.

Re AR’s papers, I think that absolute transparency is perhaps not a realistic goal; it is pretty common for heirs of writers and other literary types to restrict access or hide materials. It is often only decades after death that critical information comes forth. E.g. some of Sylvia Plath’s journals were destroyed and others are sealed; important writing by Edith Wharton was hidden by a friend of hers for years; the estate of Richard Hofstadter denied a biographer permission to quote from his papers; etc. We can, however, hope for better access to AR’s materials then there is now.

Though I should not be taken as a spokesperson for the Archives or the Estate in any capacity, I can report that the ARI scholars I met working there and the archives staff are all well aware of the editing and are uncomfortable with it. I believe there is even some talk about a reissued scholar’s edition which would include comprehensive footnotes and unrevised text.

It may be that as a new generation rises to the fore at ARA, there is more comfort with Rand’s unadulterated legacy. At least we can hope!

-Jennifer

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Jennifer, thank you for supplying some useful context, such as how non-transparent heirs and literary executors have traditionally been.

I don't know if this is a topic either you or Anne Heller give a great deal of emphasis to, but for me, the most fascinating -and useful- single aspect of Ayn Rand is not the purely personal story or the courage of resisting and overcoming, but the *intellectual development story*. The stories of her escape from Russia, De Mille and Hollywood, publisher rejections, the affair, etc. have been told before. But how she made herself into Ayn Rand, how she bootstrapped herself, how she made herself into a major intellectual force, a novelist with millions of fans? I've learned a lot less on this, to me, transcendently important topic.

Millions have escaped oppression and been motivated to fight it, but didn't become major thinkers and writers. Especially fully mastering a language not one's first language. The emergence of a powerful and original mind is rarer than a supernova. Millions of refugees have had it as their single-minded mission to fight the system or systems they escaped from. What makes one person have the kind or level of mind Rand did when so many do not? Can we learn from this? Improve our education, child-rearing, counseling, development?

How did it happen? What were her methods and steps? How and why did she shake off the attraction of Nietzscheanism? Edison said "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." If unstinting time and effot are key, that would be useful to know. Too often people think you are either born a genius or not, were born with talent or various kinds, that you either have the math gene or not, etc. She did not seem so sharp or precise in her earlier writings. He mind seems to have grown - amazingly. Barbara Branden made a brief remark on this discussion board once that Rand was the hardest working person she had ever met. It caused sort of an Aha! moment in my mind.

For some reason, I didn't follow up on that at the time, but I'd like to know the details - the who, what, why, when, where of this effort. There's obviously a great hidden, perhaps even book-length, story here.

Some clues come (as to methods, perhaps more than effort) in her two books on writing - the art of non-fiction and the art of fiction. I was allowed to hear the undedited, unexpurgated tapes years ago. (I've heard the tapes that were sold of one of the books and they were *much shorter*, as I recall.) And the FW and NFW books contain only a portion of the fascinating material, asides, tangents, etc. that were on those orignal, unedited, unshortened tapes.

When I heard the later tapes and read the books, I had the double feeling of there is good stuff here and a sense of tragic loss for what was missing. And the insight into how her mind works. Here's a single example: One time she makes an informal, loose comment to the writing group [this is an approximate quote from memory], "Well, you all know the standard Objectivist bromides, but let's look at this..." She was able to have a sense of humor about her own principles or see that this group of people might sometimes just be repeating them as a platitude without further mental work. I had never seen that side of her in the -public- Ayn Rand -- I don't quite know how to put it: stepping back from her own principles in a certain way, not denying them but not having the group treat them as scripture in a certain context.

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What makes one person have the kind or level of mind Rand did when so many do not? Can we learn from this? Improve our education, child-rearing, counseling, development?...Too often people think you are either born a genius or not, were born with talent or various kinds, that you either have the math gene or not, etc.

Are you dismissing the possibility that Rand may have been born with an intellectual and creative capacity that others don't have, and/or that she may have been born with a strong tendency to become extremely passionate about certain things?

She did not seem so sharp or precise in her earlier writings. Her mind seems to have grown - amazingly. Barbara Branden made a brief remark on this discussion board once that Rand was the hardest working person she had ever met. It caused sort of an Aha! moment in my mind.

I think the question is, was it work for Rand, or was it something closer to play? Did she love doing the things that she did, or did she spend most of her days reminding herself that she had to force herself to do things she didn't naturally want to do? To me, Phil, it sounds as if you might be looking for some sort of secret insight into how Rand and other high achievers prodded themselves to overcome their desire to be inactive. It sounds as if you might believe that they were not naturally eager. Is that your view?

J

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What makes one person have the kind or level of mind Rand did when so many do not? Can we learn from this? Improve our education, child-rearing, counseling, development?...Too often people think you are either born a genius or not, were born with talent or various kinds, that you either have the math gene or not, etc.

Are you dismissing the possibility that Rand may have been born with an intellectual and creative capacity that others don't have, and/or that she may have been born with a strong tendency to become extremely passionate about certain things?

She did not seem so sharp or precise in her earlier writings. Her mind seems to have grown - amazingly. Barbara Branden made a brief remark on this discussion board once that Rand was the hardest working person she had ever met. It caused sort of an Aha! moment in my mind.

I think the question is, was it work for Rand, or was it something closer to play? Did she love doing the things that she did, or did she spend most of her days reminding herself that she had to force herself to do things she didn't naturally want to do? To me, Phil, it sounds as if you might be looking for some sort of secret insight into how Rand and other high achievers prodded themselves to overcome their desire to be inactive. It sounds as if you might believe that they were not naturally eager. Is that your view?

J

Great post, Jonathan! I think a big quest in life is to find a calling that we are both naturally and passionately inclined to. I think great achivers find it earlier and pursue it more vigorously than most.

Jim

Edited by James Heaps-Nelson
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