Information on Frank's Drinking

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Information on Frank's Drinking

Here is an email I just received from Barbara. I requested permission to post it on OL and she has granted it.

Michael, here is some information I think will interest you, It is relevant to accusations that I fabricated my statement in Passion that over the years Frank O'Connor became a heavy drinker.

You may remember that on page 334 of Passion, I wrote that in 1964, "Frank was growing increasingly frail and thin, and had developed a contraction of the tendons of his hand which seriously interfered with his painting." He required surgery, which was successful, and which allowed him to return to his work and to the Art Students League. Sadly, the condition would return in later years.

The name of Frank's disease was Dupuytren's Contracture. Here are some statements by authorities on the subject:

The Mayo Clinic

"Dupuytren's contracture is a rare hand deformity in which the connective tissue (fascia) under the skin of the palm thickens and scars. Knots (nodes) and cords of tissue form under the skin, often pulling one or more of the fingers into a bent (contracted) position. Though the fingers affected by Dupuytren's contracture bend normally, they can't be straightened, making it difficult to use your hand. Dupuytren's contracture complicates everyday activities such as placing your hands in your pockets, putting on gloves or shaking hand....'

Among the risk factors for this deformity, the clinic explains, is :

"Alcoholism. It isn't clear whether drinking itself or the liver damage that can result increases the risk of Dupuytren's contracture."

Wikepedia states:

"Correlations have also been found between Dupuytren's contracture and:

Smoking or drinking activity,

Diabetes, Thyroid problems and Epilepsy

Alcoholism ad Liver Diseases."

Felisa S Lewis, MD, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, writes:

"Many conditions or factors have been associated with Dupuytren contracture. The following have shown the strongest associations....

"Alcoholic liver disease: Individuals with alcoholism or liver disease have an increased prevalence of Dupuytren contracture (approximately 20%) compared with control populations. Patients with liver disease from other causes do not appear to be at increased risk."

Dr. Lawrence N. Hurst MD FRCS(C ) "The association of Dupuytren's contracture with alcoholism, with or without cirrhosis, has been studied by many authors, and reports show an increased incidence of Dupuytren's contracture among alcoholic patients. The distribution of the disease in such patients mainly involves a thickening in the palmar aponeurosis without significant contractures; however, the disease can be very aggressive, leading to severe joint contractures in some cases. The association may be related to the amount of alcohol ingested and its effects on the microcirculation."

Along with my own observations on Frank's condition before I left New York, and reports from people close to Ayn and Frank in later years, my statements about Frank's drinking are certainly justified.

Best,

Barbara

Between the four sources she has on file from Rand's later years, her own observations before the break, and the general comments over the years within the Objectivist subcommunity, I fully agree that her statements are more than justified.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is another post from March 2006 on another thread. I am including it here to keep this information together for researchers. I am not so keen on including the PARC reference on a thread in Barbara's corner, but this is the main source cited as authority for the accusation against her, so I left it in.

Michael

Frank O'Connor's drinking

Fallacy in PARC: The account of Frank O'Connor's drinking was made up by the Brandens, principally by Barbara.

Quotes from PARC:

"It must be borne in mind that the Brandens are the exclusive sources for the claim of O'Connor's alcoholism, and that both have a vested interest in portraying O'Connor as a devastated man, driven to drink by Rand's callousness." (p. 145)

"And yet, as previously indicated, it is those closest to the O'Connors in their later years who most vehemently deny this charge.

In the end, there is no reason to suppose that Ms. Branden is not the true source of this urban legend herself." (p. 147)

Truth: Four different people close to Frank O'Connor corroborated that he had a drinking problem.

Main reason for the fallacy in PARC: Sloppy research. The author did not consult either Barbara Branden or Nathaniel Branden and ask them for their sources, nor were any people who knew Ayn Rand outside of the ARI circle interviewed (at least none are credited in PARC).

Evidence: Post by Barbara Branden: Objectivist Living, Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:55 am..

I appreciate the fact that polite questions have been raised about Frank O'Connor's drinking, and so I am happy to answer the questions.

I, myself, did not see him seriously affected by his drinking (only, sometimes, what I would have called being tipsy) -- or, if I did, I was not aware of it, since it's not something I was attuned to noticing in people -- but I left in 1968, and I've been told that his really debilitating drinking began after that time. I was told about his drinking by four people (two of whom were close to Ayn and Frank). One, as I believe you know, was the maid who worked for Ayn and Frank for many years and who discovered all the empty liquor bottles in Frank's studio after his death. Another was Elayne Kalberman, a member of the Collective, who said that she smelled liquor on Frank and observed him unsteady on his feet a number of times when she came to the apartment in the mornings on business matters.. Still another was Barbara Weiss (now deceased), who spent a good deal of time in the apartment as Ayn's secretary in Ayn and Frank's later years; she, too, told me that she often smelled liquor on Frank's breath; and she recounted various episodes of his behavior -- which I do not care to recount -- which clearly showed that he was badly affected by his drinking. The final one was a sculptor named Don Ventura, a recovered alcoholic himself, who often talked with Frank in a bar they both went to, and who told me that it was clear to him that Frank was a fellow-alcohoic.

I have Elayne Kalberman's and Barbara Weiss' statements on tape, since I interviewed them both as preparation for my biography. I have letters giving their statements from both Don Ventura and the maid.

No one had asked me to keep his or her name secret. I decided on my own that since they all cared deeply for Frank, they probably would prefer not to be named in my biography as describing his drinking..

By the way, in my biography of Rand, I did not diagnose Frank as an alcoholic, although I did state that he was drinking heavily. And I did, of course, quote Don Ventura's statement.

Edit - September 2, 2006 - More evidence

Another confirmation of Frank's drinking was given in a discussion on Solo Passion by George H. Smith on September 2, 2006. A quote from the post is given below. Albeit, it is a bit vague, it is still from a credible source in the Objectivist world.

The major source for the Frank story was a woman whose name I don't recall. This conversation happened around 1972, when there was a lot of interest in the L.A. area about the split. A key player in collecting information was Roy Childs, who made a point of interviewing everyone who knew something about the split and who was willing to talk to him.

Roy and I lived in the same apartment building in Hollywood, and we saw each other every day. One day he said he was having lunch with a woman who had been affiliated with NBI and knew the principal players. He wanted to "pump" her for information (this was a near-obsession with Roy, as those who knew him can attest), and I agreed to tag along.

Well, she and Roy spoke for around an hour. (I said very little.) The relevant point was her comment about Frank O'Connor (a person I knew virtually nothing about at the time). After confirming the essentials of Roy's research about the split, she said that she felt most sorry for "Frank," and that she viewed him as the real victim in the entire mess. She added that he had turned to drinking, while speculating that he had withdrawn so much that he felt helpless to do anything.

Now, Roy (who had a problem with drinking himself) was very interested in this detail, so he and she talked about it for at least ten minutes. Beyond that I don't really remember a whole lot. That was 35 years ago, and I really didn't think much about it afterwards, except that, yeah, I'd probably drink too in a situation like that.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Between the four sources she has on file from Rand's later years, her own observations before the break, and the general comments over the years within the Objectivist subcommunity, I fully agree that [barbara's] statements are more than justified.

Michael

I'm sorry, but I can't agree. I lean toward the belief that Frank did drink "in excess," whatever that amount might have been for his particular physiologic circumstances. I thought of alcohol as a cause of his mental vacantness when I first met him in spring 1970. But there could have been other causes -- and I wouldn't myself have described him as being "frail" at that time, or in following years when I saw him on a number of occasions.

The Dupuytren's Contracture point is only suggestive, by no means conclusively substantiating. Dupuytren's isn't only related to excessive alcohol consumption, any more than lung cancer is only related to smoking. E.g., Beverly Sills died of lung cancer, but she was not a smoker. My husband had an operation for Dupuytren's some years ago, but his alcohol consumption averages no more than a glass of wine in a week. In general principle, epidemiological evidence can suggest but can't establish etiology.

Plus we remain with discrepant accounts by Barbara of what the maid said. Did the maid "[discover] all the empty liquor bottles in Frank's studio after his death," as quoted above from an OL post dated Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:55 am.? Or did the maid find "rows" of bottles each week when she cleaned Frank's studio, as reported in Passion? This is a detail needing to be straightened out. It gives a different impression depending on which is the story the maid told.

I think that it's time for Barbara to cite the maid's actual testimony unless there's some compelling legal or personal reason (such as the maid's objecting) not to do so. (Actual citing of what the other witnesses said would help, too.)

Ellen

___

[BaalChatzaf]

Between the four sources she has on file from Rand's later years, her own observations before the break, and the general comments over the years within the Objectivist subcommunity, I fully agree that her statements are more than justified.

Michael

FWIW, here is what I found out about Dupuytren Contracture:

What are the causes of Dupuytren contracture?

The precise cause of Dupuytren contracture is not known. However, it is known that it occurs more frequently in patients with diabetes mellitus, seizure disorders (epilepsy), and alcoholism.

Dupuytren's contracture can be inherited. In medical terms, the inherited form of Dupuytren's contracture is transferred in the family as a so-called autosomal dominant trait with incomplete penetrance and partial sex-limitation. This means that the gene for Dupuytren contracture is not on an X or Y chromosome (sex chromosome) but on one of the other 44 chromosomes. Consequently, one version of the gene is enough to cause the disorder (it is dominant), but not everyone who has the gene has the disorder (the gene is not fully penetrant) and the disorder is most frequent in males (the gene expression is partially limited to males).

It is a condition not exclusively associated with alcoholism. Its occurrence may be genetically produced (in males).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Plus we remain with discrepant accounts by Barbara of what the maid said. Did the maid "[discover] all the empty liquor bottles in Frank's studio after his death," as quoted above from an OL post dated Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:55 am.? Or did the maid find "rows" of bottles each week when she cleaned Frank's studio, as reported in Passion? This is a detail needing to be straightened out. It gives a different impression depending on which is the story the maid told.

Ellen,

I will let Barbara speak for herself, but I do want to add a context here. Before the question was misrepresented in PARC and discussions ensued, the specific detail of weekly cleaning versus cleaning on death was not an issue. It did not exist. It was merely weekly cleaning as given in Passion.

At the time Barbara wrote the March 2006 post (given above), there had been a huge number of posts about PARC on other forums. In PARC, this point in Passion was misrepresented as having been cleaning only after death. Suddenly it became a hot-ticket item. Then there ensued those long unending idiotic posts about the virtues of painting with empty booze bottles and so forth.

In my own opinion, I think Barbara simply made a mistake in her post above. It falls into the category in my mind of something like the following.

You have stated several times that your husband was one of the participants cited in the ITOE workshops (see here for instance where you gave the names and letters of all of them). You mentioned that the "prof." could have meant "professional" instead of "professor." Now suppose that a book came out about this denouncing you, then during weeks and weeks several discussions exploded over the fact that you actually said "professional" on Date X instead of the date you really said it—that this was solid proof of your immorality. Then the discussions proceeded with passionate claims and defenses that on Date X, chocolate was invented centuries ago, that Bluebeard's third wife slapped him, and that just recently President Bush made a statement about weapons of mass destruction. And that all of this was conclusive proof that you were not only immoral, but that your husband probably did not even participate in the workshops. In every denunciation, Date X is emblazoned and highlighted. You think it is all silly and refuse to participate. Finally you make a statement. Date X slips into your statement.

Is this because Date X was ever an issue in your mind, or is it because you slipped because of all of the yelling over weeks and your thinking it was all silly anyway?

In Barbara's case, I don't recall the issue of weekly cleaning versus cleaning on death ever being brought up before the publication of PARC and all of those long unending ridiculous discussions. If you know of any such pre-PARC source, I would be grateful if you mentioned it.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Plus we remain with discrepant accounts by Barbara of what the maid said. Did the maid "[discover] all the empty liquor bottles in Frank's studio after his death," as quoted above from an OL post dated Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:55 am.? Or did the maid find "rows" of bottles each week when she cleaned Frank's studio, as reported in Passion? This is a detail needing to be straightened out. It gives a different impression depending on which is the story the maid told.

[....]

In my own opinion, I think Barbara simply made a mistake in her post above.

[....]

Possibly, but, if so, it isn't the first time she made the mistake.

See:

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralFo...611_5.shtml#112

Also:

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralFo...611_5.shtml#113

It might of course be that Eloise Huggins (the maid) reported both finding "rows" each week and finding a stash after Frank's death. Whatever exactly Eloise said, I think it would be a good idea if Barbara would clear the issue up by providing Eloise's exact wording (and that of the other witnesses also).

Ellen

Edit: misspelled "Huggins."

___

Edited February 16, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Chris Grieb]

Ellen; I agree. The exact wording needs to cleared up.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I wish I lived near Barbara. I would certainly be able to help her unpack and dig out her old research material and sort through it. I have no doubt she has not provided the exact wording because of this.

Here are couple of other issues.

Although Barbara did not call Frank an alcoholic in print, Nathaniel did. Here is a quote from My Years With Ayn Rand (p. 143 - and there is a similar passage in Judgment Day, p. 166).

What neither of us suspected, and what I would not learn until Barbara told me many years later, was that Frank's usual destination when he left the apartment was a nearby bar. He was becoming an alcoholic.

Here is another passage from JD (p. 373) that was excluded from MYWAR:

Frank had his own studio apartment by that time, where he painted — and drank. Years later, after his death, "when his studio was discovered to be filled with empty liquor bottles," Elayne would tell me, "Ayn refused to admit that he had become an alcoholic; she said the bottles must somehow have been used by him 'to mix his paints in.' She saw what she wanted to see."

(Both of these passages are alluded to in PARC on p. 146 and referenced with footnotes, but they were not quoted except for a few isolated phrases like "refused to admit" and "many years later.")

Note that Nathaniel's account is actually the story of finding the group of booze bottle after Frank's death and not weekly.

Here is a post I made in July 2006 showing how facts get distorted on this issue by a wish to preserve a perfect Rand and excessive Branden hatred.

I just read a very interesting post about PARC and Frank's O'Connor's drinking here. The poster is Michelle Cohen. Before continuing, let me say that I have no personal beef with Ms. Cohen. I do have some major disagreements.

Her post is a perfect example of how facts get distorted by people who become emotionally impacted by PARC. I do not believe that Ms. Cohen's error was on purpose - I believe she made an honest mistake by not checking facts to see if they are correct. I also think her error was due to the emotional feeling of certainty people allow themselves to hold when they let another do their thinking and checking for them. In this case, the idea is that if one believes all the statements in PARC are true, then one does not have to check any further when looking at similar issues not discussed in PARC - just repeating what they read is enough to make value judgments.

Ms. Cohen was discussing the effect PARC had on her, resulting in her decision to withdraw from attending and being a lecturer at a TOC (now TAS) Seminar because Nathaniel Branden was also giving a talk at the time.

In addition, one of my two planned talks was about the novels of Kay Nolte Smith. I used to downplay the claim that her "Elegy for a Soprano" was a roman-a-clef about Rand. Reading PARC, I realized the extent to which Mrs. Branden's account of Frank's alcoholism was unreliable, and what it meant about "Elegy," where the protagonist's husband is an alcoholic. (I do wonder what Kay Smith would have said about PARC. She passed away in 1993, and unfortunately will not be able to retract "Elegy.")

I once read somewhere a statement by Ms. Cohen that she had no intention of ever reading OL. That being the case, she obviously missed Barbara's disclosure of her main sources for Frank's drinking - including sources who were not mentioned in The Passion of Ayn Rand, but sources who provided tape recordings and signed statements. This is presented in a post called "Frank O’Connor’s drinking" in the PARC Fallacies thread here on OL and perfectly refutes the biased claims and insinuations presented in PARC.

However, there is a much more serious breach of facts. Elegy for a Soprano was published in September 1985 by Random House. I don't know how long it took Kay Nolte Smith to write it, but I think speculating one year minimum for drawing up the characters and their basic characteristics is more than fair. Thus she would have decided on an alcoholic husband in 1984 or earlier.

The Passion of Ayn Rand was published in 1986 by Doubleday. It is impossible for Kay Nolte Smith to have read it and been influenced by it before writing Elegy for a Soprano, as was insinuated by Ms. Cohen. Her further insinuation - that Ms. Smith would have wanted to retract a part of some of her best artistic work - is an insult to Ms. Smith's memory.

If this is an honest error, it should be corrected, especially in light of Ms. Cohen's reputation for seriousness. If it is not (and I do not believe it is), there is no excuse for it.

So here is one other source for Frank's drinking dating back to 1984, Kay Nolte Smith, albeit indirectly through a work of fiction.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The following is strictly my own speculation. When I was in college, then later moved to Brazil (in 1973), I subscribed to The Ayn Rand Letter. I remember my thoughts about the beginning of Vol. II, No. 12 March 12, 1973, "The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made," as soon as I opened the envelope, took it out and started reading:

"God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

This remarkable statement is attributed to a theologian with whose ideas I disagree in every fundamental respect: Reinhold Niebuhr. But—omitting the form of a prayer, i.e., the implication that one's mental-emotional states are a gift from God—that statement is profoundly true, as a summary and a guideline: it names the mental attitude which a rational man must seek to achieve. The statement is beautiful in its eloquent simplicity; but the achievement of that attitude involves philosophy's deepest metaphysical-moral issues.

I was startled to learn that that statement has been adopted as a prayer by Alcoholics Anonymous, which is not exactly a philosophical organization. In view of the fact that today's social-psychological theories stress emotional, not intellectual, needs and frustrations as the cause of human suffering (e.g., the lack of "love"), it is astonishing that that organization has discovered that such a prayer is relevant to the problems of alcoholics—that the misery of confusion on those issues has devastating consequences and is one of the factors driving men to drink, i.e., to seek escape from reality. This is just one more example of the way in which philosophy rules the lives of men who have never heard or cared to hear about it.

This essay was later included in Philosophy: Who Needs It. It is the third essay.

I remember thinking to myself, "What on earth is she doing down at AA?" This was years before I had my own problems with alcoholism.

Obviously Rand did not go to AA, but equally obviously, she was looking at AA literature in 1973. She was looking at it for some reason and my inner voice tells me loud and clear that metaphysics was not the only reason.

I believe she was worried about Frank's drinking and fishing for ideas and advice without letting anyone know about it. At least this fits a pattern of proud people who live with loved ones with drinking problems. Al-Anon is full of proud people who finally threw in the towel and opened up to others about their agony. It can be excruciating to love and live with an alcoholic or addict.

I also think she stumbled onto this quote by Niebuhr and it threw her a curve ball (she almost says as much). She was looking for one thing, but found another. Her natural fascination with ideas kicked in so she wrote the essay and went off in a tangent (which was much better than dealing with the painful unknown). As I said, I speculate, but it certainly seems plausible.

I find it interesting that she merely used alcoholism as a literary frame and did not mention this issue during the entire essay. A frame is a technique where you end by mentioning what you did at the beginning. The idea is that it is supposed to give the reader a sense of completion by coming around in a full circle. Here is how Rand did it. Right before the end, after presenting a long philosophical analysis of what is metaphysical and what is man-made and arriving at bashing John Rawls's A Theory of Justice for egalitarianism, she wrote:

This is being preached, touted and demanded today. There can be no intellectual—or moral—neutrality on such an issue. The moral cowards who try to evade it by pleading ignorance, confusion or helplessness, who keep silent and avoid the battle, yet feel a growing sense of guilty terror over the question of what they can or cannot change, are paving the way for the egalitarians' atrocities, and will end up like the derelicts whom Alcoholics Anonymous is struggling to help.

The least that any decent man can do today is to fight that book's doctrine—to fight it intransigently on moral grounds. A proposal to annihilate intelligence by slow torture cannot be treated as a difference of civilized opinion.

If any man feels that the world is too complex and its evil is too big to cope with, let him remember that it is too big to drown in a glass of whiskey.

The problem with the frame technique is that it can appear stilted and awkward if the idea for the end points is not all that integrated to the rest of the essay. In the case of this essay, alcoholism isn't very well integrated with metaphysical versus man-made or egalitarianism. It sticks out to me because this kind of weakness is unusual in her writing.

Michael