Neil Parille

The author - Chris Beam - has interviewed me and others.

My review of the book: __________________________ I’ve long enjoyed Leonard Peikoff’s lectures on the history of philosophy. Peikoff is an effective speaker and it’s interesting to hear an Objectivist take on the history of philosophy. It’s good to see that the first course has now been transcribed, edited and printed. However, as with anything Peikoff writes about intellectual history, it has to be used with some caution. One thing I’d mention is that Peikoff has a rather outdated view of Christianity, the Middle Ages, and the relationship between Christianity and science. (See the History for Atheists site to get a more balanced picture.) 1. Peikoff says that Christians began celebrating Christmas on December 25 because there were Sun God celebrations at the time. This is a likely urban legend. Christians (and not all of them) settled on the December 25 date before any known Sun God December 25 celebrations. Curiously, Peikoff says that Jesus was born in June. I’m not sure how he knows this. If you consider that the Armenian Church celebrates Christmas on January 6, it’s possible that there was an old tradition that Jesus was born around the turn of a new year. 2. Peikoff says that Christianity began as a “mystery religion.” Many scholars today (such as Jan Bremmer) reject the concept of mystery religions. No one in the ancient world said he was a member of a mystery religion. Likewise, members of traditional pagan religions never saw themselves in contrast to what are today called mystery religions. 3. Peikoff says Jesus was modeled after a dying and rising god motif. The dying and rising god concept is generally rejected today by scholars as diverse as Bart Ehrman and N.T. Wright. Most of the supposed parallels (such as Romulus and Osiris) are rather strained. 4. Of course, what would an Objectivist writing on religion be without the Tertullian (mis)quote, “I believe because it is absurd.” That’s a misreading of Tertullian. And Tertullian probably wasn’t the irrationalist that Peikoff makes him out to be. (However, see Avery Dulles’ A History of Apologetics.) When it comes to Peikoff's interpretation of various philosophers, let's just say his readings tend to be somewhat eccentric. Founders of Western Philosophy is an important addition to the literature of Objectivism because of its interaction with the history of philosophy and Peikoff’s takes on various philosophical issues from an Objectivist perspective.

I knew Valliant was a POS, but this guy is too much.

Using a different account, I asked the "protect Leonard Peikoff page" if Grace's son was living at the mansion and was promptly banned.

Valliant's a sleazy character. If I recall correctly, his initial claim for raising money was that Peikoff couldn't pay his legal bills because he gave so much of his money to Kira and the ARI. It was only later that he said Peikoff is using all of the proceeds of Rand's books to pay for the mortgage, taxes and upkeep.

I don't get the impression that Andy Bernstein likes me (he's a Valliant bro) but this is a good essay. Unlike most Objectivists he understands the anti-white nature of the left. But it's also anti-male, anti-Christian and anti-straight. The Case for Western Civilization - The Objective Standard THEOBJECTIVESTANDARD.COM Contemporary intellectual culture is rife with moral criticisms of Western civilization and white people. Are these criticisms accurate and just? A few comments: 1. I'm skeptical of the claim of 10 million deaths in the Congo. 2. Martin Luther King was a hero? He supported reparations, racial quotas and laws banning private discrimination. Let's just say his private life left something to be desired. He opposed the Vietnam war because it was allegedly racist. Prevent one group of Asians from imposing Communism on another is racist? I don't recall Objectivists giving Rothbard a pass when he said stuff like that. 3. " Life experience in a multiracial society shows us that there is no connection whatsoever between race and the most important human trait of all—moral character. The same goes for intelligence." I'm sorry, but this is flat our wrong (at least when it comes to intelligence). Every year millions of IQ and IQ-correlated tests are administered and they NEVER show no difference in intelligence. OK, correlation isn't causation, but it's evidence.

Michael, "I can't see how anyone can watch that and assume Peikoff is mentally incompetent. " People with these kinds of problems can be lucid at times and not lucid at other times. (I didn't have the stomach to watch Valliant.) It seems that Grace's son lives at Stately Peikoff Manor. If he's competent then he's compettent to make bad decisions, but this whole thing looks bad.

Full piece is out: Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature: Retouching Rand (by Neil Parille) AYNRANDCONTRAHUMANNATURE.BLOGSPOT.COM Back in 2009, I wrote an essay Retouching Rand , which discussed the Ayn Rand Institute’s efforts to create a better Ayn Rand. These effor...

Here is Lyin' Bobby Mayhew from the Brooks show: ___________________________________ Well this is an awkward kind of question because I was asked by Dr. Peikoff if I would edit Rand's Q&A. I mean I think I broached the subject with him and he talked about how it had to be edited or you know Penguin [the publisher] wouldn't go for it and that he was going to oversee the editing and now there was there was no there wasn't any you know I would edit her and then he would have suggestions and I would edit a bit more and he would you know you need more editing here and I was aware at the time that people are not going to you know like this but I assumed people would be good spirited for because almost all of it is available and you know any of the cuts that were made you could see and I mean I think it's possible that I made cuts that I shouldn't have but I stand by the work. But if it weren't for the fact that the estate of Ayn Rand was behind the project and had control of it, I probably would have done some things differently but then it wouldn't have been published by Penguin -- it would have been a different kind of book. Now I don't remember that particular one but there was some issue that Leonard had issues about uh but I just don't remember it so if you have the original and you're comparing it to the Q&A and the Q&A is different in a way that you don't like then I you should you should blame me I mean I did it what can I say? I'm not going to throw Leonard under the under the bus because I could have you know if I objected to something I could have said so and sometimes I did and sometimes he said okay and other times he didn't and so there it is.

Michael, I listened to the whole thing. Journo is just flat out dishonest. Burns says how she evaluated the Branden books and why she relied on them when appropriate. So is what Journo saying in effect, "If Burns - after the first citation of a Branden book wrote, see my Essay on Sources for an explanation of why I use these books" -- then it would have been ok?

Someone asked Mayhew yesterday if his editing of Rand's Q&A. I'm not good at time stamping but it's at 1:37:51 Ancient Philosophy -- Plato and Aristotle & More with Robert Mayhew | Yaron Brook Interviews It was directed by Peikoff and he apparently had to approve each of the edis

A rough draft - comments welcome ____________________++ Back in 2009, I wrote an essay Retouching Rand, which discussed the Ayn Rand Institute’s efforts to create a better Ayn Rand. These efforts involved fibbing about Rand (for example, Leonard Peikoff’s claim that Rand quit smoking because she concluded it was dangerous, when in fact she quit because she got lung cancer, and James Valliant’s dishonest hit piece, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics). A lot has happened in the past fifteen years, so it’s time for an update. Retouching Ayn Rand’s Posthumously Published Material At the time my essay was published, Jennifer Burns had not published her 2009 autobiography of Rand, Goddess of the Market. Burns revealed for the first time what was suspected: much of Rand’s posthumously published material was so heavily edited as to be essentially worthless. As described by Laissez Faire Books at the time: 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 Peikoff’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.* As noted above, Journals was edited by David Harriman. Ayn Rand Answers and The Art of Non -Fiction were edited by Robert Mayhew; Objectively Speaking was edited by Peter Schwartz, and The Art of Fiction was edited by Tore Boeckmann. Harriman is no longer associated with the ARI. However, Schwartz and Mayhew are. I’m not sure about Boeckmann. One would have thought that this revelation would have sent shock-waves through the world of Objectivism, but it passed hardly without notice. If one wants to see just how heavy the editing was, Robert Campbell purchased and made transcripts of all the questions and answers in Ayn Rand Answers and published a detailed critique. It took Campbell seventy-one pages to analyze all of Mayhew’s jiggery-pokery. To take one example, when Rand was asked about claims that Augusto Pinochet was torturing and killing opponents, Rand answered as follows: Those stories I don’t believe; I would want to have proof from some authorities better than the extreme Left. But I express my opinion of the junta: I don’t think that they have any idea what they’re doing, I don’t think they’re, know what they want—if they do, they’re going about it the wrong way. I think they’re immeasurably better than what, than the Allende government, but I don’t believe they will be able to achieve much, because the country is wrecked. Uhh, I don’t know any signs of their ideology. They had none before, which was what permitted Allende, who was incidentally a minority, euhh, government—he did not get a real majority —but it was made possible by the fact that his opposition didn’t have any particular prob, program, and the experience has not given them any particular program. But compared to Allende I would say they’re gentlemen and scholars and giants. [some laughter from audience] This was rewritten by Mayhew as follows: At present, I don’t believe those stories. I want proof from authorities more reliable than extreme leftists. Given what I do know of the junta, I’d say they have no idea what they’re doing; and, I don’t think they’ll achieve much, because the country is too Red. But they’re better than the Allende government. In one almost humorous example, Rand was asked about the government banning saccharine, cyclamates (an artificial sweetener) and tobacco. In her answer, she said that tobacco might be dangerous but didn’t know. (As noted above, Rand was a smoker at the time and ultimately contracted lung cancer.) Mayhew edited “tobacco” out of the question and answer. Mayhew even took to Diane Hsieh’s now-defunct Philosophy In Action blog to call Campbell a liar. When the ARI invited Jordan Peterson to speak at OCONN, Yaron Brook said while this was controversial, it was cleared by the ARI’s “Ethical Integrity Committee” which was headed by Mayhew! No, I’m not making this up. Yaron Brook was once asked about claims of poor editing of the posthumously published material and claimed it was lies spread by opponents of the ARI. He said that the editing was done under Leonard Peikoff’s supervision. (This was confirmed by Harriman.) The only acknowledgement of the questionable editing was made by Greg Salmieri in A Companion to Ayn Rand (2016). Salmieri said the critics (such as Campbell and Chris Sciabarra) were correct about the changes and concedes there were editorial decisions “that I wished hadn’t been made,” but concluded that the volumes “serve their purpose well . . . and deserve to be read.” I’m not sure how, for example, changing what Rand wrote to be more certain than it was or conform to later Objectivist orthodoxy serves any purpose. And anyone who wants to read an author’s journals is almost by definition a person who has a scholarly interest in the author and doesn’t want to read what are at best paraphrases. Retouching Ayn Rand’s Life As readers of the Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature Blog know, the first biography of Rand was Barbara Branden’s biography The Passion of Ayn Rand, which was published in 1986. Branden’s biography was largely commendatory; however, she first revealed that Rand and Nathaniel Branden had an affair and alleged that this affair led to Rand’s husband Frank O’Connor’s excess consumption of alcohol (which is well documented for his sad, final years but less well documented in the 50s and 60s). Peikoff went so far as to denounce the book (while saying he would never read it) as an “arbitrary assertion.” Shortly after its publication, Peter Schwartz denounced it as one long arbitrary assertion. It is only in this context that the question can be raised of whether to believe any of the concrete factual allegations Mrs. Branden makes about Ayn Rand’s behavior. When the truth of such allegations rests entirely upon the testimony of the author (and of unnamed ‘friends’ she regularly cites), one must ask why she is to be believed when she has thoroughly destroyed her claim to credibility. It is very easy to accuse the dead of almost anything. I could readily assert that Ayn met with me at dawn on the first Thursday of every month to join me in secret prayer at a Buddhist temple—and who could disprove it if I maintained that no one else knew about it? Branden was Rand’s closest female friend for 18 years and interviewed nearly two hundred people who knew Rand during all periods of her life. How the claims of the book – for example, Rand was born in Russia, had a temper, broke with people, had an affair with Nathaniel, wrote Atlas Shrugged – were assertions on the level of fictitious meetings at a Buddhist temple was never explained. Most people would probably conclude that these claims were either true or false and subject to empirical testing like any other claims concerning famous people. This culminated in Peikoff’s friend James Valliant’s 2005 dishonest hit piece, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics, which purported to show that Branden’s biography (and Nathaniel’s memoirs) were lies from beginning to end. While Valliant’s book was ridiculous, it did have a superficial appeal: the Brandens had a falling out with Rand and so their accounts should be used with some caution. As noted above, Jennifer Burns published her biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market, in 2009. Burns, who is not an Objectivist, had almost complete access to the ARI’s Archives. In addition, she did her own interviews, had access to Branden’s interviews, and did additional archival research. Burns largely confirms the accuracy of the Branden accounts while making occasional corrections to the historical record (for example Rand didn’t get her name from a typewriter). Most significant, Burns asserted that Rand’s decades long amphetamine use had a negative effect on her mental health (which, incidentally, Branden had denied). She found credible evidence that Frank consumed alcohol to excess. From what I recall, the Burns volume got some mention on Objectivist blogs, but only one in-print response. Robert Mayhew took to the Objective Standard (then the house organ of the ARI) to review Burns’ autobiography and didn’t even tell his readers that Burns revealed the rewriting of material much less that she fingered him as a chief culprit. He says Burns devotes too much attention to Rand’s affair with Nathaniel and obliquely mentions the amphetamine issue. No one would get the impression reading the review that Burns confirmed the accuracy of the Branden accounts. Shortly after Burns published her biography, Anne Heller published Ayn Rand and the World She Made, a full-length biography of Rand. Heller, who unfortunately did not have access to the Archives, took a view similar to Branden and Burns. Best I can tell, this book was ignored by authors associated with the ARI. From 2009 until recently, there has been mostly silence on questions related to Rand’s life by the ARI. In 2010, Scott McConnell published 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand. The book is a collection of almost entirely positive interviews (generally excerpts) from the ARI’s Oral History Project. Some interviewees take jabs at the Brandens, but there is nothing that undercuts their accounts. The interviewees are for the most part people who never broke with Rand. Rand’s affair with Branden is never mentioned, but Rand’s love for her husband is non-stop. For some reason, things changed this year. A couple of months ago, Alexanra Popoff published Ayn Rand: Creating a Gospel of Success. The biography of Rand is part of Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series. Popoff had complete access to the Archives and, while her volume isn’t a full-scale biography like Burns’ and Heller’s, it does confirm Rand’s amphetamine usage and Frank’s alcohol consumption. The ARI’s Elan Journo interviewed Harry Binswanger about Popoff’s biography. While I think Popoff goes a little too far in finding Jewish influences on Rand and her works, Binswanger can’t even concede it’s metaphysically possible. Binswanger thunders: “Rand was not influenced!” Apparently, it’s all or nothing for Binswanger. Binswanger takes jabs at the previous biographies, claiming the authors describe Rand as crazy (none of them does) and want to find heightened influence on Nietzsche on Rand “because they want to.” Apparently, no take on Rand other than Binswanger’s can be made in good faith. Journo followed this up with a lengthy review of Goddess of the Market. Apparently this critique was important for the ARI because Journo enlisted the assistance of Chief Philosophy Officer Onkar Ghate and ARI employed philosopher Ben Bayer. I discussed the review last month, but to be blunt – it is dishonest. To take one particularly blatant example: Journo argues that Burns “leans heavily” on the Branden books. Well, Goddess contains 45 pages of endnotes (in smaller print than the body of the text). I counted 630 endnotes. I totted up the notes that mention one or both of the Branden books, and there were a whopping 20 that mentioned a Branden book. That’s 3 percent of the notes. And consider the following: on page 318, Burns cites nearly 30 letters from Isabel Paterson to Rand and vice versa. While I haven’t checked all of the citations to the Branden books, I don’t get the impression that Burns relies on them as her exclusive evidence for particular conventions. For example, Burns rejects Rand’s 1968 veiled claim that Nathaniel Branden stole from her, but her source is Rand’s former attorney, Henry Holzer. Burns, as noted, contends that Rand’s mental health was negatively affected by decades of amphetamine use, a claim that Branden rejects. She bases her report that Frank consumed alcohol to excess on her conclusion that the sources Branden cites are credible. Neither of these three assertions are mentioned in Journo’s review. If Journo thinks there are errors of fact in Goddess, he should say what they are. Conclusion It’s hard to know what to make of this. As I speculated in my 2009 essay: 1. Rand had an inflated ego and a self-estimation that bordered on the delusional. Not only do ARI supporters have to justify this, but during Rand’s life the sycophancy of the orthodox Objectivism’s current leadership no doubt fed Rand’s borderline megalomania. For example, Allan Gotthelf relates that Rand once said that “I’ve done for consciousness what Aristotle did for metaphysics.” Gotthelf responded, “yes, that’s true.” In particular Leonard Peikoff has paid a high personal price to become Rand’s legal and alleged “intellectual” heir. He was even exiled by Rand to Denver for a time for failing to insufficiently advance Objectivism. 2. Rand also set in motion the claim that her philosophy did not undergo any changes, even telling an interviewer later in her life that she had held the same philosophy since her first memory at age 2 and a half. That Rand went through a Nietzschean phase would suggest that she was not a consistent Objectivist and that her own life’s story was false. 3. A high estimation of Rand the person functions as what sociologists call a “boundary marker.” It identifies those who are “in” and “out.” Those who dissent from a high regard for Rand the person are most likely to question aspects of her philosophy, such as her interpretation of other philosophers and the lack of empirical basis for many of her judgments. 4. Rand saw a particularly close connection between her philosophy and her life. She famously said that her life was postscript to her philosophy: “and I mean it.” To Rand her life was the perfect exemplar of an ideal Objectivist and living proof that the theory/practice and mind/body dichotomy that plagued Western civilization since Plato had been put to rest. If Rand can’t live up to Objectivist standards, then what does that say about Objectivism as a “philosophy for living on earth”? Something I didn’t appreciate in 2009 is that there has been a long-standing claim that Rand was morally perfect. Rand lived 77 years, and you don’t have to be an Objectivist to conclude that she largely lived up to her values albeit with occasional failures (most notably her extremely one-sided attack on Nathaniel Branden in 1968). On thing I suspect is that many Objectivists were banking that the long-awaited authorized biography of Rand by Shoshana Milgram would provide the definitive refutation on the Branden accounts. That biography has been two decades in the making and, if it ever comes out, may not even be authorized or even cover all of Rand’s life. Also, in 2009 I didn’t know that Peikoff supervised (and may have in effect ordered) the rewriting of Rand’s posthumously published material. Still, the rewriting of the material is hard to explain given that the truth was bound to come out sooner or later. And why would Journo deliberately misrepresent a book that has been in print for 15 years? If one didn’t know better, one might conclude that there is a list of prohibited books. As a final point, the ARI has implicitly claims that it is the only organization that can competently opine on Rand and Objectivism (and they periodically speak for Rand). And a couple of years ago, the ARI even developed a convoluted epistemological heuristic which essentially makes them immune from criticism. From following blogs and Facebook pages, there doesn’t seem to be much “push back” from the rank and file. Perhaps ARI supporters believe that as part of the “New Intellectuals” the flaws of the ARI are small in the grand scheme of things.

I found it interesting that Leonard said that he was creating a committee to decide what happens to Rand's books going forward. Hard to imagine that happening when Peikoff was 70. And then, Valliant chimes in "so it won't involve family members" or words to that effect -- so the implication is that Grace isn't going to be involved. But Leonard is still on the hook for the mortgage and notwithstanding the fact that he quit claimed the deed, the house can still be foreclosed upon if he or his estate doesn't pay. The only way they or Grace can stay in the house going forward if much (most? all?) of the proceeds of Rand's book are going to the upkeep, mortgage, taxes, etc.

1. The Ayn Rand Institute’s Elan Journo interviewed Harry Binswanger about Alexandra Popoff’s new biography of Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand: Creating a Gospel of Success. The biography of Rand is part of Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series. While I think Popoff goes a little too far in finding Jewish influences on Rand and her works, Binswanger can’t even concede it’s metaphysically possible. Binswanger thunders: “Rand was not influenced!” Apparently, it’s all or nothing for Binswanger. (How this is consistent with the Objectivist view that it’s ultimately a handful of intellectuals who drive the benighted masses is beyond me.) Binswanger takes a jab at Barbara Branden’s 1986 biography of Rand, The Passion of Ayn Rand. He doesn’t name Branden but concedes the author knew Rand. He then takes a jab at the 2009 biographies of Rand by Jennifer Burns and Anne Heller. They describe Rand as crazy (none of them does) and want to find heightened influence on Nietzsche on Rand “because they want to.” Apparently, no take on Rand other than Binswanger’s can be made in good faith. At the end of the interview Binswanger takes exception to Popoff’s claim that Rand’s husband Frank was “meek.” Binswanger gives a couple examples of Frank’s supposed assertiveness. I don’t think these examples undercut the portrayal of Frank by other biographers. In any event, since ARI associated writers have contested over the years that Frank consumed alcohol to excess in his sad, final years why doesn’t Binswanger attack Popoff for confirming this (she had complete access to Rand’s archives, a fact never mentioned by Binswanger or Journo)? Journo asks Binswanger about how Popoff quotes him but doesn’t acknowledge that Popoff corresponded with him. 2. Yaron Brook was asked about David Harriman’s editing of The Journals of Ayn Rand. There has been controversy about this for a long time, in particular when Jennifer Burns published her 2009 biography of Rand, Goddess of the Market. Burns reported that Harriman rewrote sentences where Rand was tentative to be more emphatic to conform with her later thinking. Harriman even moved paragraphs around. (Similar editing plagued 5 other posthumous works.) While Brook doesn’t mention Burns or discuss the nature of the changes, he says that while someone could quibble with this or that editing decision, the editing was supervised by Leonard Peikoff and Peikoff approved the work. Brook also says one can always compare the book with the originals, which is untrue. The Archives are open for the most part only to supporters (but see above and below). 3. Speaking of Burns, the ARI’s Elan Journo recently reviewed, Goddess of the Market. Journo argues that Burns’ book is deficient in matters of scope and interpretation. For example, Burns sees too much influence on Rand’s upbringing on her later philosophy, devotes too much space to Rand’s affair with Nathaniel Branden, devotes too little space on her philosophic views on non-political questions, etc. Some of these contentions I agree with and some I don’t. Up front, Journo never mentions that, as noted above, Burns revealed that six volumes of Rand’s posthumously published material were so heavily edited as to be essentially worthless. And all the editors still are associated with the ARI (with the exception of Harriman). I think readers of Journo’s review should know that. Journo argues that Burns “leans heavily” on the Branden books. Well, Goddess contains 45 pages of endnotes (in smaller print than the body of the text). I counted 630 endnotes. I totted up the notes that mention one or both of the Branden books, and there were a whopping 20 that mentioned a Branden book. That’s 3 percent of the notes. And consider the following: on page 318, Burns cites nearly 30 letters from Isabel Paterson to Rand and vice versa. Also, Journo fails to mention that Burns confirmed many aspects of their accounts through research at the ARI’s Archives (see her Essay on Sources in Goddess and her website.) She concluded that while the books should be used with caution, they have value as primary source material and we should be grateful for all the interviews Barbara Branden took. But to Journo, this is too much. And consider this attack on the Brandens: “Each openly admits to being serially dishonest. They admit that for years they deceived themselves and deceived friends and deceived Rand, while she was a close friend, mentor, business partner.” Nathaniel admits that he lied to Rand about having an affair with a young model for years. Barbara admitted that she concealed Nathaniel’s affair with the model but eventually threatened to tell Rand. How this amounts to being serially dishonest not only to Rand but also friends is beyond me. Continuing his attack on the Brandens, Journo alleges: “For example, she [Burns] notes of Barbara Branden’s book that it includes ‘significantly edited and rewritten’ quotes as if they were verbatim, and that it is ‘marred by serious inaccuracies.’” However, Burns’ statement about quotes being rewritten refers to Branden’s interviews with Rand. Burns argues that Branden, in effect, “cleaned up” Rand’s responses but doesn’t assert she changed their meaning. And the claim about “serious inaccuracies” reads in full: “Moreover, Branden’s biography is marred by serious inaccuracies and tales that do not stand up to historical investigations, including the now debunked story that Rand named herself after her typewriter. Too often, Branden takes Rand’s stories about herself at face value, reporting as fact information contradicted by the historical record.” Most importantly, if Journo’s contention is that Burns makes mistakes of a strictly historical nature by relying on the Branden accounts, then he should give some examples. Did Frank consume alcohol to excess? Did Rand consume amphetamines to an extent that it comprised her mental health?* Did Rand and Nathaniel obtain the consent of their respective spouses before initiating the affair? Was Rand wrong that Nathaniel was in effect stealing from her? Journo’s evaluation of such contentions? As someone used to say: “blank out.”As a final point, it’s interesting to see how far we’ve come concerning the Branden accounts. In 1986, after The Passion of Ayn Rand was published, Leonard Peikoff said he wouldn’t read the book but claimed everything in it was an “arbitrary assertion” (he even told David Kelley that the claim of the affair was arbitrary). Peter Schwartz seconded the arbitrary assertion claim, adding that Branden’s recollections should be given no more credence than a person claiming to have visited Buddhist temples with Rand. Then, in 2005, a Peikoff sponsored a dishonest hit piece was published, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics by James Valliant. Not only were the Branden books arbitrary, but they were dishonest from beginning to end. Now, after nearly forty years of dissembling, it looks like the Brandens got it right and we are now just quibbling about various interpretations. 4. Journo followed this review with an equally bad review of Anne Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made. While containing the usual handwringing about her use of the Branden books, Journo doesn’t identify any mistakes. 5. James Valliant interviewed Leonard Peikoff recently. As readers may know (see last month’s update), Peikoff’s daughter has filed a conservatorship action concerning him. While Peikoff didn’t discuss the legal case, he did say that he and his wife enjoy gambling. To each his own, but this hardly seems consistent with his letter in which he said he can’t pay his legal fees and starting a Go Fund Me page. Peikoff strikes me as competent, but a competent 90-year-old isn’t the same as a competent 70-year-old. Peikoff revealed that he’s creating a committee to decide what to do with Rand’s works going forward. Hard to imagine a younger Peikoff being up in the air about Rand’s books after his death. Something’s doesn’t seem right here. At the very least, Peikoff needs a better public relations advisor. 6. The Ayn Rand Fan Club has a discussion of the Peikoff situation. _______ *Incidentally, Barbara Branden acknowledged Rand’s amphetamine use but denied its negative effects on her mental health. Burns concludes otherwise. So much for Burns’ uncritical reliance on the Brandens.

I wonder what Valliant thinks since the ARI and New Ideal have reviewed the Burns bio and the Popoff bio and no mention of his screed.