Frank's Niece!

[Selene]

Anybody would be tetchy here today. The Leafs got so lambasted last night that the NHL scoresite did not even report it. And Mayor Buffoon is still at the helm waving his crack pipe and giving us the finger.

I meant to ask you about the alleged crackhead mayor that you have.

Am I understanding that you citizen's in Toronto have no right of recall?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Here is the same section from My Years with Ayn Rand. The changes are minor ones, most of them stylistic improvements.

Note that NB changes his wondering "once" about Frank's quietness while Ayn, he, and Barbara were talking to a repeating wondering, and adds that he regrets not making an effort to get to know Frank. Also that he rewords the light/darkness image. He drops "very" from the statement that the years on the ranch were bad for Ayn and Frank, and he corrects the slight implied contradiction of timing in the last quoted paragraph.

My Years with Ayn Rand

pp. 55-57

[bold emphasis added]

Although we rarely discussed it, Barbara and I found Ayn and Frank's relationship puzzling. We wondered what they had in common. He never participated actively in our discussions, did not read books, was clearly not an intellectual, and did not have her energy or passion. They had met when he was a struggling actor. Now Frank was operating their thirteen-acre ranch, which he had reconditioned and landscaped, growing flowers and citrus trees as a commercial enterprise. He was most alive and talkative when discussing his ranch activities.

"I never miss acting, never think about it," he told me cheerfully. "I love the ranch."

"Frank believed in me. He saw who I was and what I would become when no one else did, when we were both young and struggling and had nothing," Ayn told us. "We have the same sense of life. But Frank is too disgusted with people to share what he is with the world."

Frank would listen silently to such statements, almost as still as the painting on the wall. If he was not "disgusted" with Ayn, Barbara, or me, I found myself wondering why he was so silent during our meetings. He had great natural dignity and considerable charm and always projected enormous benevolence, and I felt much affection for him. Yet I found his lack of ambition incomprehensible, given that he was Ayn Rand's husband. For another man, operating the ranch would have been a perfectly legitimate occupation. But when Ayn spoke of work and career, she spoke of changing the world, of having an impact on history. "I could never love anyone who was not a hero," she said. Literally, a hero meant someone with moral virtue high above the average, but in the contexts in which she used the term, it usually connoted someone with a range of vision and ambition far beyond anything Frank suggested. I recognized that there was something between them I did not understand.

Yet I made no particular effort to get to know Frank, which I now badly regret. I would ask an occasional question about his ranch activities or admire the beautiful peacocks he raised or observe that he looked a little tired. But within moments, my attention swung back to Ayn. She was a great light that illuminated anyone in her purview and that left the rest of the world in shadows. She and Frank both seemed to regard this state of affairs as natural. Most people I saw at the ranch treated Frank as I did. He was the man who wasn't quite there.

At this time, I had absolutely no intimation of trouble between Ayn and Frank. Much later, Ayn told me that those years on the ranch had been bad for them. They were quarreling a great deal. She was bothered by his passivity and lack of intellectuality. Then she confided that in the entire history of their relationship, he had never once initiated sex; it was always she who began it. After that, she said, everything went fine, he was involved and uninhibited. But it was not difficult to imagine how that would leave her feeling. Then, there was the plain fact of their enormous intellectual differences - not merely the issue of intelligence but also differences in how their minds worked. She understood only pure, linear, sequential reasoning; he was almost totally intuitive. Although he could appreciate her cognitive style, she was never really comfortable with his. She said that she had been thinking of divorce but wanted to wait until the novel was finished, because she dreaded the interruption of her work. Work came above everything. And yet, years later, she told me that she could not live without him. He was, in his own sad way, her rock.

Ellen

[caroljane]

Adam, you are right. As I mentioned on Canada Politics, there is no way to get rid of him.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Yep - here it is Heller pgs. 184, 230, in the index under O'Conner-Rand relationship, sub-heading divorce, Rand's consideration of:

Another acquaintance recalled that Rand had once confided in her that this period was a bad one for their marriage. Exasperated by Frank's intellectual and sexual passivity, she considered divorcing him, she said, but decided to put it off until she finished writing Atlas Shrugged. [WOW SECOND HAND SECRET HEARSAY WITH NO SOURCING!] Pg. 184]

The source is given in an endnote:

[The endnote is on pg. 476.]

184 Another acquaintance: TPOR, p. 210.

Ok, let's look on pg. 210 of The Passion of Ayn Rand to see what the unnamed "acquaintance," a/k/a Barbara Branden, said about Ayn's and Frank's relationship on that page:

The Passion of Ayn Rand

pg. 210

[a couple paragraph breaks added for reading ease]

Throughout the months of conferences and scriptwriting and casting and filming, Frank had to leave the ranch daily to drive Ayn to and from the studio. The ranch began to fall into disrepair. Once more, Frank's life revolved around Ayn; the peace he had found was replaced by exhausting evenings of listening to Ayn planning her next day's battle, marshaling the arguments she would need - sometimes pounding the arm of her chair in frustration, her pain and fear transformed, as always, into anger. He did not argue with her - as he never argued with her - but this period, some of their friends recognized, marked the beginning of something in Frank that was to grow and intensify as time passed: an impatience with Ayn, totally at variance with his usual personality, split-second bursts of furious, seemingly motiveless anger at her that were gone almost before they could be noticed.

He did not shout at her because his gentle spirit cringed at anger, he did not shout at her because her needs were taking from him the few moments of contentment he had found - he shouted at her because she was late in dressing for an appointment, or had forgotten her keys, or wore stockings with runs in them, or nagged him to wear a warm sweater on a balmy day. He had repressed too much of his emotional life over too many years: it could not forever remain underground. Now his inevitable resentment of Ayn - perhaps his resentment of his own failed life - burst out at unpredictable times and for unpredictable reasons.

Ayn was bewildered by it. Her fantasy view of herself, of Frank, and of their relationship, did not permit her to understand the motivation she might have understood in someone else. Through the rest of their life together, as his outbursts of anger grew more frequent and more intense, it remained unintelligible to her.

Nor did she have time to think of it. From all sides, pressures to make ideological cha ges in her script were descending on her. [....]

Barbara writes as if she were inside Ayn's and Frank's respective minds, privy to their feelings and thoughts.

However, there isn't a mention of Ayn's contemplating divorce.

Ellen

[Selene]

Ellen:

Thanks a lot.

I always thought this was a red herring story.

Tempest in a teacup.

A...

[Ellen Stuttle]

Yep - here it is Heller pgs. 184, 230, in the index under O'Conner-Rand relationship, sub-heading divorce, Rand's consideration of:

See the post two above re Heller's pg. 284 reference.

Here's the quote Adam copied from pg. 230:

In their memoirs, both Brandens would declare that a few years after meering Rand, the author would confide that her marriage had been in trouble at the time and that she had contemplated divorce; [WOW AND COMMITED CONTEMPLATION OF DIVORCE!!]

One of the endnote references for that page is to pg. 248, The Passion of Ayn Rand. On that page, Barbara indeed does say that Ayn "seriously considered divorce" but not from whom she, Barbara, heard this. Was it something Ayn told her, or something Nathaniel told her that Ayn told him? Barbara expresses doubt that Ayn "would have divorced Frank under any circumstances."

The Passion of Ayn Rand

pg. 248

[The context is the days when Barbara and Nathaniel were visiting the ranch.]

Occasionally, [Ayn]would grow irritated with [Frank], and they appeared to have little to say to each other. But none of their friends suspected the extent to which the relationship was troubled. A number of years later, Ayn was to admit that during this period the friction between them and their lack of intellectual communication had come to so frustrate her that she had seriously considered divorce. She had decided to put the issue out of her mind until Atlas Shrugged was completed. By then, she had changed her mind. It seems unlikely that she would have divorced Frank under any circumstances, however hard and long she had considered it; her need of him was too great; the place he filled, the place of nonthreatening lover and companion, was too vital ever to be abandoned.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen:

Thanks a lot.

I always thought this was a red herring story.

Tempest in a teacup.

A...

Seems to me it's something for which Nathaniel was the unreliable source. I'd expect Barbara to have provided some detail if she'd heard it directly from Ayn.

However, it could be that Ayn mentioned it to Barbara, or to someone other than Nathaniel who then mentioned it to Barbara, and that Nathaniel turned the reference in Passion into a "recollection" of something Ayn confided in him.

Heller also references a Full Context interview with NB from 1996. I'll look for that later. (I don't have it filed where it belongs, but I think I might know where it got to.)

Ellen

EDIT: The interview isn't where I hoped it might be, and I haven't any more time for searching today.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Repeating:

Carol, where does Rand compare humans to insects? (See your post #1025.)

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Heller also references a Full Context interview with NB from 1996. I'll look for that later. (I don't have it filed where it belongs, but I think I might know where it got to.)

. . .

EDIT: The interview isn't where I hoped it might be, and I haven't any more time for searching today.

Ellen,

Here's a link to an online version:

Full Context Interview with Nathaniel Branden

Michael

[Neil Parille]

I'm not sure why this is so hard to believe (AR considering divorce). After all she had an affair with Nathaniel which indicates her marriage to Frank wasn't exactly what she would have considered optimal.

Neil

[Brant Gaede]

Too much considering; not enough facts.

--Brant

let the fiction begin

[Guyau]

From the Full Context interview:

Q: In Judgment Day you said that after finishing Atlas Shrugged, Rand was thinking fairly seriously of divorcing Frank. Why? And what made her change her mind?

Branden: Ayn told me that she had been unhappy with Frank for some years, chiefly because of his overall passivity and lack of intellectuality. . . . He was not a linear thinker, which was the only kind of thinker she really respected. Then there were other reasons I don't care to go into.

. . .

I don't think she ever would have divorced him. She needed him. And once I entered the picture, it was easier for her to accept his shortcomings because now she was getting important wants met by me. . . .

Frank was 57 years old in 1954. For some men that is old enough for sexual desire to have entirely vanished. (Additionally, by that age, interventions on prostate issues routinely brought that part of life to a close in that era, as with both my father and my mom’s second husband.) That leaves their partner painfully stranded. I don’t know if that was part of the situation here, part of the “other reasons I don’t care to go into,” but I just want to mention its regular occurrence and the understandability of seeking that missing aspect of life outside the marriage while remaining married.

[caroljane]

Ellen, re the insects, I was thinking of the parasite references in Roark's courtroom speech in FH and Galt's in The Speech. My impressions were that Rand saw only the producers as fully human, that the "parasites" chose not to be so. I do not know of anyother insect comparisons she made however, so I will withdraw my sweeping statement with apologies.

[Selene]

Ellen, re the insects, I was thinking of the parasite references in Roark's courtroom speech in FH and Galt's in The Speech. My impressions were that Rand saw only the producers as fully human, that the "parasites" chose not to be so. I do not know of anyother insect comparisons she made however, so I will withdraw my sweeping statement with apologies.

I also believe she was still making distinctions between the "uberman/overman/superman" issues from Nietzsche and her fully valued and rational heroic man.

[caroljane]

It is a "there are two types of people in the world" mindset, which Rand's supporters have seized upon often to excess.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I found a leech reference in Galt's speech:

They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it 'another dimension,' which consists of denying dimensions. The mystics of muscle call it 'the future,' which consists of denying the present. To exist is to possess identity. What identity are they able to give to their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say—and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge—God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue 'is non-profit, A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out.

It is only the metaphysics of a leech that would cling to the idea of a universe where a zero is a standard of identification. A leech would want to seek escape from the necessity to name its own nature—escape from the necessity to know that the substance on which it builds its private universe is blood.

But I don't think she was calling people leeches. Instead, she was saying they think like leeches.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

From the Full Context interview:

Q: In Judgment Day you said that after finishing Atlas Shrugged, Rand was thinking fairly seriously of divorcing Frank. Why? And what made her change her mind?

The question is sure misleading the way it's worded. What Branden said in Judgment Day - see below - was that Ayn had been thinking for a time that she would divorce Frank but she wanted to wait until she finished Atlas Shrugged, and meanwhile she'd changed her mind. The question makes it sound as if the time frame of the thoughts was after the book was completed.

Ellen

Judgment Day

pp. 66-67

[bold emphasis added]

[....]

At this time I had absolutely no intimation of trouble between Ayn and Frank. Ayn told me, much later, that those years on the ranch had been very bad for them. They were quarreling a great deal. She was bothered by his passivity and nonintellectuality. Then she confided that in the entire history of their relationship, not once had he initiated sex; it was always she who began it; after that, she said, everything went fine, he was very involved and uninhibited; but it was not difficult to imagine how that would leave her feeling. Then, there was the plain fact of their enormous intellectual differences - not merely the issue of intelligence but also differences in how their minds worked. She understood only pure, linear, sequential reasoning; he was almost totally intuitive; and although he could appreciate her cognitive style, she was never really comfortable with his. She said that she had been thinking of divorce but wanted to wait until the novel was finished because she dreaded the interruption of her work. Work came above everything. Years later she told me that she could not live without him. He was, in his own sad way, her rock.

The slightly altered version from My Years with Ayn Rand is in post #1052.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I found a leech reference in Galt's speech:

[....]

But I don't think she was calling people leeches. Instead, she was saying they think like leeches.

Um, folks, leeches aren't insects. They're segmented worms, phylum Annelida.

I misunderstood Carol's comment, which I now gather came from thinking that leeches are insects. I thought that Carol thought that Rand made some sort of humans/insect comparison a la Plato's Republic.

Ellen

[caroljane]

Yes, I did think of leeches as insects, and I will not even get into the cuttlefish which Aristotle studied, except the varieties of life are glorious....

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen, re the insects, I was thinking of the parasite references in Roark's courtroom speech in FH and Galt's in The Speech. My impressions were that Rand saw only the producers as fully human, that the "parasites" chose not to be so. I do not know of anyother insect comparisons she made however, so I will withdraw my sweeping statement with apologies.

Rand did see only the producers as fully human. I've recently quoted passages from both Galt's Speech and "The Objectivist Ethics" in which she plainly said that being what she called "man qua man" is a choice. The alternative is to be a suicidal animal with a sub-human consciousness.

Re the "insects," I misunderstood what you meant. See the post two above.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Um, folks, leeches aren't insects. They're segmented worms, phylum Annelida.

Ellen,

Oh... OK.

I'm fine with that. Thanks for the correction.

Rand didn't call people insects. She wouldn't be that crude, now would she?

She called them bloodsucking worms instead.

But maybe she did call them insects once in a while, especially if they were communists (from "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" addressed to a West Point class):

... it is urgently important for you to understand the nature of the enemy. You are attacked, not for any errors or flaws, but for your virtues. You are denounced, not for any weaknesses, but for your strength and your competence. You are penalized for being the protectors of the United States. On a lower level of the same issue, a similar kind of campaign is conducted against the police force. Those who seek to destroy this country, seek to disarm it—intellectually and physically. But it is not a mere political issue; politics is not the cause, but the last consequence of philosophical ideas. It is not a communist conspiracy, though some communists may be involved—as maggots cashing in on a disaster they had no power to originate. The motive of the destroyers is not love for communism, but hatred for America. Why hatred? Because America is the living refutation of a Kantian universe.

But here's one of my favorites from The Fountainhead. Ellsworth Toohey is young and is being raised by a hardworking but homely aunt who's secret regret is lack of romance in her life. Ellsworth always sends reminders of romance around her as gestures of "affection."

"You're a maggot, Elsie," she told him once. "You feed on sores."

"Then I'll never starve," he answered.

I just looked for another Randian insect and I found a nest. From "The Pull Peddlers," Chapter 16 in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

Observe that there is no consistent pattern in the erratic chaos of our foreign aid. And although in the long run it leads to the benefit of Soviet Russia, Russia is not its direct, immediate beneficiary. There is no consistent winner, only a consistent loser: the United States.

In the face of such a spectacle, some people give up the attempt to understand; others imagine that some omnipotent conspiracy is destroying America, that the rationalizations are hiding some malevolent, fantastically powerful giant.

The truth is worse than that: the truth is that the rationalizations are hiding nothing—that there is nothing at the bottom of the fog but a nest of scurrying cockroaches.

OK... Enough already.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Rand didn't call people insects. She wouldn't be that crude, now would she?

She'd be cruder. For instance, "crawling aggregate of muscles," in "The Objectivist Ethics."

As I said,

I misunderstood Carol's comment, which I now gather came from thinking that leeches are insects. I thought that Carol thought that Rand made some sort of humans/insect comparison a la Plato's Republic.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

Relax.

We love you.

I knew what you meant. Let's have some fun.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

I knew what you meant.

Sure fooled me.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I did, didn't I?