Bryan Register's comparison of JD and MYWAR

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bryan Register's comparison of JD and MYWAR

As everybody knows, Nathaniel Branden wrote two versions of his memoirs - Judgment Day (1989), then he revised them and published the new version under the title, My Years With Ayn Rand (1999).

Bryan Register wrote an article comparing the versions in Liberty, August 1999, entitled "A Kinder, Gentler 'Judgment Day.'" The teaser line is "Ten years can make a big difference."

Over time, a small controversy has grown up around this article. It has been used by several people to insinuate harsh negative things about NB. The article is difficult to obtain and most people aren't in the habit of buying back issues of magazines. Thus an image has been projected and has taken root that Bryan Register wrote an article hostile to NB.

He didn't.

The main issue that gets harped on is that NB made about 400 changes from one book to the next and both are a little over 400 pages long. As the new book is a rewrite - a memoir based on a perspective 10 years later, including a different approach - and not merely a corrected version based on errata (although a few facts do get corrected), I don't find this at all excessive.

I read the article a while back. I didn't find that the negative portrayal attributed to Register (by insinuation) was warranted and decided to write about this one day. But as the innuendo happened only sporadically, I kept letting it slide. Recently, it flamed up more than usual and Ellen Stuttle responded essentially with what I wanted to write (April 13 2006).

As Ellen has a physical problem that crops up when she stays on the computer for a long time, and adapting her post as stand-alone for OL would take valuable time from other new uses of her computer time, I am posting her response here as given (with her permission). The poster she quotes and answers is James Heapes-Nelson. It is highly perceptive as written and reflects my own thinking about the two versions (except, of course, Ellen's endorsement of the image of Rand given in NB's memoirs from her experience in having known Rand personally).

Jim wrote:

"My question to you is: what part of Judgment Day should we believe based on the changes that were made?"

Jim, I have trouble getting a grip on that question as asked. To begin with, I don't think there's a "should" here, or a "we." I'm not in a position to tell others how they ought to assess Nathaniel, or anyone else, only to give my assessments and reasons therefor.

The book, as you observe, does not purport to be a documented biography. It is experiences Nathaniel lived, as he experienced and as he recalls them. It is his viewpoint. Obviously, there are numerous factual details: He met AR in X year, when he was Y old; NBI was formed in Z year, etc. If there's a factual detail which can be verified by external sources, then I think doubting it because Nathaniel said it would be silly. On the other hand, if he gets such a detail wrong in the first book and corrects it in the second, I think accusations of his being a liar in the first case because of having made such a mistake are silly. (Why would he deliberately have made mistakes about factual details which can be checked?) I'll assume you're speaking instead of such details as the exact number of affairs Barbara had, his descriptions of various people, etc. I see no problem in thinking that when he wrote the first book, he had an exaggerated view of how many affairs Barbara had had, but that he believed this view at the time -- or in thinking that with the passage of the years he came to feel that he'd still been overly angry when he wrote the first book and he wanted to soften the portrait he painted of certain people. (Do you think that if you were to write now an account of your emotions about your life, and then to revise the account ten years later, you would make no changes?)

"[J H-N] No interviews were conducted in the course of writing this book and Nathaniel asserts that the only assurance we have about the accuracy of the account is the internal consistency of the narrative."

I don't think he asserts that that's the "only" assurance, as regards everything he says. (I haven't time to look it up right now.) As I recall what he was talking about was the plausibility, the characterological accuracy of his presentations -- whether his portraits seem correct, not whether he has every detail right. I think that's pretty much what you have to go on in any such account, especially in regard to scenes where there weren't (or no longer are) other witnesses -- accounts of what the narrator felt, and what happened in exchanges with someone now dead. Does what he says make sense to you or doesn't it? The backdrop estimate you have to make is whether or not you believe the narrator is attempting to tell the truth -- i.e., a judgment of the narrator's character -- and of how reliable you believe the narrator's memory to be. But even if you have a narrator who you think is trying his or her best to present the truth, and whose memory you estimate as a good one, you still, with the kind of first-person recollection Nathaniel was writing, have to go by how well what's being said adds up in your view. I think that Nathaniel was aware of this and that the options you list do not exhaust the possibilities.

You give as options:

"[J H-N] Now, either Nathaniel did not expect us to take his account of specific events in Judgment Day seriously, his recollection is extremely poor or he was lying to us."

The "extremely poor" I think isn't documented. The kind of details he corrected aren't ones which change the whole tenor of anything. It's not like, oops, there was a whole other person in this story whom I left out. Or, oops, I met Rand in 1960, not 1950. You make it sound as if there were enormous changes. But there weren't. Nor is the only other alternative to his having been lying to you that he didn't expect you to take "his account of specific events [...] seriously." He didn't expect you to take them as if there was a camera filming them, as if it happened very exactly as he said. And he told you he didn't expect that, that he was not claiming he was recounting exact dialogue. What I'd say he was expecting (or at least hoping) was that you (meaning whoever the reader is) would take seriously that what he writes was his honest attempt to recall those years and make vivid what they were like for him.

You write:

"[J H-N] If Branden was just emoting on paper or filling in gaps, he should have said so."

In a sense, that is what he said. He was telling, to repeat, the story of how he perceived those years. As to your being given "confidence in what he says about Ayn Rand," I think that's each reader's judgment call (unfortunate pun on the book's title; I'm too tired to try to think of something more felicitous). I place a fair amount of confidence in what he says. But then I was around Ayn Rand enough times to come to conclusions of my own, and I knew and heard from people close to her. I have more reasons than you have to think that there's significant accuracy in what he wrote. From your standpoint, I don't see any sound reason for dismissing Nathaniel as a liar if you feel that you wouldn't have assessed Rand the way he did. Surely you've had an experience where you and someone else assess a third person quite differently.

Ellen

Thank you Ellen. Many thanks.

Michael

[Kat]

I read Bryan Register's article, too, and I did not see it as evidence of NB's "dishonesty" at all. Far from it. Ten years passed between the publication of these two books. He simply took a step back and decided to make some changes. Apparently, most of the changes were not even about Ayn Rand, but had more to do with casting Barbara in a better light. More time had passed since their divorce and they were on better terms when the second book was published. No big surprise. I commend, not condemn, NB for taking responsibility for his own words and making the changes he did. It was a classy thing to do.

The last two paragraphs of the article sum it up pretty well.

My years with Ayn Rand tells its story more readable than Judgment Day. The members of Rand's inner circle are not quite the passive bores we saw before, and Barbara gets more credit for her autonomy and accomplishments. Rand is treated somewhat more sensitively; Branden himself is humbler and takes more responsibility for his hand in things.

I noted about four hundred changes between the earlier memoir and the current one that struck me as substantial. Four hundred is also the approximate number of pages in the book. The '89 memoir was 436 pages long, the '99 is 405. A lot of changes are relatively minor; the tenor of the book is not radically different; yet four hundred changes make four hundred interesting differences in a truly fascinating story.

Kat

[Kat]

I just finished reading NB's book, A Woman's Self-Esteem and there is a chapter near the end called "Choosing Happiness." He talks a bit about naturally happy people like Devers who focus on self-discipline and a commitment to being happy. This book came out around the same time as My Years with Ayn Rand so reading this passage may give a little bit more context as to why he chose to give the book a more positive spin.

The more I studied and thought about other happy people I encountered, the more clear it became that happy people process their experiences so that, as quickly as possible, positives are held brighter in the foreground of consciousness and negatives are held dimly in the background. This is essential to understanding those people.

But then I was stopped by this thought: None of these ideas are entirely new to me. At some level they are familiar. Why have I not implemented them better throughout my life? Once I had asked the question, I knew the answer. Somehow long ago I had decided that if I did not spend a significant amount of time focused on the negatives in my life, the disappointments and setbacks, I was being evasive, irresponsible toward reality, not serious enough about my life. Expressing this thought in words for the first time, I saw how absurd it was. It would be reasonable only if there were corrective actions I could be taking that I was avoiding taking. But if I was taking every action possible, then a further focus on negatives has no merit at all.

If something is wrong, the question to ask is: Is there an action I can take to improve or correct the situation? If there is, I take it. If there isn't, I do my best not to torment myself about what is beyond my control. Admittedly, this last is not always easy.

Kat

[Robert Campbell]

Kat,

The passage you quoted makes the same point that Positive Psychologists frequently make, about the difference between optimism and pessimism and how they affect a person's overall happiness.

I recently read Authentic Happiness by Marty Seligman, where this is a major theme.

Robert