Harriman takes the meat-axe to Rand's journals

[william.scherk]

A quick query to list members who possess the Letters Journals of Ayn Rand. I have my own copy on order, but have had to rely upon Amazon's reader to 'search within' the text.

Missing from the Amazon reader's purview on this book are preface material. I seem to recall that David Harriman did not reproduce an entire class of entries . . . if my memory is as good as Valliant's quoating, I may be wrong.

So the query is: did Harriman set aside journal entries that featured Rand's personal notes on psychology? In other words, if she ever wrote a slam of Person A's 'psycho-epistemology' or other moral failings, has Harriman avoided reproducing them? The Objectivist Research Center merely notes that Harriman removed 'personal entries' from her 'working journals' . . . a subsidiary query would be -- were Rand's journals entirely 'working'-diaries? Did she, as with the 1968 entries in POARC on Branden, spend time puzzling out the morally-repugnant depths of folks in and near the Collective?

It would be so interesting to see if she ever wrote anything about Hospers break, for example.

I am wondering about this because it seems to me that Valliant did more or less the same thing -- excising all supposed redundancies and references to other people than TheBrandens.

I further wonder just what kind of shape the journals were in once Harriman had finished with the 'working' journals . . .

One more dumbass question: what will happen to all these materials once the Pontiff heads for Valhalla? -- does anyone suspect a deposition of all the archive material to a public facility . . . or is it likely that these materials will be locked in a cave under Mount Ari until the end of time?

Edited July 3, 2008 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

Nothing about Hospers in the index or the chronology, which gets very thin after Atlas.

--Brant

edit: excuse me, that was from The Journals of Ayn Rand. Somedhow I ended up with two copies.

--Brant

Edited July 3, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Greybird]

I'd like to help you, but I no longer have Letters of Ayn Rand. Though I suspect you're actually talking about Journals of Ayn Rand, a different volume, one I never owned.

I've sold off Letters of Ayn Rand and Peikoff's OPAR, among dozens of other hardcovers, at monthly meetings of the Karl Hess [libertarian supper] Club in west Los Angeles. For between $5 and $10 each.

I still bring one or two books to most meetings, if anyone wants to take a chance. It's a slow whittling of my overstuffed library. Also of my videos — I just sold my spare copy for $15 of "Harry's War," with Edward Herrmann heroically battling the IRS, from a tank!

As for "the meat-axe," Harriman is just being the instrument of Peikoff. It won't matter where the Rand papers end up. All independent scholarly value for them has already been gutted. Their provenance is that they've been used, abused, and freely edited to give work to Peikoff's favorites. That's not going to change, unless his wife or daughter get some sense in the next decade.

[Neil Parille]

As Brant notes, the letters and the journals become quite thin after Atlas. I've always wondered why. No drafts or notes for her articles for the Ayn Rand Letter?

Valliant says that Rand's journals don't shed any light on her splits with people.

Darn, I missed the lecture on how to use the archives --

http://www.objectivistconferences.com/ocon...ename=openhouse

Maybe there will be a refresher course for Valliant.

-NEIL

____

[Reidy]

I've put this up on various Objectivist sites before, but it seems once again to be a hot topic. A few years before Rand's letters came out as a book, I looked up her correspondence with FLlWright at the Getty Center in LA, which has his archives on microfiche, and found several editorial discrepances, though nothing that adds up to a consistent line of bowlderization:

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

>

>As printed:

>I am sorry for this late reply to your letter of the 12th which arrived

>while Mr. Wright was in the East. He has now left for a several month

>sojourn in the Arizona desert so there will be no opportunity for you to

>see him.

>

>Original [He though AR was a man.]:

>Please forgive this late reply to your letter of the 12th which arrived

>here while Mr. Wright was in the east [no capitalization]. He has now

>left for several months sojourn in Arizona and there will be no

>opportunity for you to see him.

>

>Unimportant, but still hard to understand, as the alterations don't save

>space or make the text read any more clearly.

>

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

>

>Printed:

>...Both items obtrude themselves disagreeably on the imagination, and he

>is not very convincing anyway. Will try to sometime see you in New York

>and say *why* if you want me to do so.

>

>Original:

>...Both obstruct themselves disagreeably [no comma] and he is not very

>convincing. Will try to fine [sic] time to see you in New York and say

>why [no emphasis] if you want me to do so.

>

>Here Berliner is doing Wright a favor, as "obstruct" is simply the wrong

>word, but I'd rather think that Wright or his secretary made a typing

>mistake than that he would use a split infinitive.

>

>3. Telegram, p. 111:

>The original says "ROARKE"; the last sentence says "YOU WOULD", not

>"YOU'D", and she gives her address.

>The reply is dated the 21st, not the 22nd as in the book, and says

>"SORRY [no comma] MR. WRIGHT HAS ALREADY LEFT FOR ARIZONA DESERT."

>

>The spelling is presumably a mistake on the operator's part rather than

>an earlier version of Rand's because Wright's earlier letter had used

>the familiar spelling. The telegram and reply are on what looks like a

>typewritten sheet, not a telegram form.

>

>4. Wright to Rand, 23 April 44:

>This and the letter of 14 January 46, quoted on p. 116, are for one

>reason or another not in Wright's archive.

>

>5. Rand to Wright, 14 May 44:

>

>Printed pp 113 - 114:

>So far, it looks as if I will win the battle, and the book will be

>preserved on the screen. I am willing to take the chance, because my

>producer's enthusiastic.

>

>Original:

>So far, it looks as if I will win the battle [no comma] and the book

>will be preserved on the screen. I am willing to take the chance,

>because my producer's appreciation of the book is genuine, intelligent

>and enthusiastic. ["go east" in the next paragraph is not capitalized

>in the letter as it is in the book.]

>

>This is the really puzzling one, as the changes are a disservice to

>Rand. The comma, as I learned grammar, really shouldn't be there, so

>she knew English better than whoever put it in. The bigger change later

>on makes her out to be a more careless, slangy writer than she was, and

>less thoughtful about the movie project's prospects.

[Reidy]

I know of at least one case where Harriman didn't suppress a 'psychological' entry. Early in her notes for Atlas Shrugged Rand engages in what you might call either novelistic meditation on character or shamelessly presumptuous mind-reading of, among others, Wright and Ivan Lebedeff (a character actor who worked in Hollywood from the 30s to the 60s). I don't have the book at hand, but if you looked up either of those names in the index you should be able to find the entry.

[Brant Gaede]

I know of at least one case where Harriman didn't suppress a 'psychological' entry. Early in her notes for Atlas Shrugged Rand engages in what you might call either novelistic meditation on character or shamelessly presumptuous mind-reading of, among others, Wright and Ivan Lebedeff (a character actor who worked in Hollywood from the 30s to the 60s). I don't have the book at hand, but if you looked up either of those names in the index you should be able to find the entry.

Such speculation is legit for a novelist in researching her characters in her private journals. It is least defensible in the case of Wright. For less famous people the actual name might be needed for a point of immediate reference.

--Brant