Peikoff wows 'em in Q&A as part of

[Barbara Branden]

Rnd was very much afraid of investing. She said that she was not sufficiently knowledgeable about investments and could not take the time to become knowledgeable. Nor was she willing to take advice on the subject; she knew that even the best of advisors can make mistakes. She had lived through the misery of trying to steal time to write when she had no money, and she wanted never to go through that again. By simply leaving her money in the bank, despite what inflation was doing to it, she could reasonably expect that she would have sufficient income to support herself for the rest of her life. To Rand, money was time -- free time to write. She was relatively indifferent to whatever else it could buy.

It was only in the last years of her life that she accepted Alan Greenspan's advice and put some of her money into very safe investments.

On another subject, I'm surprised that some of you think Leonard Peikoff should not leave his money to his daughter. If she is the person he cares about most in the world -- as I assume she is -- then of course he wants her to be the one who profits from whatever he has. She can't destroy Objectivism, or stop Rand's books from being read, even if she cares about it less than Peikoff does, or not at all. And I could well understand it if he preferred not to shackle her with legal requirements, just as Rand did not shackle him.

Barbara

[Philip Coates]

Barbara, I'm assuming there is plenty of money from the royalties on all those hundreds of thousands of books sold every year to both provide a very wealthy existence for his daughter and to require that some of the money be spent to translate Rand's books and spread her philosophy, as I assume she would have wished. (A trust does not need to control all of the money in an estate.)

Unless LP is an incredibly poor money manager or failed to hire one or has a gambling/drugs/booze/prostitution problem we don't know about , the Estate should be rolling in money, making this a non-problem. Bestselling authors with steady sales for some years often become millionaires and Rand is a super-bestselling author across more than half a century.

> Rand was very much afraid of investing. She said that she was not sufficiently knowledgeable about investments and could not take the time to become knowledgeable. Nor was she willing to take advice

Diversification is a good hedge against this. You spread the money out in conservative investments that hold value in most times and you put other money in counter-cyclicals and inflation and recession hedges like precious metals and gold stocks. You can also diversify between advisors, between mutual funds (which are themselves a diversification strategy), etc. You'll make mistakes but they will tend to even out and you won't lose everything. Asset protection, not wealth growth is the idea behind diversification.

> By simply leaving her money in the bank, despite what inflation was doing to it, she could reasonably expect that she would have sufficient income to support herself for the rest of her life.

During the seventies, with steady inflation, buying precious metals particularly either gold coins (despite lack of interest) or gold stocks would have been the 'safe' investment, not banks. (Some of this reasoning seems as if it would apply today. Obamonomics, massive deficits has to lead to Jimmy Carter-type inflation just over the horizon.)

[Robert Campbell]

On another subject, I'm surprised that some of you think Leonard Peikoff should not leave his money to his daughter. If she is the person he cares about most in the world -- as I assume she is -- then of course he wants her to be the one who profits from whatever he has. She can't destroy Objectivism, or stop Rand's books from being read, even if she cares about it less than Peikoff does, or not at all. And I could well understand it if he preferred not to shackle her with legal requirements, just as Rand did not shackle him.

Not only is it perfectly sensible for Leonard Peikoff to leave the copyrights to Kira, she is not known to have any personal interest in becoming an ideological arbiter, a philosophical panjandrum, or an overzealous literary executor—all of which her father has been or has tried to be.

Phil worries about the Estate not being interested in promoting translations of Ayn Rand's work. But wasn't it Dr. Peikoff who put the kibosh on a couple of Swedish translations because the man who was going to do them was insufficiently orthodox?

Robert Campbell

[Guyau]

The term privacy always brings to my mind a definition I learned many years ago from a 1977 law-review article. Privacy for legal contexts was being defined as autonomy over the intimacies of personal identity.

It always seemed to me a useful concept for moral thinking, too, beyond legal contexts. Most of us have intimacies of personal identity we want to keep, as the song says, "for your eyes only." Lying to those whose business it is not is right. "Inquiring minds want to know," but that is just tough.

See also:

http://www.solopassi...7#comment-19843

A few days ago, I read somewhere that Nathaniel Branden’s book My Years with Ayn Rand (1999) included intellectual biography. So I got the book, and this morning I skimmed through it. One thing I had wondered about for some time was the development of the concept of self-esteem as set out in Galt’s speech and as elaborated in print some years later by Nathaniel Branden in a major essay in The Objectivist. I got my money’s worth (pp. 148–49), realizing of course the window has to be taken as with some fog of memory and individual perspective.

There are bits of Rand’s intellectual history to be gleaned from this book. I see, for example, that in the ’40’s Rand was somewhat familiar with logical positivism and that with her Nathaniel and Barbara discussed a work of Hans Reichenbach, who was one of their profs at UCLA.

Personal associations come to mind with some of the personal details of this memoir. At the bit about Reichenbach, immediately I remembered reading in early college on my own his Axiomatization of the Theory of Relativity. It was my first exposure to the theory. Warm memories. Then in connection with another moment in the memoir—I’ll leave it to the reader to find—I remember my first lover saying to me “I’m the only one who is not afraid of you.”

My personal associations clash harshly with Branden’s response to something Rand wrote in 1966. It was the close of “Art and Sense of Life” published in The Objectivist. I remember where I was in my university library reading that essay for the first time, which was about 1968. I remember because of my response to the close of the essay, which is: “When one learns to translate the meaning of an art work into objective terms, one discovers that nothing is as potent as art in exposing the essence of a man’s character. An artist reveals his naked soul in his work—and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it.” I felt a thrill of intimate kinship with the author (of the novels and these lines) in that phrase gentle reader. Those two sentences were all warmth and light in my reception of them. Branden writes of them: “The use of words like expose, naked, and gentle reader could have no other purpose than to intimidate—to scare the hell out of her audience” (307). How different, New York and Oklahoma. I imagine I was fortunate not to have been plugged into NBI.

The purpose of this note, however, is mostly to correct a certain specific impression this book gives about public knowledge of the love affair between Rand and Branden. In his Introduction, Branden writes that at the time of his break with Rand, “neither she nor I (for different reasons) chose to disclose to the world its actual cause.” He means the factor of the romantic relationships, their shifts and pains. Nathaniel Branden did reveal his affair with Ayn Rand, if not to “the world,” then at least to a good number of us. It was in the form of a letter, as I recall, he wrote to some of his Objectivist-type associates. Some time before finishing college in 1971, I had been shown the letter and knew about the affair. I informed my friends immediately. I imagine hundreds, if not thousands, were informed by little ripples from that letter.

At the end of his memoir, Branden relates some conversations Rand had with his wife Devers (c. 1981). Within these Rand denied repeatedly having an affair with Nathaniel, which Devers squarely and repeatedly disputed to Rand. Finally, Rand conceded with the remark “A gentleman would have carried it to his grave” (399).

As mentioned in the earlier note above, I think it right to lie in some settings concerning private matters. Then too there are details concerning some acquaintances of mine across the span of my life I intend to take with me unspoken to the grave. The work of the dead is to inspire, and there is no need for people who knew and admired those acquaintances to know of any such defects.

In contrast Rand was a public figure about whom many friends of her work have a sincere and wholesome interest in knowing the important facts of her life, and that certainly includes her affair with Nathaniel. So I don’t fault Rand (or others in the know) for lying to the public in this matter, and I don’t fault Branden—either earlier or later—for relating what transpired as he saw it and remembers it.

To Rand’s remark “A gentleman would have carried it to his grave,” Devers replied “All the years when you and your supporters were attacking him, he never said a word about it.” Not quite. From early on, some of us knew about the affair. I did not and do not think any the less of either of them for that. Actually, my friends and I thought it was neat, apart from the sad ending. We were not normal (thank goodness).

[9thdoctor]

Nathaniel Branden did reveal his affair with Ayn Rand, if not to “the world,” then at least to a good number of us. It was in the form of a letter, as I recall, he wrote to some of his Objectivist-type associates. Some time before finishing college in 1971, I had been shown the letter and knew about the affair. I informed my friends immediately. I imagine hundreds, if not thousands, were informed by little ripples from that letter.

The letter is available here:

http://www.nathanielbranden.com/in-answer-to-ayn-rand-part-1-of-2/

It ends with this:

In writing the above, Miss Rand has given me the right to name that which I infinitely would have preferred to leave unnamed, out of respect for her privacy. I am obliged to report what was in that written paper of mine, in the name of justice and of self-defense.

That written statement was an effort, not to terminate my relationship with Miss Rand, but to save it, in some mutually acceptable form.

It was a tortured, awkward, excruciatingly embarrassed attempt to make clear to her why I felt that an age distance between us of twenty-five years constituted an insuperable barrier, for me, to a romantic relationship.

I think he kept whether there'd been an affair rather ambiguous, in fact if I didn't know better I'd conclude that he was saying that she had been trying to initiate an affair, not that there'd been one already. I do recall however, that William F. Buckley included a snide reference to the affair in his obituary of Rand, so I take it that it was interpreted that way by some.

[Brant Gaede]

That letter was sent to every subscriber of The Objectivist in October or early November 1968, over 20,000 people. It was in response to "To Whom It May Concern," published in The Objectivist in early October. While Ayn had control of the magazine, the Brandens retained a copy of the subscription list. I have a heavily annotated copy, in a box somewhere in my storage. You can also find it on www.BarbaraBranden.com

--Brant

I wonder if Stephen is referring to another letter I've never seen or heretofore heard about because Branden's ending statement does not reveal that there had been an affair and if fact was not truthful enough to be truthful and there is the seeming case of the guy who was watching Branden's house in LA while he was on a trip and went through his papers finding out about it that way then went blabbing about it

[Guyau]

Dennis and Brant,

Yes, I remember that snide remark of Buckley’s also. I'm unsure, however, if that was in his obituary jig or a later one. I do not recognize the letter “Part 1” at Barbara’s site. Nevertheless, that may have been what I saw, with the person showing it to me simply filling in with further information heard. However, I doubt it. As I recall, something I was being shown was shorter, and had been conveyed to my friend under hush-hush, I believe from her old Equitarian friends in Iowa. Anyway, we all understood there had been an affair between Rand and Branden, and that that was what the split was about.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS

I see here that in his 1982 piece Buckley did make a reference to romance between Rand and Branden, but it was clearly conveying only the overture of romance as indicated at the end of the Branden letter to subscribers. Buckley did not say an affair had taken place, and very possibly he did not yet know about it. I incline more and more to think that the letter I saw was only this well-known one to subscribers from Nathaniel Branden and that my friend filled in for us the report that an affair had actually taken place, ended, and caused the split.

Although I was still in college, I had seen, first hand, cases of business partners splitting and immediately accusing each other of all sorts of things, especially financial graft. I knew about those sorts of accusations: "take with grain of salt." The report of actual affair would have made simple sense of the split, easily more plausible than the vagaries and small potatoes in the cover stories. The age difference would not have made an affair utterly implausible to us, given the evident togetherness of the couple's thought and values. I should mention that what we carried away was only that there had been an affair that had ended; no particulars of the time frames. I recall being pissed off at Rand and Branden for ending NBI (which I thought was a good and important thing) over a splitting of the sheets. I had some things to learn about love.

[Brant Gaede]

B's reference to the affair may have been in one of his last books--if not the last.

--Brant

[PDS]

The term privacy always brings to my mind a definition I learned many years ago from a 1977 law-review article. Privacy for legal contexts was being defined as autonomy over the intimacies of personal identity.

It always seemed to me a useful concept for moral thinking, too, beyond legal contexts. Most of us have intimacies of personal identity we want to keep, as the song says, "for your eyes only." Lying to those whose business it is not is right. "Inquiring minds want to know," but that is just tough.

See also:

http://www.solopassi...7#comment-19843

A few days ago, I read somewhere that Nathaniel Branden’s book My Years with Ayn Rand (1999) included intellectual biography. So I got the book, and this morning I skimmed through it. One thing I had wondered about for some time was the development of the concept of self-esteem as set out in Galt’s speech and as elaborated in print some years later by Nathaniel Branden in a major essay in The Objectivist. I got my money’s worth (pp. 148–49), realizing of course the window has to be taken as with some fog of memory and individual perspective.

There are bits of Rand’s intellectual history to be gleaned from this book. I see, for example, that in the ’40’s Rand was somewhat familiar with logical positivism and that with her Nathaniel and Barbara discussed a work of Hans Reichenbach, who was one of their profs at UCLA.

Personal associations come to mind with some of the personal details of this memoir. At the bit about Reichenbach, immediately I remembered reading in early college on my own his Axiomatization of the Theory of Relativity. It was my first exposure to the theory. Warm memories. Then in connection with another moment in the memoir—I’ll leave it to the reader to find—I remember my first lover saying to me “I’m the only one who is not afraid of you.”

My personal associations clash harshly with Branden’s response to something Rand wrote in 1966. It was the close of “Art and Sense of Life” published in The Objectivist. I remember where I was in my university library reading that essay for the first time, which was about 1968. I remember because of my response to the close of the essay, which is: “When one learns to translate the meaning of an art work into objective terms, one discovers that nothing is as potent as art in exposing the essence of a man’s character. An artist reveals his naked soul in his work—and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it.” I felt a thrill of intimate kinship with the author (of the novels and these lines) in that phrase gentle reader. Those two sentences were all warmth and light in my reception of them. Branden writes of them: “The use of words like expose, naked, and gentle reader could have no other purpose than to intimidate—to scare the hell out of her audience” (307). How different, New York and Oklahoma. I imagine I was fortunate not to have been plugged into NBI.

The purpose of this note, however, is mostly to correct a certain specific impression this book gives about public knowledge of the love affair between Rand and Branden. In his Introduction, Branden writes that at the time of his break with Rand, “neither she nor I (for different reasons) chose to disclose to the world its actual cause.” He means the factor of the romantic relationships, their shifts and pains. Nathaniel Branden did reveal his affair with Ayn Rand, if not to “the world,” then at least to a good number of us. It was in the form of a letter, as I recall, he wrote to some of his Objectivist-type associates. Some time before finishing college in 1971, I had been shown the letter and knew about the affair. I informed my friends immediately. I imagine hundreds, if not thousands, were informed by little ripples from that letter.

At the end of his memoir, Branden relates some conversations Rand had with his wife Devers (c. 1981). Within these Rand denied repeatedly having an affair with Nathaniel, which Devers squarely and repeatedly disputed to Rand. Finally, Rand conceded with the remark “A gentleman would have carried it to his grave” (399).

As mentioned in the earlier note above, I think it right to lie in some settings concerning private matters. Then too there are details concerning some acquaintances of mine across the span of my life I intend to take with me unspoken to the grave. The work of the dead is to inspire, and there is no need for people who knew and admired those acquaintances to know of any such defects.

In contrast Rand was a public figure about whom many friends of her work have a sincere and wholesome interest in knowing the important facts of her life, and that certainly includes her affair with Nathaniel. So I don’t fault Rand (or others in the know) for lying to the public in this matter, and I don’t fault Branden—either earlier or later—for relating what transpired as he saw it and remembers it.

To Rand’s remark “A gentleman would have carried it to his grave,” Devers replied “All the years when you and your supporters were attacking him, he never said a word about it.” Not quite. From early on, some of us knew about the affair. I did not and do not think any the less of either of them for that. Actually, my friends and I thought it was neat, apart from the sad ending. We were not normal (thank goodness).

Re: the "gentle reader" portion of your comment--I recall my reaction to this as well, and agree with you. I found it to just the opposite of intimidating.

As for the rest of it, i.e., anything about their affair, I sure wish there was a statute of limitations on such things. I wish everybody had taken that entire episodes to their graves. The issue has been stomped on and beaten and psych-analysed beyond recognition. It is the too liberally applied sharp-smelling cologne of Objectivism, and my nostrils are sick of it.

On my first date as a 16 year old, my bricklaying high-school educated father gave me one of the best pieces of advice I have ever recieved: keep your peter in your pants. That advice has served me well.

Too bad NB didn't get the same advice. Or didn't heed it.

[Guyau]

Postscript

. . .

I should mention that what we carried away was only that there had been an affair that had ended; no particulars of the time frames. . . .

Post Postscript

Naturally, we also had no knowledge of Branden’s elaborate deception of Rand concerning their personal relationship in its final, fizzled years, which deception he relates in My Years with Ayn Rand. In Rand’s statement about the split, she had revealed only

I was shocked to discover that he was consistently failing to apply to his own personal life and conduct, not only the fundamental philosophical principles of Objectivism, but also the psychological principles he himself had enunciated and had written and lectured about. . . .

. . .

. . . Mrs. Branden suddenly confessed that Mr. Branden had been concealing from me certain ugly actions and irrational behavior in his private life, which were grossly contradictory to Objectivist morality . . . .

. . .

. . . I had not expected conscious deception on his part. I have always been willing to give a person the benefit of the doubt in regard to errors of knowledge . . . . This was the last of the evidence which caused me to break all professional, as well as personal, association with him. (9/15/68)

When Rand wrote this, she was 63, which happens to be my present age. I still think, as Jer and I thought those four decades ago, that there was nothing wrong and likely much right in this extramarital affair between those two souls of considerably different age. Our own affair (two men), we knew with absolute certainty against the entire world (and against the public thoughts of Branden on the subject) was right.

(At that time we had no thought of even the possibility that we could stay together after college at all, let alone make a life together. We were finding our own way in the dark in which there were only snarls from society. We parted after college. I found a job in a technical capacity in a very small firm in a remote, country part of the state. I fought it and fought it, but there was a rage going on in me saying No! I resigned the wonderful and lucky little job. I arrived by bus to the broad Main street of my college town on a brilliant, hot summer day, my suitcase and briefcase in hands. Jerry was waiting by his car across the street. Years later I was recalling that scene to him and said I still remembered walking across that street. He said, “No. You ran across that street.”)

A straight friend of mine married a second time when he was about 50. She was about 18. They continued together to his death, when he was around 78. I don’t mean to say there were no special problems that needed to be endured and managed on account of the large age difference. But something very right was theirs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There haven't been any takers in answering my question about a reaction to AR's statement, supposing one had no prior context of the persons involved.

___

I'm going to dig it out and look at it again. When I read it [back then], my reaction was merely that it wasn't telling the story--too many big fat unanswered questions. I was surprised when I found out some people didn't react that way. One person became quite angry at me when I said that was my reaction.

I first heard of "the Affair" in the winter of 1977 from an alumnus of Vassar College, who had heard of it from a philosophy professor there named David Kelley. At that time it had never been publicly discussed by any of the people involved beyond "To Whom It May Concern" and the Brandens' replies -- none of which I'd read yet. What I heard from the Vassar College alumnus was that Frank O'Connor and Barbara Branden had consented to the affair.

How did David Kelley know? It must have circulated among Ayn Rand's acquaintances then, while she was still alive. -- Mike Hardy

I discovered this old post by Mike Hardy this morning. Glad to see that others have spoken of knowing about the affair before Rand’s death. I’m now more confident that hundreds of us “knew” about it. That is, we had heard of it and thought the story the most likely root story of what had happened.

It seems likely, with this further information from Mike, that all of Rand’s continuing immediate circle had heard the story. That fits with something I overheard after a presentation and Q&A from one of Rand’s principal emissaries in the late 1970’s (ten years after the split). A woman had asked him about what he thought about such-and-such psychological writings of Nathaniel Branden. The distinguished man from Rand’s circle had said something deflationary about those works and recommended works of Abraham Maslow in their place. The particulars in themselves were not so memorable to me as a creepy feeling I carried away: They are terrified of NB. Now I wonder if that strange feeling was on target and the reason they were afraid was because they knew (all of the circle knew) that Branden had a jackknife on Rand.

[caroljane]

Stephen,

What a fine expression of your feelings on this. Mine are similar. One of the first things I wrote on OL was a short piece on why I admire Ayn Rand as a human being, but I forget where I posted it; I wonder if you happened to read it at the time.

In obeying your deepest self you most fully became yourself. You deserve the happiness you have found.

Carol

[9thdoctor]

I discovered this old post by Mike Hardy this morning. Glad to see that others have spoken of knowing about the affair before Rand’s death. I’m now more confident that hundreds of us “knew” about it. That is, we had heard of it and thought the story the most likely root story of what had happened.

Somewhere or other you'll find a piece by Robert Bidinotto about being in the audience when Peikoff first acknowledged the truth about the affair, soon after Barbara's book came out. Without rereading it, the impression he gives is that everyone knew, but were in denial and were shocked to finally have the truth confirmed.

[Robert Campbell]

It seems likely, with this further information from Mike, that all of Rand’s continuing immediate circle had heard the story.

Stephen,

The Affair was talked about in the 1970s. Or, at least, it was whispered about.

But I can't believe that everyone in Rand's remaining circle was informed.

Allan Blumenthal, of course, knew.

But Leonard Peikoff didn't know (or at least he strove mightily not to know).

And the self-designated enforcers, like Harry Binswanger and Peter Schwartz, pretended not to know.

Remember that for Schwartz, Barbara Branden's mere statement that there had been an affair was an arbitrary assertion.

Robert Campbell

[caroljane]

The enduring mystery to me, now that the chronology of the affair is known, is when did Rand fall in love with Branden? He has gallantly asserted that it was he who initiated the affair. Yet she was willing and surely must have been so before he approached her. Surely when you fall in love with somebody you feel the attraction, physical and emotional, fairly soon...it doesn't take years.

Yet she encouraged him to marry Barbara although Barbara had doubts, as she mentions in the Passion.

[Guyau]

Carol, I had missed that, but found it (re #61). Thanks.

You might like to see this, which is available at Netflix. It has much about Rand’s story, other than the involvement with Branden. It is a nice flow of life and ideas. Walter and I found it informative and delightful. I have given this DVD to a couple of friends, and they really enjoyed it.

Concerning #64 I'm pretty sure Nathaniel Branden gives his perceptions on that development in My Years with Ayn Rand, which you might like to give a read.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS (Re #64)

Well, let’s see. First off I see I erred in reporting that Rand’s conversation with Nathaniel and Barbara on Reichenbach was in the ’40’s. Nathaniel first met Rand in March 1950.

The two couples became well-acquainted and super-important friends. Nathaniel and Barbara married in January 1953. Shortly after changing his last name to Branden (which did not come from Ben Rand), in the fall of 1954, Nathan and Ayn slipped into falling in love, evidently simultaneously, step in step. That is his perception and recollection (pp. 119–43). He led the dance, the two resisted the steps, but stepped till the words were spoken.

[Robert Campbell]

He has gallantly asserted that it was he who initiated the affair.

Gallantly, but I suspect inaccurately.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

They both "initiated" the affair and both were trapped by different needs and suppositions. Ayn had fewer options because of her age and the context of writing AS, while Nathaniel was going full throttle on what he did not know was a one-trick pony. That only works until you're 30 or an obsessive genius.

--Brant