News: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns

[Robert Campbell]

Jennifer Burns was interviewed a couple of weeks ago by Marshall Pope of New Books in History:

http://newbooksinhistory.com/?p=1324

Direct link to the podcast is here:

http://newbooksinhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/Podcasts/Burns%20Interview.mp3

Starting at 48:46, Dr. Burns makes stronger claims about Ayn Rand's Benzedrine use than appeared in her book.

Robert Campbell

[Philip Coates]

(hackjob-haiku for adam)

Jeff likes to be a snark.

Even when his referent can't find a place to park.

Since I am so certain, people like to tell me to blow.

I guess they just don't like a hero.

Edited October 23, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just got a notice from Jennifer that Mark Sanford(!!!) was assigned by Newsweek to review her book. He also reviewed Anne Heller's bio. (Not a formal review, but a review.)

This is the same South Carolina Governor who disappeared for a few days to fan a hidden flame in Argentina!

Here's the link: Atlas Hugged.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Whoa!!!

Mark Sanford has long been known to have libertarian sympathies (and while in Congress, he was interviewed in Reason magazine). He is also highly religious, as came through in his article.

But his stock has fallen sharply. He won't be a candidate for President. There is talk here in South Carolina that he may be impeached.

He made one mistake in the piece: the rules he attributes to Nathaniel Branden, during the NBI days, weren't spelled out. In Judgment Day, NB says that only the first couple of items on his list would have been consciously admitted by the members of Rand's Circle.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Here's a review of Goddess by a Colorado-based ARIan who calls himself mtnrunner2.

Mtnrunner2 has come across as quite the zealot in the past, so the moderate tone of the review is remarkable:

http://funwithgravity.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-goddess-of-market-ayn-rand-and.html

I wonder whether collective amnesia will soon become the modal reaction to Jim Valliant and PARC.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Here's a review of Goddess by a Colorado-based ARIan who calls himself mtnrunner2.

Mtnrunner2 has come across as quite the zealot in the past, so the moderate tone of the review is remarkable:

http://funwithgravit...n-rand-and.html

I wonder whether collective amnesia will soon become the modal reaction to Jim Valliant and PARC.

Robert Campbell

It appears to be a good, thinking review. Maybe ARI generated animadversion upon the Brandens is now vitiated because you cannot deal with and accept these new bios without implicitly accepting the essences of what Nathaniel and Barbara wrote about Ayn Rand which depict her as a complicated, powerful and supremely interesting human being. Valliant gets to stand by holding that silly typewriter proving she didn't get her name from it. PARC is a dead-end cultural artifact. People don't care about a cheap prosecutor's brief unless they care about the prosecutor, because you can't find Ayn Rand in there except for her must-now-be-somewhat-suspect diary entries. Leonard Peikoff is still on the outside looking in on the world of Ayn Rand wondering why he couldn't get in even after she died, and angry he couldn't twist her into a shape that didn't fit her actual reality. She herself failed, so how was he going to succeed except in the short-term? The Brandens win this tussle. Permanently.

How do I know this stuff about LP? I really don't, but I do know he's not stupid. He had to know that to get at the Brandens, especially Barbara, he had to use Rand via PARC whatever the cost to Rand's reputation. PARC is a Branden assault--as in a war--and AR was collateral damage. PARC makes her look pitiful and quite unfairly to her. She was so much more than her diary entries even during that difficult time in her life.

--Brant

Edited October 24, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Chris Grieb]

Here's a review of Goddess by a Colorado-based ARIan who calls himself mtnrunner2.

Mtnrunner2 has come across as quite the zealot in the past, so the moderate tone of the review is remarkable:

http://funwithgravity.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-goddess-of-market-ayn-rand-and.html

I wonder whether collective amnesia will soon become the modal reaction to Jim Valliant and PARC.

Robert Campbell

Robert; Thanks for the link. It was an interesting review.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

I just looked on SLOP and saw that you mentioned that the PARC game is up. I quote from you:

The Game Is Up

Here's a review of the Burns book from a guy who goes as mtnrunner2. Whoever he is, he's affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute and with Diana Hsieh.

http://funwithgravity.blogspot...

When this kind of review comes from a member of the Orthodoxy, the game up is for the Valliantoids and the Perigonians.

Pretty soon, the average ARIan will deny ever hearing of Jim Valliant.

Man! You sure get those little suckers wound up, don't you?

The responses are hilarious. I don't even think they know what you are talking about.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

Nope, the last defenders of PARC are so far gone, they don't realize what's hit them.

In fact, Jeff Perren can normally be relied to defend the Ayn Rand Institute when he's not vouching for Lindsay Perigo's good character. On the blog he shares with Michael Moeller, he's reviewed the Jennifer Burns book.

Mr. Perren's review is disputatious, mainly about the philosophical points he thinks Dr. Burns has gotten wrong. But its manner is notably mild. Logically, if Mr. Perren were genuinely convinced of the immutable truth of Jim Valliant's opus, he'd have known that a scorched-earth screed was required.

Robert Campbell

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Full Publication of Primary Source Material

I emphatically agree with the idea that we need to see Rand's exact words, so the complete transcripts of the unedited [except for ums and ahs] journals, letters, and answers to questions should be published.

But I also notice that the spate of bios of Rand also rely on material and interviews we are not privy to. Just as we can't have complete confidence in the selectivity (errors, omissions, special pleading, hidden agendas) in journals and letters we can't see, so we can't have complete confidence in the selectivity or error-free nature of the mass of materials biographers and memoir writers are sifting through and choosing from.

For that reason, the largest source of Rand's own words on her life -- the complete transcripts of the taped interviews Barbara conducted and on which she and other biographers? rely in part -- should be published (or put on the web if there is no commercial market -- but I think there would be for Rand speaking, she is always clear, precise, fascinating).

[Brant Gaede]

Subject: Full Publication of Primary Source Material

I emphatically agree with the idea that we need to see Rand's exact words, so the complete transcripts of the unedited [except for ums and ahs] journals, letters, and answers to questions should be published.

But I also notice that the spate of bios of Rand also rely on material and interviews we are not privy to. Just as we can't have complete confidence in the selectivity (errors, omissions, special pleading, hidden agendas) in journals and letters we can't see, so we can't have complete confidence in the selectivity or error-free nature of the mass of materials biographers and memoir writers are sifting through and choosing from.

For that reason, the largest source of Rand's own words on her life -- the complete transcripts of the taped interviews Barbara conducted and on which she and other biographers? rely in part -- should be published (or put on the web if there is no commercial market -- but I think there would be for Rand speaking, she is always clear, precise, fascinating).

Is she ever wrong?

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

Jennifer Burns has finally completed her four-part saga about working at the Ayn Rand Archives.

Her "prognostications" are interesting.

She predicts that although access will increase for outside scholars, material related to the affair between Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand will probably remain off-limits to them for quite some time.

http://www.jenniferburns.org/blog/74-in-the-rand-archive-part-iv-prognostications

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

One of Jim Valliant's defenders, Ed Cline, is in no hurry to review Jennifer Burns' book or Anne Heller's.

But he does feel ready to review Stephen Cox's review.

http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2009/10/oblique-smearing-of-ayn-rand.htm

I think a common response from the Orthodoxy is going to take the form:

• This biographer says that Rand did X

• Rand didn't say she was doing X

• Rand did only what she said she was doing

• Ergo, this biographer is out to get Ayn Rand

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Both new biographies are now reviewed in The Economist.

http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14698215

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Mr. Cline is funny. He says he won't review the new bios until he reads them then reviews them right in the first paragraph out of almost complete first-hand ignorance.

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

Brant G,

Mr. Cline is funny. He says he won't review the new bios until he reads them then reviews them right in the first paragraph out of almost complete first-hand ignorance.

Maybe he's taking as his model Ayn Rand's essay on A Theory of Justice by John Rawls?

Robert C

[Chris Grieb]

Or LP's review of Barbara Branden's book.

[Robert Campbell]

Touché, Chris!

Robert Campbell

[Alfonso Jones]

Or LP's review of Barbara Branden's book.

LP - - some fun ambiguity for those initials in that sentence!

Bill P

[Jerry Biggers]

Both new biographies are now reviewed in The Economist.

http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14698215

Robert Campbell

I am not particularly worried about the responses of the ARIans, since they mainly talk just to each other, and are preoccupied by nervously attempting to enforce conformity to their "party line" amongst themselves.

However, I regret to say that the passage of fifty-plus years has not substantially changed the method of attack that the MSM and liberal reviewers have taken towards Ayn Rand. In large part, they have simply used the publication of these books as an excuse to repeat the same distortions and mis-characterizations. The recent reviews of the Burns and Heller biographies in the New York Times, New York, Salon, The Economist, The New Republic, and at the Barnes and Noble online newsletter review, all pretty much follow the same game plan: recount personal eccentrities of Rand and "The Collective", misrepresent key aspects of Objectivism, and then use this "strawman" to dismiss her views as not worthy of examination by serious people.

That this method attack has not changed since the initial reactions to the publications of Atlas Shrugged, read these reviews and then read Nathaniel Branden's comments on the line of attacks used by Rand's critics near the end of his essay, "The Moral Revolution in Atlas Shrugged," published in 1962 in Who Is Ayn Rand? (recently republished as a separate pamphlet by TAS). He could have written that today, as a response to the current reviews, and not changed a single line.

Apparently, the reviewers think that if they can label her as nasty, eccentric, or just plain crazy, then few of their readers will bother to check her out for themselves, relying instead on the liberals' mythology. This may work for their acolytes, but risks a serious counter-reaction in those who actually do read Rand, and then realize that the liberal reviewers and their allies have lied to them.

Do the Burns and Heller books have enough positive things to say about Rand to counter the impressions left by the liberal reviewers? Or will readers rely on observations in these books that tend to fit the liberal's "party line" about Rand? I am not sure about reactions that "neutral" readers would have to the view of Rand presented in Professor Burns' book. I can't say anything at all about what is in Anne Heller's book, since it is just now being released.

[Brant Gaede]

Jerry, the liberals rule the media the media rule the country and they intend to extend their power and rule and maintain their tribal allegiance which means comfort zone.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Or LP's review of Barbara Branden's book.

LP - - some fun ambiguity for those initials in that sentence!

Bill P

Bill; I still think of LP's as 331/3 long playing records. I suspect there are some people who don't know what that is.

[Chris Grieb]

Or LP's review of Barbara Branden's book.

LP - - some fun ambiguity for those initials in that sentence!

Bill P

Bill; I still think of LP's as 331/3 long playing records. I suspect there are some people who don't know what that is.

Bill; I know some people refer to Leonard Peikoff as Lenny but I'll give him a little dignity by just using his initials.

[Chris Grieb]

Both new biographies are now reviewed in The Economist.

http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14698215

Robert Campbell

I am not particularly worried about the responses of the ARIans, since they mainly talk just to each other, and are preoccupied by nervously attempting to enforce conformity to their "party line" amongst themselves.

However, I regret to say that the passage of fifty-plus years has not substantially changed the method of attack that the MSM and liberal reviewers have taken towards Ayn Rand. In large part, they have simply used the publication of these books as an excuse to repeat the same distortions and mis-characterizations. The recent reviews of the Burns and Heller biographies in the New York Times, New York, Salon, The Economist, The New Republic, and at the Barnes and Noble online newsletter review, all pretty much follow the same game plan: recount personal eccentricities of Rand and "The Collective", misrepresent key aspects of Objectivism, and then use this "strawman" to dismiss her views as not worthy of examination by serious people.

That this method attack has not changed since the initial reactions to the publications of Atlas Shrugged, read these reviews and then read Nathaniel Branden's comments on the line of attacks used by Rand's critics near the end of his essay, "The Moral Revolution in Atlas Shrugged," published in 1962 in Who Is Ayn Rand? (recently republished as a separate pamphlet by TAS). He could have written that today, as a response to the current reviews, and not changed a single line.

Apparently, the reviewers think that if they can label her as nasty, eccentric, or just plain crazy, then few of their readers will bother to check her out for themselves, relying instead on the liberals' mythology. This may work for their acolytes, but risks a serious counter-reaction in those who actually do read Rand, and then realize that the liberal reviewers and their allies have lied to them.

Do the Burns and Heller books have enough positive things to say about Rand to counter the impressions left by the liberal reviewers? Or will readers rely on observations in these books that tend to fit the liberal's "party line" about Rand? I am not sure about reactions that "neutral" readers would have to the view of Rand presented in Professor Burns' book. I can't say anything at all about what is in Anne Heller's book, since it is just now being released.

Jerry; One of the things is that Ayn Rand has reached her audience with all the opposition. The "neutral" readers seem to love her and buy her books

Don't forget that William F Buckley at the time of her death referred to her philosophy dying with her. Do you really think that has happened. Can you think of another novelist from the 50ths whose books are selling like Rand's. I might add from the 60ths, 70ths and 80ths.

Another point that has been made by Jennifer Burns is that Ayn Rand's love life is not so unusual for an artist and philosopher. What was unusual is her gender.

Stop worrying about the MSM.

[Philip Coates]

> Ayn Rand has reached her audience...Can you think of another novelist from the 50ths whose books are selling like Rand's...Stop worrying about the MSM. [Chris G]

Chris, what has reached a large and enthusiastic audience is her fiction. Not her philosophy - it's neither widely understood nor accepted.

There are many reasons for this, and the silence or distortion of the MSM and the universities are a major part. Jerry's post is thoughtful, right on target, and should be carefully read.

Edited October 27, 2009 by Philip Coates