Literary references to Ayn Rand

[9thdoctor]

I’m interested in developing a list of references to Ayn Rand from other fiction writers, particularly allusions to her or her work within their fiction, as opposed to listing writers who claim her as an influence. I’ve been reading Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel V.,and was surprised to find that Rand is a character in the book. Her character’s name is Mafia, the portrayal is not positive. Such portrayals usually aren’t. Here she’s primarily a sex maniac:

His wife was an authoress. Her novels-three to date- ran a thousand pages each and like sanitary napkins had gathered in an immense and faithful sisterhood of consumers. There’d even evolved somehow a kind of sodality or fan club that sat around, read from her books and discussed her Theory.

If the two of them ever did get around to making a final split, it would be that Theory there that would do it. Unfortunately Mafia believed in it as fervently as any of her followers. It wasn’t much of a Theory, more wishful thinking on Mafia’s part than anything else. There being but the single proposition: the world can only be rescued from certain decay through Heroic Love.

In practice Heroic Love meant screwing five or six times a night, every night, with a great many athletic, half-sadistic wrestling holds thrown in. The one time Winsome had blown up he’d yelled, “You are turning our marriage into a trampoline act,” which Mafia thought was a pretty good line. It appeared in her next novel, spoken by Schwartz, a weak, jewish psychopath who was the major villain.

All her characters fell into the disturbingly predictable racial alignment. The sympathetic-those godlike, inexhaustible sex athletes she used for heroes and heroines (and heroin? he wondered) were all tall, strong, white though often robustly tanned (all over), Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic and/or Scandinavian.

That’s enough retyping, there’s more, but you get the idea. BTW the above is from pages 131-132. Here’s a little more, a few paragraphs later:

“Hey,” called Mafia from the writing desk. “How do you spell Prometheus, anybody.”

Off the top of my head, some other references:

In Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy a book is referenced called Telemachus Sneezed, with its catchphrase Who is John Guilt? Hard to say what the authors think of her. Crazy books.

Christopher Buckley’s Boomsday references Rand by name, the heroine Cassandra Devine is a fan. Altogether a positive reference though in a very satirical novel.

William F. Buckley’s novel Getting it Right has Rand as a character, by name. I haven’t read any of it but gather it is a very negative portrayal and that the book is a stinker.

Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress references John Galt as a model for the hero. Positive.

Kay Nolte Smith's Elegy for a Soprano is reportedly a veiled portrayal of Rand. I've read two of her other novels, Catching Fire and Country of the Heart and liked them.

From the Wikipedia Ayn Rand article, the authors Matt Ruff, J. Neil Schulman, and Mary Gaitskill are named as alluding to “Rand or characters based on her”. I’ve heard of J. Neil Schulman but not the other two.

From Wikipedia on Mary Gaitskill - The novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin follows the childhood and adult lives of Justine Shade (thin) and Dorothy Never (fat). Justine works through her sadomasochistic issues while Dorothy works through her up-and-down commitment to the philosophy of "Definitism" and its founder "Anna Granite" (thinly-veiled satires of Objectivism and Ayn Rand).

I know there was a movie adaptation of a famous book, relatively recently (5-10 years), where a character attempts suicide clutching a copy of The Fountainhead, I can’t remember the name (or author) and don’t know if the reference is in the book. I’m drawing a total blank on this one, guaranteed as soon as I hit post I’ll think of it.

Anyone have more references to add?

[Dragonfly]

I think that in one of Jonathan Kellerman's recent novels someone reads books by Ayn Rand, but at the moment I've no time to check it.

[jriggenbach]

I’m interested in developing a list of references to Ayn Rand from other fiction writers, particularly allusions to her or her work within their fiction, as opposed to listing writers who claim her as an influence. I’ve been reading Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel V.,and was surprised to find that Rand is a character in the book. Her character’s name is Mafia, the portrayal is not positive. Such portrayals usually aren’t. Here she’s primarily a sex maniac:

His wife was an authoress. Her novels-three to date- ran a thousand pages each and like sanitary napkins had gathered in an immense and faithful sisterhood of consumers. There’d even evolved somehow a kind of sodality or fan club that sat around, read from her books and discussed her Theory.

If the two of them ever did get around to making a final split, it would be that Theory there that would do it. Unfortunately Mafia believed in it as fervently as any of her followers. It wasn’t much of a Theory, more wishful thinking on Mafia’s part than anything else. There being but the single proposition: the world can only be rescued from certain decay through Heroic Love.

In practice Heroic Love meant screwing five or six times a night, every night, with a great many athletic, half-sadistic wrestling holds thrown in. The one time Winsome had blown up he’d yelled, “You are turning our marriage into a trampoline act,” which Mafia thought was a pretty good line. It appeared in her next novel, spoken by Schwartz, a weak, jewish psychopath who was the major villain.

All her characters fell into the disturbingly predictable racial alignment. The sympathetic-those godlike, inexhaustible sex athletes she used for heroes and heroines (and heroin? he wondered) were all tall, strong, white though often robustly tanned (all over), Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic and/or Scandinavian.

That’s enough retyping, there’s more, but you get the idea. BTW the above is from pages 131-132. Here’s a little more, a few paragraphs later:

“Hey,” called Mafia from the writing desk. “How do you spell Prometheus, anybody.”

Off the top of my head, some other references:

In Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy a book is referenced called Telemachus Sneezed, with its catchphrase Who is John Guilt? Hard to say what the authors think of her. Crazy books.

Christopher Buckley’s Boomsday references Rand by name, the heroine Cassandra Devine is a fan. Altogether a positive reference though in a very satirical novel.

William F. Buckley’s novel Getting it Right has Rand as a character, by name. I haven’t read any of it but gather it is a very negative portrayal and that the book is a stinker.

Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress references John Galt as a model for the hero. Positive.

Kay Nolte Smith's Elegy for a Soprano is reportedly a veiled portrayal of Rand. I've read two of her other novels, Catching Fire and Country of the Heart and liked them.

From the Wikipedia Ayn Rand article, the authors Matt Ruff, J. Neil Schulman, and Mary Gaitskill are named as alluding to “Rand or characters based on her”. I’ve heard of J. Neil Schulman but not the other two.

From Wikipedia on Mary Gaitskill - The novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin follows the childhood and adult lives of Justine Shade (thin) and Dorothy Never (fat). Justine works through her sadomasochistic issues while Dorothy works through her up-and-down commitment to the philosophy of "Definitism" and its founder "Anna Granite" (thinly-veiled satires of Objectivism and Ayn Rand).

I know there was a movie adaptation of a famous book, relatively recently (5-10 years), where a character attempts suicide clutching a copy of The Fountainhead, I can’t remember the name (or author) and don’t know if the reference is in the book. I’m drawing a total blank on this one, guaranteed as soon as I hit post I’ll think of it.

Anyone have more references to add?

Ayn Rand is a character in L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach.

I also vaguely recall, in college, reading a series of satirical spy novels master-titled The Man from O.R.G.Y. by Ted Mark, about a spy named Steve Victor who spent most of his time bedding beautiful damsels. In one of these novels, Steve infiltrates an underground sect of Ayn Rand devotees. I can no longer remember whether Rand is identified by her actual name, or if it's merely obvious that that's who the author is talking about/satirizing.

JR

[9thdoctor]

Thanks DF and JR. BTW the book/movie I couldn't think of earlier was A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K. Dick.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is Ayn Rand in a comic book, but the episode is really short: AYN RAND, The comic book!

Here is my report on a play that was produced in California in 2007. It is by John Byrd and called The Death of Ayn Rand (and it's a comedy!): Rand and Peikoff characters in a theater comedy

Oddly enough, the play and all references to it have disappeared from the author's site except for a couple of blog posts in his archives (see here and here). From a recent blog entry, I think this guy now lives in Irvine.

Hmmmmm...

I have the play in my files. I got it when it was still online. It's really weird. I wonder. Maybe Peikoff didn't like the way he was portrayed in fiction.

Michael

[Reidy]

Walter Mosely and Jonathan Kellerman, mystery novelists, have alluded to her work, though I don't have exact references. Robert Rodi's Fag Hag is a farce set in the libertarian/survivalist milieu with at least one mention of Howard Roark. Tobias Wolff's Old School features Rand as a writer in residence at a prep school ca. 1960. John Leonard's Naked Martini, 1965, features a cocktail party at which a cluelessly unhip Randroid keeps breaking into conversations with "Let me tell you about Objectivism."

[jriggenbach]

Walter Mosely and Jonathan Kellerman, mystery novelists, have alluded to her work, though I don't have exact references. Robert Rodi's Fag Hag is a farce set in the libertarian/survivalist milieu with at least one mention of Howard Roark. Tobias Wolff's Old School features Rand as a writer in residence at a prep school ca. 1960. John Leonard's Naked Martini, 1965, features a cocktail party at which a cluelessly unhip Randroid keeps breaking into conversations with "Let me tell you about Objectivism."

Speaking of mystery novelists, John D. MacDonald included a brief, unflattering comment on Rand in one of his Travis McGee novels of the 1960s.

JR

[9thdoctor]

I wonder if there’s ever been a positive portrayal. Spillane would have given her the pedestal treatment, I bet.

[9thdoctor]

Another one for the list, Ira Levin’s Son of Rosemary, the sequel to Rosemary’s Baby, has repeated references to the “Ayn Rand Brigade”, and there’s a character named Alice Rosenbaum. I gather that Levin was an early NBI student. I’m not sure if it’s a positive reference or not, the book wasn’t well received and I haven’t read it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=DaKAxdiUjBUC&q=ayn+rand+brigade&dq=ayn+rand+brigade&hl=en&ei=OKosTeP9MIaglAeulbyXCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCQ

[anonrobt]

Matt Ruff's book is Sewer, Gas and Electric , Warner paperback, 1998 [tho it list 1997 as copyright, so maybe a hardback also exists]...