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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Going through an Ayn Rand phase
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ayn Rand has worked her way back into a corner of the news lately, with the publication of Alan Greenspan’s new memoir, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.” Greenspan was an acolyte to the author-philosopher back in the ’50s, before he was famous, let alone Federal Reserve chief, and he covers those years in his book.
Quick Cliff’s Notes for the unfamiliar: Ayn (rhymes with “fine”) Rand was a popular but controversial author whose two main novels, “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” put forth her philosophy of Objectivism, or putting the individual above all else. They are thick, didactic, preachy, pulpy, and the gateway to what we now call Libertarianism.
In the late ’90s, Random House ran a reader’s poll for best novel of the 20th century. “Atlas Shrugged” placed first. “The Fountainhead” placed second. Then again, “Battlefield Earth” by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, placed third, and “Ulysses” by James Joyce didn’t make the Top 10, so that tells you something about the poll. Namely, that her followers take her very seriously.
Greenspan’s memoir has revived interest in the “Ayn Rand phase” of the young, misunderstood intellectual. As Michael Kinsley put it in his review of Greenspan’s memoir in The New York Times Book Review: “Many young brainiacs of dorkish tendencies go through an Ayn Rand period.”
Much harsher is the equivalent passage from Andrew Ferguson, reviewing Greenspan’s book in The Weekly Standard. In the ’50s, when Greenspan hung out with Rand, Ferguson writes, “Her creepy philosophy of Objectivism, placing the self at the center of the moral universe, was being enthusiastically embraced, as it still is, by tens of thousands of pimply teenage boys in the dreamy moments between fits of social insecurity and furious bouts of masturbation.”
Whoa, Andrew. Wipe down the computer keys and listen up: Lots of misunderstood intellectual teenage girls also dig Rand.
Not everyone outgrows Rand, but most people seem to. I’m interested in hearing from both groups. Did you go through an Ayn Rand phase? Are you still in it? What about her books? How do they stand the test of time?
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