| Drama, Poems, Essays |
BOOKS ABOUT
|
|
Binswanger, Harry, ed. The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A-Z. Vol. IV, A miscellany of Rand's opinions and arguments on many topics by a follower. Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand. New York: Doubleday, 1986. This is the only full-length life of Rand available. It is surprisingly balanced and definitive. Barbara Branden was an intimate of Rand's and the wife of Nathaniel Branden (see later entry). She tells Rand's story sympathetically. She obviously admired and respected Rand, thought of her as a friend and mentor, and regretted the rupture of their friendship that occurred because of the 1968 split in Rand's Objectivist movement. But parts of this book make it, for me, the funniest thing written in the 1980s. Those who remember Who is Ayn Rand? by the Brandens or other official propaganda by the Objectivist movement will guffaw at the contrast between the official "spin" about Rand by the movement in the 1960s and what seems to have been the truth. Still, Branden's biography makes you sympathize with Rand, an utterly brilliant philosopher and gravely flawed human being. You end up respecting both biographer and subject: Rand for her brain, and Barbara Branden for her honesty. Despite Barbara Branden's efforts to be fair, Nathaniel Branden comes off looking like a weaseling wimp. Filmed starring Helen Mirren (as Rand) in 1998; shown on cable in the U.S. in 1999. Branden, Nathaniel, and Branden, Barbara. Who is Ayn Rand?. New York: For some years in the 1960s this book was the official spin on the character and life of Ayn Rand. Consists of an admiring, cogent first exposition of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism by Nathaniel Branden, her chief disciple, followed by (in retrospect) a blindly optimistic officially-approved biographical sketch of Rand by Barbara Branden. I believe that Nathaniel Branden repudiated this book in the 1970s. Like Andre Maurois' Ariel, ou La Vie de Shelley, gives a radically incomplete picture of its subject, but is very enjoyable. Life should be like this. Branden, Nathaniel. Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand. New York: A defensive memoir by Rand's great disciple and apostate. Some will find it egregiously self-serving. Branden, a very able and helpful psychologist and psychological thinker, comes off very poorly -- well, like a weasel -- in "explaining" his long-term affair with Rand while both were married. Important -- perhaps priceless -- for establishing his view of Rand -- perhaps the 20th century's most significant philosopher -- and the other players around Rand in her "Objectivist" movement. Branden was as close an intellectual soulmate to Rand as anyone could be. Reissued, altered -- apparently slightly shorter -- in 1999 under the title My Years with Ayn Rand from Jossey-Bass Publishers in San Francisco. In this version Branden seems human, though -- in his young manhood -- much lacking in moral fibre and self-insight. Gives excellent critical insight into Rand's (and Branden's) psychology, strengths, and faults. Includes accounts of several priceless incidents that occurred after the breakup between the two.
Ellis, Albert J. Is Objectivism A Religion? 1960s. Softcover. Believed out of print. Ellis, a hostile and once-notorious psychotherapist and proponent of "rational-emotive therapy", rips into Rand with gusto but, except for scoring points on her for fanaticism, barely lays a glove on the philosophy. Indeed, he doesn't seem to understand it. Gladstein, Mimi Reisel; and Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Gladstein has written a book on Rand's philosophy, The Ayn Rand Companion (no information available); Sciabarra wrote a book about 1993 (called, I think, Ayn Rand, the Russian Radical) on some of the Russian influences that helped structure Rand's thought. Provocative analysis of Rand's work from many feminist points of view. Wendy McElroy's analysis of the "rape" scenes in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is insightful and illuminating. Greenberg, Sid[ney]. Ayn Rand and Alienation: The Platonic Idealism of the Objectivist Ethics and a Rational Alternative. San Francisco: self-published, 1977. Verbose, messy, somewhat confused; but a thought-provoking criticism of Rand's ethics based on the implicit psychology behind her work. Greenberg believes Rand thinks Platonically and confusedly about her philosophy's highest values (Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem); this causes her to elevate the trio to the status of Platonic ideals implicitly worthy of her (and her followers') sacrifices. He argues that this explains much of the behavior of her and her followers. He argues somewhat confusedly (if I understand him) that Rand is too much biased in favor of conscious thought, and that her highest value should have been happiness; this can be achieved by enjoying pleasure, and using it as a guide to action. Greenberg points out examples of Rand's repeated (inconsistent?) hostility to pleasure, especially to using it as a guide to action; she scornfully calls this "whim-worshipping". (But, according to Barbara Branden's biography, practised it in her private life.) Greenberg points out her repeated ukases against trying to achieve happiness directly; Rand believes happiness to be the incidental result of the accomplishment of a rational life; and that this was to be achieved through the trio of highest values: Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem. Rand also seems to strongly believe that human beings have a duty to think consciously, and thus (usually) implicitly dismisses intuition and the unconscious as guides to action or value. Harriman, David. Journals of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1997. Hospers, John. An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall (2nd edition), 1967. A college-level philosophy textbook using the technique of linguistic analysis philosophy. Contains a section (pages 602 and following) sympathetically discussing Rand's ethical ideas. Hospers, chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Southern California, ran for president of the United States on the Libertarian ticket in the 1970s. He also wrote a big dull book called Libertarianism. Mayhew, Robert. Ayn Rand's Marginalia: Her Critical Comments on the Writings of Over 20 Authors. New Milford, Connecticut: Second Renaissance Books, 1995. Merrill, Ronald E. The Ideas of Ayn Rand. La Salle, Illinois: 1991. (Recommended by Barbara Branden on backcover.) O'Neill, William F. With Charity Toward None: An Analysis of Ayn Rand's Philosophy. Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1972. Unsympathetic criticism of Objectivism by a University of Southern California professor trying to be fair. O'Neill believes Rand uses Aristotelian logic in a non-traditional, ambiguous, and non-Aristotelian fashion. He attempts to point out areas where Objectivism is inconsistent with itself. Paxton, Michael. Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 1998. A coffee-table book of pictures of Rand's life and background. Very sympathetic. Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1991. Rand's "intellectual heir" and chief disciple gives a straightforward, detailed, uncritical runthrough of her philosophic system. Rand, Ayn. We the Living. New York: Macmillan, 1936. Rand's first novel is basically post-Tolstoyan, but developing in her own direction. It dramatizes the story of a young woman in post-1917 Russia who tries bravely to cope with the new, horrid, collectivist Red regime. Finally, she attempts to escape the country and is shot down. ------. Anthem. London: ([original publisher unknown to me]: 1936. Published in the United States in 1946 by Leonard Read, founder of the Free Enterprise Foundation, and later by New American Library.) Perhaps the oddest and most inspiring of the 20th century's odd dystopian works. A shortish novella about a future Earth reduced to barbarism by collectivist beliefs, Anthem is -- unusually for Rand -- written in a near-poetic -- yet abstract (!) -- simple prose. The unnamed male protagonist liberates himself from the surrounding brutal intellectual, social, and economic collectivist stagnation by discovering the meaning of the words "ego" and "I". (He also discovers love.) Because of its style and simplicity a very odd fish in Rand's family of books, Anthem vividly dramatizes the meaning of self, one of freedom's (and Rand's) most fundamental concepts. ------. The Fountainhead. New York: Bobbs and Merrill, 1943. Perhaps Rand's best, most approachable, and most novelistic novel. The story of an architect determined to build buildings his way, and of the "second-handers" who oppose him. Dramatizes the philosophies of the chief characters. Contains fascinating discussions about architecture and integrity. Howard Roark's courtroom speech is the climax, and is a bitter, forthright, proud statement of the author's concept of individualism. The novel was filmed in 1949 by Warner Brothers from a script by Rand. Starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal (and directed by King Vidor), the black-and-white film is not to be missed: it is hyper-Romantic, extravagant (some would say overblown), and full of wonders and enjoyable quirks. Note that the architects who oppose Roark want to ruin his modernist buildings by altering them into postmodern ones (!). ------. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House, 1957. Rand's classic dystopian novel of ideas about a American genius who persuades his like to withdraw from a nightmarish, collapsing 1940s/1950s socialist world. An utterly brilliant, titanic, sui generis achievement. A work of genius. Didactic, with a great many powerful ideas and arguments; yet, ultimately, a novel that can only be compared with Tolstoy's War and Peace and Mann's The Magic Mountain. (Some of Rand's admirers will nevertheless prefer her The Fountainhead for its cleaner, tighter focus, its better characterized hero, and its less-prominent didactic content.) John Galt's 50-page speech is central to the thought of Objectivism. ------. For the New Intellectual. New York: Random House, 1961. Rand's own collection of significant philosophical passages from her novels and earlier writings. Although this is a collection useful for understanding Rand, it (and Rand's reputation) is deeply damaged by the title essay. In that essay Rand broadly and erroneously libels numerous historical philosophers as "mystics", "Attilas", and "witch doctors"; yet she shows no sign of knowing the slightest thing about any of these phenomena. Instead, as some shallow people do, Rand merely uses the words pejoratively (and indiscriminately) to smear her opponents, historical believers in some kind of faith. This is unfair, ignorant, and shoddy: it is blatant, silly misrepresentation. She is particularly uncharitable to Plato and Kant. Because of its slipshod nature, this is one of Rand's worst books. ------. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: New American Library, 1964. (Articles and essays. Rand's best statement of her egoistic ethics.) ------. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: New American Library, 1966 (?). Articles by Rand and her approved associates. Rand's best statement of her political and economic ideas, and the ideas of her followers that apparently had her blessing. Makes an unprecedented moral argument for laissez-faire capitalism in a constitutional state limited to defending man's rights through judicial, police, and military power. ------. The Romantic Manifesto. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1970 (?) Essays by Rand on her aesthetics. Rand advocated Romanticism -- artistic work seriously concerned with the struggle for lofty values. One of the most provocative artistic manifestoes of the 20th century, but, ultimately, I think, narrow and inadequate. ------. The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. New York: New American Library, 1971. Rand's fulminations against New Left sloppy anti-industrial thinking. Consists mainly of reprints from her magazine The Objectivist. A second expanded edition with additional essays by Rand and Peter Schwartz was published in 1998 under the title Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. ------. An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. New York: Mentor, an imprint of Penguin Books. Expanded second edition, 1990. This book is an expansion of articles originally published in The Objectivist in 1966-7; the first edition was published in 1977. While Rand's Atlas Shrugged is currently her most culturally influential work, the Introduction is perhaps the work of Rand's that will have the most powerful influence on philosophy. An under-appreciated classic. The analytic-synthetic dichotomy is the basic cause of the attack on and dismissal of metaphysics since the 18th century, and a foundation of 20th century philosophy; it has been attacked or dismissed several times in the past, with little result to the course of philosophy. In the Introduction, Rand subjects the doctrine to a withering attack, savagely and horribly ripping it up, virtually destroying it. (My one objection is that she does not go far enough in clarifying the results of her work.) I can only compare Rand's attack here to Aristotle's annihilation in a few pages (of his Metaphysics) of Plato's World of Forms. Rand lucidly derives, discusses and justifies the Law of Identity (A is A -- first postulated in Aristotle's Organon, his collection of treatises on logic) and makes other powerful arguments. Wow! ... Alas, as always in Rand, she shows enormous contempt for most other philosophers (especially 20th century ones) en masse without showing, I think, sensitive understanding of their positions. ------. The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought. Edited and with additional essays by Leonard Peikoff. New York: New American Library, 1988. Robbins, John W. Without a Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System. Walker, Jeff. The Ayn Rand Cult. Ayn Rand and Business. 2002. No further information. # # # # # Essays by Grant Schuyler
|