Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns

Author:Jennifer Burns
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Philosophy, Movements, General
ISBN: 9780199740895
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Love Is Exception Making

BY THE MIDDLE of the 1960s Rand’s popularity among young conservatives, her open support of Goldwater, and the continued appeal of her books had pushed her to a new level of mainstream visibility. As a backlash unfolded against Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the war in Vietnam, Rand’s ideas seemed ever more relevant and compelling. In 1967 she was a guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show three times in five months. Each time she explained to Carson the fundamentals of her philosophy, the audience response was so great she earned another invitation.1 Ted Turner, then a little-known media executive, personally paid for 248 billboards scattered throughout the South that read simply “Who is John Galt?”2 Ten years after the publication of Atlas Shrugged she was at the apex of her fame.

With success came new challenges. Most troubling of all was her relationship with Nathan. Rand had designated him her intellectual heir, openly and repeatedly. She had dedicated Atlas Shrugged to him (and Frank), allowed his name to be publicly linked with Objectivism, entered business arrangements with him. The Nathaniel Branden Institute had blossomed into a national institution, with around thirty-five hundred students enrolled each year in more than fifty cities.3 The institute had heavy concentrations of followers in southern California, New York, and Boston. In New York City Objectivism became its own subculture, complete with sports teams, movie nights, concerts, and annual dress balls. An NBI student could socialize, recreate, and study exclusively with other Objectivists, and many did. At the top of this society stood Nathan and Ayn, living embodiments of her philosophy. They were bound by a thousand ties, personal and professional, private and public, past and present. But more than a decade after they first became lovers, the two were further apart than they had ever been.

The success of NBI and Rand’s new fame transformed the Collective from a small band of intimates into a much admired and watched in-group. New York NBI students knew them all by sight. Nathan was “tall, striking, his hair cascading in blonde waves over his forehead and his eyes sparkling like blue ice.” (Less flatteringly, other Objectivists remembered Nathan’s “Elmer Gantry” style and called him a “great showman.”)4 Barbara, cold and remote in her bearing, looked the part of a Rand heroine with her delicate features and pale blonde hair. Alan Greenspan, nebbish and awkward, was an occasional lecturer, offering a course in the Economics of a Free Society, and Leonard Peikoff, hovering in Nathan’s shadow, taught the History of Philosophy.

When new NBI tape transcription courses debuted in far-flung cities, Nathan would fly in like a rock star to deliver the first lecture. When Ayn accompanied him once to Los Angeles, an overflow audience of eleven hundred crowded several rooms to hear them talk. Their tours on behalf of NBI not only energized the faithful, but helped Nathan maintain control over his sprawling empire. The institute’s business representatives were carefully vetted; they served as the official representatives of NBI to the vast majority of Rand’s students, who would never see her or Nathan in person.

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