Much adored and much reviled, Ayn Rand finds no sympathy at the
hands of Canadian investigative journalist Walker. Like many
others, he compares the Objectivist guru and Atlas Shrugged author
to a cult leader, while attacking her claims of originality,
consistency, literary talent, and morality. Rand's novels made
free-marketeers out of almost as many 1950s and '60s teens as
Kerouac's On the Road made restless beatniks. At least two
generations have been influenced by her loyalty to a peculiarly
stark form of individualism, the reification of rationality, and
moral approbation of selfish profit-seeking. In the midst of the
Cold War, Randian thinking struck a chord, and she, the former
Russian Jew Alissa Rosenbaum, attracted a sizeable circle of
devoted followers. Too devoted, says Walker, claiming that this
philosophical success story tells less than half the tale. He
argues that Objectivism garnered intelligent yet sadly
impressionable youths, intimidating them into total emotional
submission. Interviews with prominent former Objectivists reveal
Rand's repulsively didactic character, her intolerance for
criticism or disagreement of any kind, and her vindictiveness when
spurned by a disciple. Walker does not stop at characterizing Rand
as a cultist. He seeks to discredit her altogether by showing that,
despite her brainwashed followers' claims that Rand was the
greatest thinker since Aristotle, everything she wrote was either
derivative (from a combination of Jewish tradition, laissez-faire
manifestos, and mystery novels), devoid of literary value (he
performs a painful count of monstrously overused words in Atlas),
or both. That Ayn Rand was inflated beyond her merit will shock
nobody but Objectivists, who will never read this book. Walker's
expose is a bit too shrill, repetitive, and even snide to rise
persuasively above the people he describes - but he does convey
vividly the frightful mess that was Ayn Rand. (Kirkus Reviews)
Ayn Rand and her philosophical school, Objectivism, have had
considerable influence upon American popular culture, yet the true
story of her life and work has yet to be told. In The Ayn Rand
Cult, Jeff Walker debunks the cult-like following that developed
around the author of the best-selling Atlas Shrugged and The
Fountainhead -- a cult that persists even today.
What was Ayn Rand really like and how did she manipulate her
adoring disciples? Why do her ideas continue to wield such
influence? How does her "cult" fit in with the social climate of
the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, and what contributed to
its growth? By placing her ideas within the context of her
formative influences and important relationships, Walker shares
with readers how and why she developed ideas that still both
strongly attract and violently repel readers today.
Walker argues that the ideas Rand and her followers claimed as
her own are not original, but a pastiche of those of philosophers
Friedrich Nietzsche and Herbert Spencer, economists Harriet
Martineau and Friedrich Hayek, and 1920s business propaganda.
Though Randists claim her novels are groundbreaking and original,
both plot and style borrow heavily from best-selling popular
fiction of the time.
The author closely examines the cult which was shaped by Rand's
volatile personality and unrewarding personal relationships -- her
unhappy marriage and search for a domineering partner, her liaisons
with much younger men, and lengthy affair with then-disciple
Nathaniel Branden -- and draws comparisons to the cult-like
followings that developed around other popular figures such as L.
Ron Hubbard and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Ultimately, the objectivistmovement came to practice the very
opposite of the principles it espoused -- individualism,
objectivity, heroism, and laissez-faire -- evolving into a
dictatorial cult in which members suffered arranged marriages, took
new names in homage to Rand and were tried and excommunicated for
expressing opinions different from Rand's.
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