Retouching Rand - Extended Dance Remix

[Neil Parille]

A rough draft - comments welcome

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Back in 2009, I wrote an essay Retouching Rand, which discussed the Ayn Rand Institute’s efforts to create a better Ayn Rand.  These efforts involved fibbing about Rand (for example, Leonard Peikoff’s claim that Rand quit smoking because she concluded it was dangerous, when in fact she quit because she got lung cancer, and James Valliant’s dishonest hit piece, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics).  A lot has happened in the past fifteen years, so it’s time for an update.

Retouching Ayn Rand’s Posthumously Published Material

At the time my essay was published, Jennifer Burns had not published her 2009 autobiography of Rand, Goddess of the Market.  Burns revealed for the first time what was suspected: much of Rand’s posthumously published material was so heavily edited as to be essentially worthless.  As described by Laissez Faire Books at the time:

One other area that I found of significant interest is Burns discussion of the various problems surrounding Rand documents made public by the Ayn Rand Institute, Leonard Peikoff’s organization. There has been a great deal of controversy over indications that ARI doctored documents. Some of this doctoring was admitted by ARI, which asserted that they merely made clarifications consistent with what Rand had intended to say. Burns, who has seen the originals, says this is not the case.

She does say that the letters of Rand, that have been released, “have not been altered; they are merely incomplete.” But the same is not true for other works of Rand, including her Journals Burns writes, “On nearly every page of the published journals an unacknowledged change has been made from Rand’s original writing. In the book’s foreword the editor, David Harriman, defends his practice of eliminating Rand’s words and inserting his own as necessary for greater clarity. In many case, however, his editing serves to significantly alter Rand’s meaning.” She says that sentences are “rewritten to sound stronger and more definite” and that the editing “obscures important shifts and changes in Rand’s thought.” She finds “more alarming” the case that “sentences and proper names present in Rand’s original …have vanished entirely, without any ellipses or brackets to indicate a change.”

The result of this unacknowledged editing is that “they add up to a different Rand. In her original notebooks she is more tentative, historically bounded, and contradictory. The edited diaries have transformed her private space, the hidden realm in which she did her thinking, reaching, and groping, replacing it with a slick manufactured world in which all of her ideas are definite, well formulated, and clear.” She concludes that Rand’s Journals, as released by ARI, “are thus best understood as an interpretation of Rand rather than her own writing. Scholars must use these materials with extreme caution.”

The bad news is that “similar problems plague Ayn Rand Answers (2005), The Art of Fiction (2000), The Art of Non-Fiction (2001), and Objectively Speaking (2009).” Burns says all these works were “derived from archival material but have been significantly rewritten.” Rand scholars have long suspected such manipulation of documents; Burns confirms it with evidence she herself saw.*

As noted above, Journals was edited by David Harriman.  Ayn Rand Answers and The Art of Non -Fiction were edited by Robert Mayhew; Objectively Speaking was edited by Peter Schwartz, and The Art of Fiction was edited by Tore Boeckmann.  Harriman is no longer associated with the ARI.  However, Schwartz and Mayhew are.  I’m not sure about Boeckmann.

One would have thought that this revelation would have sent shock-waves through the world of Objectivism, but it passed hardly without notice.  If one wants to see just how heavy the editing was, Robert Campbell purchased and made transcripts of all the questions and answers in Ayn Rand Answers and published a detailed critique.  It took Campbell seventy-one pages to analyze all of Mayhew’s jiggery-pokery.  To take one example, when Rand was asked about claims that Augusto Pinochet was torturing and killing opponents, Rand answered as follows:

 

Those stories I don’t believe; I would want to have proof from some authorities better than the extreme Left. But I express my opinion of the junta: I don’t think that they have any idea what they’re doing, I don’t think they’re, know what they want—if they do, they’re going about it the wrong way. I think they’re immeasurably better than what, than the Allende government, but I don’t believe they will be able to achieve much, because the country is wrecked. Uhh, I don’t know any signs of their ideology. They had none before, which was what permitted Allende, who was incidentally a minority, euhh, government—he did not get a real majority —but it was made possible by the fact that his opposition didn’t have any particular prob, program, and the experience has not given them any particular program. But compared to Allende I would say they’re gentlemen and scholars and giants. [some laughter from audience]

This was rewritten by Mayhew as follows:

At present, I don’t believe those stories. I want proof from authorities more reliable than extreme leftists. Given what I do know of the junta, I’d say they have no idea what they’re doing; and, I don’t think they’ll achieve much, because the country is too Red. But they’re better than the Allende government.

In one almost humorous example, Rand was asked about the government banning saccharine, cyclamates (an artificial sweetener) and tobacco.  In her answer, she said that tobacco might be dangerous but didn’t know.  (As noted above, Rand was a smoker at the time and ultimately contracted lung cancer.)  Mayhew edited “tobacco” out of the question and answer.  Mayhew even took to Diane Hsieh’s now-defunct Philosophy In Action blog to call Campbell a liar.  When the ARI invited Jordan Peterson to speak at OCONN, Yaron Brook said while this was controversial, it was cleared by the ARI’s “Ethical Integrity Committee” which was headed by Mayhew!  No, I’m not making this up.

Yaron Brook was once asked about claims of poor editing of the posthumously published material and claimed it was lies spread by opponents of the ARI.  He said that the editing was done under Leonard Peikoff’s supervision.  (This was confirmed by Harriman.)

The only acknowledgement of the questionable editing was made by Greg Salmieri in A Companion to Ayn Rand (2016).  Salmieri said the critics (such as Campbell and Chris Sciabarra) were correct about the changes and concedes there were editorial decisions “that I wished hadn’t been made,” but concluded that the volumes “serve their purpose well  . . . and deserve to be read.”  I’m not sure how, for example, changing what Rand wrote to be more certain than it was or conform to later Objectivist orthodoxy serves any purpose.  And anyone who wants to read an author’s journals is almost by definition a person who has a scholarly interest in the author and doesn’t want to read what are at best paraphrases.

Retouching Ayn Rand’s Life

As readers of the Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature Blog know, the first biography of Rand was Barbara Branden’s biography The Passion of Ayn Rand, which was published in 1986.  Branden’s biography was largely commendatory; however, she first revealed that Rand and Nathaniel Branden had an affair and alleged that this affair led to Rand’s husband Frank O’Connor’s excess consumption of alcohol (which is well documented for his sad, final years but less well documented in the 50s and 60s).  Peikoff went so far as to denounce the book (while saying he would never read it) as an “arbitrary assertion.”  Shortly after its publication, Peter Schwartz denounced it as one long arbitrary assertion. 

It is only in this context that the question can be raised of whether to believe any of the concrete factual allegations Mrs. Branden makes about Ayn Rand’s behavior.  When the truth of such allegations rests entirely upon the testimony of the author (and of unnamed ‘friends’ she regularly cites), one must ask why she is to be believed when she has thoroughly destroyed her claim to credibility.  It is very easy to accuse the dead of almost anything.  I could readily assert that Ayn met with me at dawn on the first Thursday of every month to join me in secret prayer at a Buddhist temple—and who could disprove it if I maintained that no one else knew about it?

Branden was Rand’s closest female friend for 18 years and interviewed nearly two hundred people who knew Rand during all periods of her life.  How the claims of the book – for example, Rand was born in Russia, had a temper, broke with people, had an affair with Nathaniel, wrote Atlas Shrugged – were assertions on the level of fictitious meetings at a Buddhist temple was never explained.  Most people would probably conclude that these claims were either true or false and subject to empirical testing like any other claims concerning famous people.

This culminated in Peikoff’s friend James Valliant’s 2005 dishonest hit piece, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics, which purported to show that Branden’s biography (and Nathaniel’s memoirs) were lies from beginning to end.  While Valliant’s book was ridiculous, it did have a superficial appeal: the Brandens had a falling out with Rand and so their accounts should be used with some caution.

As noted above, Jennifer Burns published her biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market, in 2009.  Burns, who is not an Objectivist, had almost complete access to the ARI’s Archives.  In addition, she did her own interviews, had access to Branden’s interviews, and did additional archival research.  Burns largely confirms the accuracy of the Branden accounts while making occasional corrections to the historical record (for example Rand didn’t get her name from a typewriter).  Most significant, Burns asserted that Rand’s decades long amphetamine use had a negative effect on her mental health (which, incidentally, Branden had denied).    She found credible evidence that Frank consumed alcohol to excess.

From what I recall, the Burns volume got some mention on Objectivist blogs, but only one in-print response.  Robert Mayhew took to the Objective Standard (then the house organ of the ARI) to review Burns’ autobiography and didn’t even tell his readers that Burns revealed the rewriting of material much less that she fingered him as a chief culprit.  He says Burns devotes too much attention to Rand’s affair with Nathaniel and obliquely mentions the amphetamine issue.  No one would get the impression reading the review that Burns confirmed the accuracy of the Branden accounts.

Shortly after Burns published her biography, Anne Heller published Ayn Rand and the World She Made, a full-length biography of Rand.  Heller, who unfortunately did not have access to the Archives, took a view similar to Branden and Burns.  Best I can tell, this book was ignored by authors associated with the ARI.

From 2009 until recently, there has been mostly silence on questions related to Rand’s life by the ARI.  In 2010, Scott McConnell published 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand.  The book is a collection of almost entirely positive interviews (generally excerpts) from the ARI’s Oral History Project.  Some interviewees take jabs at the Brandens, but there is nothing that undercuts their accounts.  The interviewees are for the most part people who never broke with Rand.  Rand’s affair with Branden is never mentioned, but Rand’s love for her husband is non-stop.

For some reason, things changed this year.  A couple of months ago, Alexanra Popoff published Ayn Rand: Creating a Gospel of Success.  The biography of Rand is part of Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series.  Popoff had complete access to the Archives and, while her volume isn’t a full-scale biography like Burns’ and Heller’s, it does confirm Rand’s amphetamine usage and Frank’s alcohol consumption.

The ARI’s Elan Journo interviewed Harry Binswanger about Popoff’s biography.  While I think Popoff goes a little too far in finding Jewish influences on Rand and her works, Binswanger can’t even concede it’s metaphysically possible.  Binswanger thunders: “Rand was not influenced!”  Apparently, it’s all or nothing for Binswanger.  Binswanger takes jabs at the previous biographies, claiming the authors describe Rand as crazy (none of them does) and want to find heightened influence on Nietzsche on Rand “because they want to.”  Apparently, no take on Rand other than Binswanger’s can be made in good faith. 

Journo followed this up with a lengthy review of Goddess of the Market.  Apparently this critique was important for the ARI because Journo enlisted the assistance of Chief Philosophy Officer Onkar Ghate and ARI employed philosopher Ben Bayer.  I discussed the review last month, but to be blunt – it is dishonest.  To take one particularly blatant example:

Journo argues that Burns “leans heavily” on the Branden books.  Well, Goddess contains 45 pages of endnotes (in smaller print than the body of the text).  I counted 630 endnotes.  I totted up the notes that mention one or both of the Branden books, and there were a whopping 20 that mentioned a Branden book.  That’s 3 percent of the notes.  And consider the following: on page 318, Burns cites nearly 30 letters from Isabel Paterson to Rand and vice versa.

While I haven’t checked all of the citations to the Branden books, I don’t get the impression that Burns relies on them as her exclusive evidence for particular conventions.  For example, Burns rejects Rand’s 1968 veiled claim that Nathaniel Branden stole from her, but her source is Rand’s former attorney, Henry Holzer.  Burns, as noted, contends that Rand’s mental health was negatively affected by decades of amphetamine use, a claim that Branden rejects.  She bases her report that Frank consumed alcohol to excess on her conclusion that the sources Branden cites are credible.  Neither of these three assertions are mentioned in Journo’s review.  If Journo thinks there are errors of fact in Goddess, he should say what they are.

Conclusion

It’s hard to know what to make of this.  As I speculated in my 2009 essay:

1. Rand had an inflated ego and a self-estimation that bordered on the delusional. Not only do ARI supporters have to justify this, but during Rand’s life the sycophancy of the orthodox Objectivism’s current leadership no doubt fed Rand’s borderline megalomania. For example, Allan Gotthelf relates that Rand once said that “I’ve done for consciousness what Aristotle did for metaphysics.” Gotthelf responded, “yes, that’s true.” In particular Leonard Peikoff has paid a high personal price to become Rand’s legal and alleged “intellectual” heir. He was even exiled by Rand to Denver for a time for failing to insufficiently advance Objectivism.

2. Rand also set in motion the claim that her philosophy did not undergo any changes, even telling an interviewer later in her life that she had held the same philosophy since her first memory at age 2 and a half. That Rand went through a Nietzschean phase would suggest that she was not a consistent Objectivist and that her own life’s story was false.

3. A high estimation of Rand the person functions as what sociologists call a “boundary marker.” It identifies those who are “in” and “out.” Those who dissent from a high regard for Rand the person are most likely to question aspects of her philosophy, such as her interpretation of other philosophers and the lack of empirical basis for many of her judgments.

4. Rand saw a particularly close connection between her philosophy and her life. She famously said that her life was postscript to her philosophy: “and I mean it.” To Rand her life was the perfect exemplar of an ideal Objectivist and living proof that the theory/practice and mind/body dichotomy that plagued Western civilization since Plato had been put to rest. If Rand can’t live up to Objectivist standards, then what does that say about Objectivism as a “philosophy for living on earth”?

Something I didn’t appreciate in 2009 is that there has been a long-standing claim that Rand was morally perfect.  Rand lived 77 years, and you don’t have to be an Objectivist to conclude that she largely lived up to her values albeit with occasional failures (most notably her extremely one-sided attack on Nathaniel Branden in 1968).  On thing I suspect is that many Objectivists were banking that the long-awaited authorized biography of Rand by Shoshana Milgram would provide the definitive refutation on the Branden accounts.  That biography has been two decades in the making and, if it ever comes out, may not even be authorized or even cover all of Rand’s life.

Also, in 2009 I didn’t know that Peikoff supervised (and may have in effect ordered) the rewriting of Rand’s posthumously published material.  Still, the rewriting of the material is hard to explain given that the truth was bound to come out sooner or later.  And why would Journo deliberately misrepresent a book that has been in print for 15 years?  If one didn’t know better, one might conclude that there is a list of prohibited books.

As a final point, the ARI has implicitly claims that it is the only organization that can competently opine on Rand and Objectivism (and they periodically speak for Rand).  And a couple of years ago, the ARI even developed a convoluted epistemological heuristic which essentially makes them immune from criticism.  From following blogs and Facebook pages, there doesn’t seem to be much “push back” from the rank and file.  Perhaps ARI supporters believe that as part of the “New Intellectuals” the flaws of the ARI are small in the grand scheme of things.

 

 

[Brant Gaede]

Just a great job, Neil. It's about intellectual and moral insanity off the Atlas Shrugged base in which Rand necessarily has Galt come down from the mountain to displace Christianity with a 35,000 word extemporaneous moralistic speech she took two years to write. The novel is brilliant literarily and could be the greatest ever written, but it is fiction. It did and does have the stupendous virtue of food for moral and intellectual freedom for any readers who need that ammo.

I don't think the word "objectivism" (became Objectivism) appears in the novel. However, Nathaniel Branden taught it for a decade with her obvious sanction. He was all about the catechism until he was blown out of that context in 1968. Peikoff took over, but unlike Branden he was all about schism post date. That's when it really went off the rails which might be the best thing to happen to it by shortening the inevitability, time being very important.

It's incredible how much a novel published 67 years ago so well describes the world around us today. It's alternate reality then not so alternate now.

--Brant

[Neil Parille]

Someone asked Mayhew yesterday if his editing of Rand's Q&A.

I'm not good at time stamping but it's at 1:37:51

Ancient Philosophy -- Plato and Aristotle & More with Robert Mayhew | Yaron Brook Interviews

It was directed by Peikoff and he apparently had to approve each of the edis

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Neil,

I read your article and it is good. I am giving my inner mind time to let it settle before I comment.

However, for your amusement, here is something to go along with it.

Looks like the ARI people have learned nothing.

I only watched the start of this.

But as I was watching, I kept thinking, why?

Why are these men wasting the precious unrepeatable minutes and hours of their lives doing this?

What do they get from it?

 

(sigh) At least I hope they are doing this to kiss the ass of someone rich and powerful so they get money for it. Otherwise, what in hell are they doing? An ideological crusade? On what planet?

 

The vision Ayn Rand bestowed on humanity is so big and grandiose, it takes your breath away when you allow it purchase in your soul.

And these dudes are still stuck in trying to micromanage Rand's image in the world. What's worse, they are doing it in a way nobody will know about because they are too boring, nitpicking and trivial.
 

For the record, both bios are good bios. Well-researched and well-written. (I even helped Anne Heller a small bit.) One can agree or disagree with this or that in what they wrote, but to portray them as "shaping the perception of Ayn Rand"?

Really?

Those books are biographies, for God's sake. Not propaganda. How many bios in life have I read, have you read, not liked and put down? Biographies don't shape image perception in the culture of anyone. If that image were not already shaped, no one would read the bios. 

 

At least these dudes are telling you right up front what their goal is.

Their goal is not truth. It is not even to tell "the correct" stories about Rand.

Their goal is to shape the perception of Ayn Rand in the heads of others.

How small and petty next Ayn Rand's work. This is their version of her legacy?

This is them showing their own heroic souls, the heroic productive soul in man that Rand talked about? 

Good God...

 

Just like you focused on in your article, these are people (among others at ARI) who think it is proper to distort Ayn Rand's own works in order to shape public perception of her. 

This is a clear indication that they don't believe at root that her ideas and presentation of them--nor the life she lived as she lived it--are good enough to make their stamp on the world. Ayn Rand needs their help, right? A little deception here and there goes a long way in getting Ayn Rand accepted in the world, right?

Heh...

 

I want to go on about this, but this is too easy a target. These people won't even be footnotes in history in years to come. 

What dorks...

I have to get back to my fiction writing...

 

Michael

 

EDIT: OK. I watched a little more. I listened to Journo and the other guy go blah blah blah about the standards that biographers should have when they write, and I can't get the elephant in the room out of my mind. I can't not see it. He and the other guy work for an organization that bowdlerizes and publishes Ayn Rand's own words. They didn't do it just once. They did it over and over and over.

Look in the friggin' mirror if you want people like me to take you seriously. It doesn't have to be me (since I doubt these gentlemen would like me  ), but at least normal rational people.

There is a reason those bios are "widely acclaimed" as Journo complains, but not his own works, which are niche at best. And without top-down patronage, this guy would have no market at all.

Ayn Rand sure has a market where people bought (and still buy) her stuff. And so do Burns and Heller.

These works are not sponsored by an elite. People buy them and read them because they like them.

If someone wants to "correct the record" like Journo claims, why not compete on that field instead of in a "safe space" payed for by rich dudes?

I'll tell you why not. Because nobody will pay for their stuff on the book market. Nobody will read it. To put it another way, it's easier to sway one rich dude than 10,000 normal people. And the money is the same.

Is Journo's practice the Randian vision? Is it capitalism like in Atlas Shrugged?

Yeah, right.

What's even worse, the bowdlerized Rand works sell more on the book market than the stuff these people put out. (Imagine if they did Rand right.)

Bah...

The ARI folks should do a little soul-searching in that direction. But I'm not holding my breath.

I repeat, what dorks.

I just can't...

[Neil Parille]

Michael, 

I listened to the whole thing.  Journo is just flat our dishonest.  Burns says how she evaluated the Branden books and why she relied on them when appropriate.  So is what Journo saying in effect, "If Burns - after the first citation of a Branden book wrote, see my Essay on Sources for an explanation of why I use these books" -- then it would have been ok?

[Neil Parille]

Here is Lyin' Bobby Mayhew from the Brooks show:

___________________________________

Well this is an awkward kind of question because I was asked by Dr. Peikoff if I would edit Rand's Q&A.  I mean I think I broached the subject with him and he talked about how it had to be edited or you know Penguin [the publisher] wouldn't go for it and that he was going to oversee the editing and now there was there was no there wasn't any you know I would edit her and then he would have suggestions and I would edit a bit more and he would you know  you need more editing here and I was aware at the time that people are not going to you know like this but I assumed people would be good spirited for because almost all of it is available and you know any of the cuts that were made you could see and I mean I think it's possible that I made cuts that I shouldn't have but I stand by the work. 

But if it weren't for the fact that the estate of Ayn Rand was behind the project and had control of it, I probably would have done some things differently but then it wouldn't have been published by Penguin -- it would have been a different kind of book.   

Now I don't remember that particular one but there was some issue that Leonard had issues about uh but I just don't remember it so if  you have the original and you're comparing it to the Q&A and the Q&A is different in a way that you don't like then I you should you should blame me I mean I did it what can I say?

I'm not going to throw Leonard under the under the bus because I could have you know if I objected to something I could have said so and sometimes I did and sometimes he said okay and other times he didn't and so there it is.