9/6/22

My own intellectual history with Rand aside, I read this because of this, which you should click immediately: http://the-toast.net/2016/02/11/ayn-rand-once-cursed-a-guys-dick-so-bad-he-moved...

Anyway, the book is uncomfortably fawning like 75% of the time, but vastly compelling, partly because Ayn Rand couldn't stop being Ayn Rand and doing the most Ayn Rand things possible. Seriously. ( )

NA

A very readable biography of a highly divisive author, written by a woman who was a close friend and follower of Rand's for many years -- and whose husband (Nathaniel Branden) ended up cheating on her with Rand. Despite the soap-opera background, this is a surprisingly even-handed biography of a woman whose very name can cause heated arguments. I found the book fascinating, especially the period of her childhood in Russia and her time in Hollywood as a young woman (she arrived in Los Angeles in 1926 as a 21-year-old aspiring writer). Index, photographs. ( )

I first read an Ayn Rand book during my sophomore year in high school (Fountainhead, if anyone cares). Though my New Relationship Energy with her ideas faded away many decades ago, I continue to find her ideas interesting. Throughout her lifetime, Rand blocked efforts to see her in any terms other than the terms she demanded: as a shining living example of the heroes whose stories she wrote down. She kept hoping that she would find other "living examples," and died in bitter disappointment that she never did.

This book is a fascinating after-the-penny-dropped account of a remarkable author who unwittingly made her own life more dramatic (and more pathetic) than the lives of any of her heroic characters. Branden shows her as human, uncertain, and as willing to rationalize her mistakes as any other person. I found it fascinating, and I am very glad I read it. ( )