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“Prospector and Jeweler”: Ayn Rand on theRelationship between Politics and Literature

CLAUDIA FRANZISKA BRÜHWILER

Journal of American Studies / FirstView Article / November 2014, pp 1 - 16DOI: 10.1017/S0021875814001820, Published online: 05 November 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021875814001820

How to cite this article:CLAUDIA FRANZISKA BRÜHWILER “Prospector and Jeweler”: Ayn Rand on theRelationship between Politics and Literature. Journal of American Studies,Available on CJO 2014 doi:10.1017/S0021875814001820

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“Prospector and Jeweler”: AynRand on the Relationship betweenPolitics and LiteratureCLAUDIA FRANZISKA BRÜHWILER

The novels by Russian immigrant writer Ayn Rand (–) still attract a large readership, notleast thanks to a recent renaissance of libertarian ideas in the US. Was it Rand’s intention, whenwriting her novels, to construct political tracts, as many insinuate, or was she indeed trying toimitate her literary idols, as she herself claimed? The answer is complicated due to Rand’s owncontradictory statements on fiction’s impact. Although Rand suggested that it was the readerwho gave text meaning, she also believed her books to have an unambiguous message that shouldhave a distinct effect on the reader.

INTRODUCTION: LITERATURE AS POLITICAL TRACTS?

With the title of his satirical book on the libertarian movement, It UsuallyBegins with Ayn Rand (), writer and New York gubernatorialcandidate of the Free Libertarian Party, Jerome Tuccille, remarked on acommon rite of initiation to right-wing politics in the United States, both inhis time and today. It is indeed true that the novels of Ayn Rand (–)have introduced many Americans to libertarian ideas for the first time.Mockingly, Tuccille observes the effect of Rand’s work on libertarian initiates:

The young crusader in search of a cause enters the world of The Fountainhead or AtlasShrugged as though he were about to engage in unheard-of sexual delights for the firsttime. He has been warned beforehand. There is no need to search any further.

School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen. Email: claudia-franziska.bruehwiler@unisg.ch. The author thanks Professor Jennifer Burns (Stanford University, USA),Professor Roland Bleiker (University of Queensland, Australia), and Dr. iur. DanielM. Häusermann (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland) for their valuable comments andsuggestions. I am likewise indebted to Prof. Lucas for his choice of reviewers whose thoughtfulevaluations have greatly contributed to the article’s improvement –my heartfelt thanks to allfour reviewers for their valuable time, attention to detail, and insights. Finally, I would like tothank the staff at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library for their support. This article wasfirst drafted during a research stay at the University of Virginia, funded by the Swiss NationalScience Foundation, and I was able to finish it at the University of St. Gallen thanks to theJanggen-Pöhn Stiftung.

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The quest is over. Here is all the truth you’ve been looking for contained in the tightlypacked pages of two gargantuan novels.

The popularity of Rand’s books has hardly waned, even though her best-known novel, Atlas Shrugged, was first published more than half a centuryago, in , and her breakthrough novel, The Fountainhead, dates back to. According to a survey by the Library of Congress in , Americanreaders described Atlas Shrugged as the book that had most influenced theirlives, second only to the Bible. Seven years later, a survey by Modern Library,a division of Random House publishing, ranked all four novels by Rand inthe Top of their “ Best Novels.” Although both surveys are, formethodological reasons, to be taken with a grain of salt, they reflect the lastingimpact of Rand’s oeuvre; in alone, Atlas Shrugged sold more than, copies, and the first two movies in a series of three have been releasedin recent years. This enduring success is not least of all due to a general risein the popularity of libertarian ideas in the United States, which gained anincreased following in the wake of the Tea Party movement. Ayn Rand’s workhas thus remained, as historian Jennifer Burns put it, “the ultimate gatewaydrug to life on the right.”

In spite of Ayn Rand’s indisputable impact, neither author nor oeuvrehave received much attention from scholars in literary criticism, philosophy,or political science, with the exception of recent biographies and treatisesby either openly hostile authors or by adherents of Objectivism,

Jerome Tuccille, It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand (New York: Stein and Day, ), .Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Signet Books, ; first published ). Pagereferences are given parenthetically in the text.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (London: Penguin Books, ; first published ). Pagereferences are given parenthetically in the text.

Anne C. Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made (New York, London, Toronto, Sydney,and Auckland: Nan A. Talese, ), xii. Ibid., xii.

See press release by the Ayn Rand Institute, Jan. , at www.aynrand.org/site/News?page=NewsArticle&id=.

Each movie has its website: www.atlasshruggedpart.com and http://atlasshruggedpart.com. Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, ), .

The two biographies in question are by Burns and Heller, cited above. A notable exception isalso the work by scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein; see for instance The New Ayn RandCompanion, rev. edn (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, ); and AtlasShrugged: Manifesto of the Mind (New York: Twayne Publishers, ).

Most notably JeffWalker, The Ayn Rand Cult (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, ). Best known are the biographies written by Rand’s once closest disciples, Barbara andNathaniel Branden: Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand (New York: Anchor Books,); and Nathaniel Branden, My Years with Ayn Rand (San Francisco: Jossey-BassPublishers, ; first published ). See also Tara Smith, Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics:The Virtuous Egoist (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).An interesting forum for Rand scholars is the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, and Robert

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the philosophy developed by Rand herself. From early on, writing aboutRand has been, as William F. O’Neill observed, “a treacherous undertaking.”

This is particularly true in writing about Rand as a novelist. She is hardly everconsidered as a writer, even though she owed her fame to the fiction shewrote. Instead, her novels are repeatedly dismissed as lacking literary quality, asthinly veiled political pamphlets with stereotyped protagonists who parrotthe author’s political beliefs, serving more as political messengers than asactual characters. Critics judged her début novel to be “slavishly warpedto the dictates of propaganda,” and Atlas Shrugged was dismissed as“a demonstrative act” and as not “in any literary sense a serious novel.”

Discussing Rand and social theorist Harriet Martineau (–), MaxE. Fletcher even suggested that the fiction written by both authors was“primarily sugar coatings for tracts, and the two of them merely “purposewriters . . . with identical missions: to convert their reading publics to a firmbelief in the principles of a self-regulating market system (what we now callcapitalism).”

Like most critics who dismiss Ayn Rand as a “purpose writer,” Fletcher doesnot reflect on the question whether she actually believed literature to have animpact on people’s political ideas. Since Rand developed her considerableinfluence thanks to her fiction and thus reached the iconic status we nowadaysattribute to her, this question deserves further exploration. More specifically, ifRand felt that literature could change people’s outlook on politics, did shewrite her novels with the intention to influence them politically?Ayn Rand offers rare insights into these questions, not only because of her

political impact, but because she reflected on the (potentially contradictory)relation between politics and literature in her philosophic essays. Interestingly,most of these essays were written at a time when Rand was alreadyan established writer and would not publish another work of fiction.

Mayhew coedited several volumes on Rand’s prose, namely essays on Anthem, We the Living,The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged (all published by Lexington Books).

William F. O’Neill, With Charity toward None: An Analysis of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy(Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co.), .

Harold Strauss, “Soviet Triangle”, New York Times, April , BR.Granville Hicks, “A Parable of Buried Talents,” New York Times, Oct. , . Ibid.Max E. Fletcher, “Harriet Martineau and Ayn Rand: Economics in the Guise of Fiction,”American Journal of Economics and Sociology, , (), –, .

Ibid., . Fletcher’s arguments were addressed in two papers by Objectivist scholars, namelyJohn B. Ridpath and James G. Lennox, the latter being cofounder of the Ayn Rand Society.See John B. Ridpath, “Fletcher’s Views on the Novelist’s Aesthetic Purpose in Writing,”American Journal of Economics and Sociology, , (), –; and James G. Lennox,“Fletcher’s Oblique Attack on Ayn Rand’s Economics and Ethics,” American Journal ofEconomics and Sociology, , (), –.

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Consequently, this article will first look at the ways Rand reimagined readers,how she depicted literature’s transformative effect – or lack thereof – in herown fiction. It will then turn to her theoretical writings, which likewise can beseen as a second phase in her discussion of literature’s role in politics andspheres beyond. Finally, the article will demonstrate that Rand held positionsthat prevented her from becoming anything but a “purpose writer,” as Fletchersees it, but that she was, at the same time, aware of the unpredictabilityof the reader response.

AYN RAND ON POLITICS AND LITERATURE IN HER FICTION

Novelist and one-time member of Ayn Rand’s inner circle, Kay Nolte Smith,once observed that “an awful lot of people have been turned on to libertarianpolitics by Atlas Shrugged,” yet that “none of the people in it read novels.” Ata first glance, Rand’s fiction seems to suggest that literature cannot shape theminds of heroic characters. The protagonists that Rand portrays positively areneither writers nor avid readers, but creative and innovative businesspeople.These characters include a financier (in her playNight of January th),

an architect (in The Fountainhead), and the head of a railway company aswell as an engineer (in Atlas Shrugged). Characters who have not yet foundpowerful vocations are usually impeded by the constraints of the reigningregime, as in the case of Kira Argounova in Rand’s début novel We the Living(). Kira wants to become an engineer, but has to leave university sincethe newly established Soviet government denies higher education to thechildren of the bourgeoisie. Similarly, the narrator–protagonist of the novellaAnthem () is a lowly street sweeper because the ruling totalitarianregime assigns each citizen a position to be held for life, whether he or shethirsts for further education or not. For reasons such as these, literature is not amajor concern for Rand’s central characters.At the same time, the effect of fiction on its readers and the public role of

writers are recurring themes, particularly with regard to literature as anindicator of a society’s political culture and values. In The Fountainhead andAtlas Shrugged, Rand explores how literature reflects on the collective andmirrors political conditions, as well as how it shapes art. In both novels, writers

Cited in Walker, .Ayn Rand,Night of January th, in Three Plays: Night of January th – Ideal – Think Twice(New York: Signet, ), –.

Ayn Rand,We the Living (New York: Signet, ; first published ). Page references aregiven parenthetically in the text.

Ayn Rand, Anthem (London: Penguin Classics, ; first published ). Page referencesare given parenthetically in the text.

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are members of the cast of antagonists who are constantly working to obstructthe success of Rand’s creator–protagonists, exemplifying the decline of all thatis truly good and heroic. In The Fountainhead, it is the writer Lois Cookwho profits from critic Ellsworth Toohey’s disdain for accessible art andliterature. Toohey recommends Cook’s work to Peter Keating, an untalentedbut ambitious architect and antihero of Rand’s tale, who takes a very specialjoy in reading Cook’s Clouds and Shrouds. The novel does not influenceKeating’s political thinking or open his eyes to anything new – far from it.Indeed,

He liked this book. It had made the routine of his Sunday morning breakfasta profound spiritual experience; he was certain that it was profound, because he didn’tunderstand it.

. . . Keating thought he could talk of this book to his friends, and if they did notunderstand he would know that he was superior to them. He would not need toexplain that superiority – that’s just it, “superiority as superiority” – automaticallydenied to those who asked for explanations. He loved the book. ()

Keating’s lack of insight seems to be intended by Cook, who reacts to hiscompliments dismissively, stating that it “is so commonplace . . . to beunderstood by everybody” (). In this spirit, Cook writes a novel titled TheGallant Gallstone, whose merits are regularly touted by Ellsworth Toohey.When the owner of the newspaper that prints Toohey’s column asks anotheremployee about the nature of the book, the latter answers with a laugh, “Oh,just a lot of drivel . . . It’s all about a gallstone that thinks that it’s anindependent entity, a sort of a rugged individualist of the gall bladder . . . andthen the man takes a big dose of castor oil.” Although the book’s core idea isnot clear to this employee, he has been told that it is “all supposed to provethat there’s no such thing as free will” ().The portrayal of Lois Cook and her oeuvre, as well as that of her fellow

authors united in the “Council of American Writers” () amounts to acritique of modernist literature and poetry. Rand thus targets the literature ofher time that found critical acclaim, in spite of its use of narrative techniquesthat challenge readers with stylistic innovations or nontraditional plotstructures, as exemplified by other members of the council in TheFountainhead. In a sense, she tries to open the reader’s eyes to see the actualquality of the emperor’s new clothes, and make him or her realize thatsomething is not necessarily artistic just because everyone calls it art. There is,for instance, a youth “who had written a thousand-page novel without asingle letter o” or “a man with a beard, who was sophisticated and proved it byusing every unprintable four-letter word in every ten pages of his manuscript”(ibid.).Presumptuous, vain, and utterly nonsensical – this is The Fountainhead’s

verdict regarding the literature of its time which was later echoed in Rand’s

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writing course developed for members of her inner circle. As outlined inThe Art of Fiction (), Rand justifies her distaste for James Joyce by hisusage of “words from different languages,” and by the fact that he “makes upsome words of his own, and calls that literature” (). She reserves most of herspite, however, for a writer she describes very much in the way that PeterKeating thinks of Lois Cook’s work. Gertrude Stein is to Rand the “best-known example of a nonobjective writer”

who combines words into sentences without any grammatical structure or meaning.She is still to some extent laughed at, but people are laughing rather respectfully; theirimplied attitude is: “Well, she’s strange, but her writing is probably deep.” Why is itdeep? “Because I, the reader cannot understand it.” (The subjectivism of the audienceof nonobjective art is based on an inferiority complex which takes the form: “If I don’tunderstand it, it must be profound.”) (ibid., emphasis in original)

Rand’s characters have to keep looking for meaningful literature. While thereader of The Fountainhead has to struggle with Cook’s stylistic extravaganza,Atlas Shrugged finds fault with the literary elite’s disdain for popular literature.They sneer at commercially successful, plot-driven stories, but their ownallegedly superior writing fails to attract readers. A case in point is discoveredby Rand’s heroine, Dagny Taggard. As she is wandering through the streetsof a nameless American city in a time of economic decline, she reachesthe windows of a bookstore where she spots a stack of a particular novel, TheVulture Is Molting. It is advertised as the “novel of our century,” providing thereader with a “penetrating study of a businessman’s greed” (). It reveals,as the advertisement promises, “man’s depravity” (ibid.). Its author, BalphEubank, feels that the

literature of the past . . . was a shallow fraud. It whitewashed life in order to please themoney tycoons whom it served. Morality, free will, achievement, happy endings, andman as some sort of heroic being – all that stuff is laughable to us. Our age has givendepth for the first time, by exposing the real essence of life. ().

And the essence of life? “Defeat and suffering” (ibid.).Not surprisingly, Eubank sneers at what some might deem central elements

of fiction: “Plot is a primitive vulgarity in literature” (). Like Cook’sGallant Gallstone (The Fountainhead ), Eubank is commerciallyunsuccessful; he “was described as the literary leader of the age, but hadnever written a book that sold more than three thousand copies” (AtlasShrugged ). It is probably this lack of success that leads him to promotea law “limiting the sale of any book to ten thousand copies” (). He decriesbest sellers as “trash,” implying that the common reader is unable to recognize

Ayn Rand, The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers (New York: Plume, ).Page references are given parenthetically in the text.

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true art or great literature, and is therefore in need of a guiding hand.A commercially successful book is always despised and envied by the self-declared elites, Rand seems to suggest, as they neither contribute anything ofvalue, nor are able to render their work understandable to all, and thereforecannot succeed in a free market. The distinction between high and low artonly protects those who have nothing of substance to offer, is thus apparentlyher verdict.

Given their choices and their sociocultural milieus, Rand’s protagonistshardly ever turn to literature for inspiration or insight. The only positivelypresented character who is strongly influenced by literature, Vesta Dunning,was cut out of Rand’s final draft of The Fountainhead. A second strongfemale character in earlier drafts, the young actress embodies a differentfeminine ideal than that of Roark’s lover-to-be, Dominique Francon. Roarkruns into Vesta in his apartment, where she is rehearsing the play that shefeels most passionately about – Friedrich Schiller’s Joan of Arc or The Maid ofOrleans (), a romantic tragedy inspired by the life of the French saintand national heroine Joan of Arc. It is the one role that Vesta hopes to playsome day, yet in pursuing success she has had to forsake her ideals. She faltersin her ambition to focus on attaining this one, ideal role. Instead, she longs tobe liked, particularly by Roark, who, as a result of this desire, loses his respectfor her.Had Rand kept Vesta in the final draft of The Fountainhead, she would

have offered us one of her rare ambiguous characters, a characterrepresenting, as Rand might say, neither an ideal creator nor a parasiticmoocher. This ambiguity is apparent in Vesta’s choice her of dream role.Although Rand was known to have regarded Schiller as one of the greatestplaywrights, The Maid of Orleans celebrates ideas Rand probably wouldnot have approved of. While the passage recited by Vesta carries a messageof strength, certainty, and idealism, the play in its entirety follows a logicrejected by Rand. Pursuant to the ethics of Kant – Rand’s most hated

Interestingly, her mentor Isabel Paterson came to a similar conclusion in her column “Turnswith a Bookworm”: “The mere fact that a book does not sell is not a guarantee of literaryquality.” Quoted in Stephen Cox, “Representing Isabel Paterson,” American Literary History,, (), –, .

The pages dedicated to Vesta Dunning have been published in Ayn Rand, The Early AynRand: A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction (New York: Signet, ; revised andexpanded edition), –.

Rand, The Early Rand, , cites the play as “Joan d’Arc.” See also Leonard Peikoff, “Editor’s Preface,” in Rand, The Early Ayn Rand, –, . Instead of many see Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet, ), –. Vesta recites the passage when Joan of Arc offers to lead the troupes into the battle which sheis convinced to win: “We’ll lift together / the siege of Orleans and win the freedom / I amalone to see and to believe.” Rand, The Early Ayn Rand, .

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philosopher, whom she frequently attacked in her nonfiction – the playdepicts Joan of Arc as torn between her divine calling and her love for a man.As an atheist, Rand would have struggled with the premises of the plot, andshe would not have been able to accept Joan of Arc’s self-sacrifice as a catharsis.In this light, the naming of the character after the Roman goddess of thehome and hearth might be a hint that the young actress does not have anunambiguously heroic character owing to her “mystic” streak, as Rand mighthave denounced her had she not been her own creation.In some instances, Rand does recognize that literature is an individual

endeavor, just like the history of the novel is tied to the idea of individuality,

and reading a private act; separate from societal contexts, these private acts canturn into subversive ones. Accordingly, the novel We the Living begins withthe family of a former textile producer, the Argounovs, riding the train backfrom the Crimean peninsula to St. Petersburg. When they had left the city itwas still called Petrograd; when they returned, it was about to becomeLeningrad, and had created new rules for citizens. Under these new rules, theformerly wealthy would have to submit to a societal order that intended topunish them for their heritage and their success. Fearful of this regime change,the Argounovs try to conceal their identity from their fellow travelers on thetrain. Their education and taste would betray their background, which iswhy the mother of the Argounov family has to hide the book she is reading:“She was careful not to let her fellow travelers observe that her book wasFrench” (We the Living ).Even prior to the Revolution, reading certain books could amount to an act

of defiance or mockery of the current regime. Rand’s portrayal of LeoKovalensky, the lover of her heroine, Kira, conveys this, expressing his disdainfor the then-ruling Slavophilia of the upper classes by quoting “Oscar Wilde atthe prim gatherings of his stern aunt’s Ladies’ Charity Club” (). After therevolution, Leo is forced to earn his living as a translator for Gossizdat, theState Publishing House whose publications are approved by the censors.

Rand foreshadows the eventually very harsh criteria applied to the import

Donald H. Crosby, “The Creative Kinship of Schiller and Kleist,” Monatshefte, , (),–.

It is well established that the history of literature, particularly the history of the novel, cannotbe discussed independently of that of the individual, ranging from the heroic individualspopulating novels to the individual that crafts fictitious worlds for the secluded reader.For more thereon see Russell A. Berman, Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty, andWestern Culture (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, ), ; Catherine Zuckert, “OnReading Classic American Novelists as Political Thinkers,” Journal of Politics, , (),–, . Alternatively spelt “Gosizdat.”

See, for instance, Dimitry Pospielovsky, “From Gosizdat to Samizdat and Tamizdat,”Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des slavistes, , (), –.

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and selection of foreign literature deemed suitable for translation by havingLeo suffer through one foreign novel espousing communism after another.

Apparently, he is brooding over proletarian novels, a term coined by MichaelGold in , which not only intended to reflect on political ideas, but evenserved political aims, namely to “bring the worker to class-consciousness, steelhim for the coming revolution, prepare him for the role he would play in thenext stage of history.” The plot thus follows simple lines, at least in Rand’sreimagination:

They were novels by foreign authors in which a poor, honest worker was always sent tojail for stealing a loaf of bread to feed the starving mother of his pretty, young wifewho had been raped by a capitalist and committed suicide thereafter, for which theall-powerful capitalist fired her husband from the factory, so that their child had to begon the streets and was run over by the capitalist’s limousine with sparkling fenders anda chauffeur in uniform. (–)

Ayn Rand’s characters emphasize that the books one chooses to readconvey one’s political convictions and allegiances. However, can these booksgo so far as to alter these convictions, effecting changes in one’s thinking?The Communist regime, as Rand depicts it, obviously subscribes to the idea ofliterature’s transformative power; otherwise, it would not censor individual-istic novels and promote tales acting out Marxist clichés.In the dystopian world of the novella Anthem, the regime has reshaped

language and eliminated singular pronouns; “I” does not exist. In this society,the perversion of language reaches down to the very core of a language’sfunction: to allow the speaker to define his or her identity. In such a world,literary production is unthinkable, especially not by an individual who hasbeen denied any education and been forced to become a street sweeper. Still,Rand makes this street sweeper the narrator of the story. The narrator –ironically named Equality - – is aware of the uniqueness of thisposition:

It’s a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them downupon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking aloneto no ears but to our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blackerthan to do or think alone. ()

Equality - is only able to relate his own story, reconstructing the eventsthat finally allowed him to assume his individuality and to break out of the

For a concise account of the changing publishing and translating policies in the s ands see Nailya Safiullina and Rachel Platonov, “Literary Translation and Soviet CulturalPolitics in the s: The Role of the Journal Internacional’naja literatura,” RussianLiterature, , (), –, esp. –.

Walter Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States – (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, ), .

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confinement of totalitarian order. This is made possible by the books thathe finds in an abandoned house, a reminder of earlier times. Reading Greekmythology and finally gaining knowledge, Rand’s protagonist finds his voice,and is able to express his identity: “It was when I read the first of the books Ifound in my house that I saw the word ‘I’” ().In her own fiction, Rand emphasizes that literature requires individuality

and individualism. Literature can offer the chance to escape gruesome realities,as a clandestinely perused French novel does on a Soviet train, or it can finallygive a character his or her own voice. In most cases, however, societies do notencourage the creation of fiction worthy of Rand’s heroes, and they produce,at best, novels that can only be considered “mirrors of national character,”

a characteristic that Joseph Blotner attributed to political novels.

LITERATURE AND POLITICS IN AYN RAND’SPOLITICAL WRITINGS

In his seminal treatise Political Fiction and the American Self, John WhalenBridge aptly observed that a novel “does not come with an FDA label listing allits motives, byproducts, and secret ingredients.” In the case of Rand, somecritics wished that her novels indeed came with such an advisory label. Sucha desire confirms their belief in literature’s potential to affect a reader’s politicalthinking, and their conviction of Rand’s intention to use her fiction as apolitical tool. Rand has addressed and dismissed both assumptions; as if inresponse to the demand for an FDA label, she wrote several essays on hermotives as a writer and on how she expects readers to respond to her work.Some themes from her fiction recur in her theoretical writings, but she oftengoes further in formulating her view of literature’s impact on politics. Rand’swritings provide insight into some of the key questions in the discourses onpolitics and literature. Albeit indirectly, Rand talks about the relevant audience(i.e. whether original or later audiences define a political novel) and how shereconciles the contradiction between ideology’s general and inclusive natureand the novel’s particularity.

Joseph Leo Blotner, The Political Novel (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, ), . JohnWhalen Bridge, Political Fiction and the American Self (Urbana and Chicago: Universityof Illinois Press, ), .

See, for instance, Nora Ephron’s review in theNew York Times: “I am forced to conclude that[The Fountainhead] is better read when one is young enough to miss the point . . . It is aridiculous book. It is also quite obviously a book by an author whose previous work readershave missed the point of. It is impossible to miss the point of ‘Atlas Shrugged.’Nevertheless, itis a book that cannot be put down, and therefore probably should not be picked up in the firstplace.”Nora Ephron, “A Strange Kind of Simplicity,” New York Times, May , BR, .

Whalen Bridge, –.

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However, Rand did not try to craft a more wide-ranging and inclusivescholarly discussion of politics and literature. True to her reputation as aniconoclast, her theoretical contributions do not refer to any other viewsespoused by the politics or literature of her time; she reflects neither on thegenre of the political novel nor on the tension-prone relationship betweenpolitics and literature in general (as, for instance, Irving Howe did in Politicsand the Novel, which appeared in the same year as Atlas Shrugged). As in herother political and philosophical writings, Rand relies mostly on her owninstincts and beliefs, rather than on scholarly references. Her personal literarytastes also preclude her from discussing the views of other political novelists,such as George Orwell, who mentioned, in addition to sheer egoism, politicalpurpose as a writer’s impulse.

Although Rand would not acknowledge major influences on her theoreticalwritings, presenting her thoughts as innate rather than as the result ofprolonged intellectual development, her answers to the questions above canbe clearly retraced to her early acquaintance with writer and journalist IsabelM. Paterson (–). Paterson became widely known as a literary criticand columnist for the New York Herald Tribune in , and provided Randwith what Jennifer Burns called “a virtual graduate school in American history,politics and economics.” Rand and Paterson shared both political outlooksand views on the impact of literature on the individual, though the lattertended to be contradictory. Paterson believed that writers and their workhad only a limited impact on individuals or society, an insight that she feltescaped other writers. In her column from May she urges her readersto consider

the nature of a book; it can enforce nothing; any one may pick it up, look into it,throw it aside, disagree with it; it has no physical force to back up whatever assertionsit contains; it may be controverted or ignored – in short, it is the instrument offree men, and consequently of the greatest power in the world, the power of themind.

At the same time, however, Paterson believed that books could make readersrethink their political standpoints and point out the flaws in their thinking.Thus she believed that both her own work and Rand’s novels would have such

Irving Howe, Politics and the Novel (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, ; first published ), .George Orwell, Why I Write (London: Penguin, ; first published ), –. Burns, Goddess of the Market, . Stephen Cox corroborates Burns’s account in his seminalbiography of Isabel Paterson, The Woman and the Dynamo (New Brunswick, NJ,Transaction Publishers, ). Paterson has, however, also benefited from the exchangewith Rand, who later reviewed her mentor’s most important work, The God of the Machine().

Clipping on file in the Isabel M. Paterson Papers, Box , at the Herber Hoover PresidentialLibrary in West Branch, Iowa, page number no longer legible.

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an impact, inspiring further books promoting laissez-faire capitalism.

Although she was aware that the effect literature can have ultimately dependson the reader, she seems to have still hung onto the belief that her worksmight have the kind of effect she felt desirable, a conviction clearly runningcounter to her statement above. Incidentally, her early disciple’s opinions,many of which shone through in her fiction and her comments on otherauthors, are not that different – and as contradictory as Paterson’s.In a collection of essays titled The Romantic Manifesto, Rand lays out her

theory of literature. She is basically in agreement with Paterson, believing thatbooks do not alter people’s minds, nor is it the task of art in general to lecturereaders:

Let me stress this analogy: art does not teach – it shows, it displays the full, concretizedreality of the final goal. Teaching is the task of ethics. Teaching is not the purpose ofan art work, any more than it is the purpose of an airplane. Just as one can learn a greatdeal from an airplane by studying it or taking it apart, so one can learn a great dealfrom an art work – about the nature of man, of his soul, of his existence. But these aremerely fringe benefits. The primary purpose of an airplane is not to teach man how tofly, but to give him the actual experience of flying. So is the primary purpose of an artwork. (–, emphasis in original)

In a similar manner, Rand dismissed any allegations that her novels were merepolitical tracts, written with the intention to convert readers into laissez-fairecapitalists. In earlier private correspondence following the publication ofThe Fountainhead, she even contradicted her reader-response position whenshe stated according to Burns that “spreading our ideas in the form of fictionis a great weapon, because it arouses the public to an emotional, as well asintellectual response to our cause,” and expressed her desire to become aJohn Steinbeck for the political right. However, she might have learned inthe course of her success that readers tended to interpret her novels differentlythan she had intended them to be read. In this context, it is interesting to notethat the three books that Rand declared to “hate most” (Q&A ) wereCervante’s Don Quixote, Leo Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina, and Flaubert’sMadame Bovary. In other words, Rand despised two characters cast asamong the most dedicated readers of world literature, Don Quixote de laMancha and Emma Bovary. These characters not only read voraciously,but also follow the lead of their fictional companions, inviting readers into

Letter to Ayn Rand from March ; the letter is part of the Isabel Paterson Papers, Box ,archived at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa.

Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto (New York: Signet Books, ; first published ),, emphasis in original. Page references are given parenthetically in the text.

Burns, , original emphasis. Ibid., .Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A (New York: Signet Book, ), .Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text.

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a metafictional maze. Although Rand claimed to dislike these novels mainlyfor their propagated values and their depiction of individuals as victims of boththeir own emotions and of society, one wonders whether she did not also findfault with the way literature influences the reasoning of the protagonists inthese writers’ novels, casting a spell on their thoughts and supplanting reason.As she explained in an interview after the publication of Atlas Shrugged,

Rand did not think of herself “as a propagandist, either, but primarily asa novelist.” Rand shows an attitude not unlike that espoused by reader-response theory, whereby the meaning of a text is basically in the hands ofthe reader (The Romantic Manifesto ). At first sight, this may contradict hermanifest belief in the existence of an objective meaning. But to reach the“right” conclusion, the reader has to depart from the “right” premises, thusleaving the ultimate understanding of the text to the reader. Rather thanspreading particular political ideas, Rand describes her intention as “theprojection of an ideal man” (The Fountainhead ix; The Romantic Manifesto; Q&A ); any other effect her writing may have is welcome, but is nother primary motivation. The novelist has, according to Rand, to act asa “combination of prospector and jeweler” who tries to discover “the potential,the gold mine, of man’s soul, [and] must extract the gold and then fashion asmagnificent a crown as his ability and vision permit” (The Romantic Manifesto). In fact, she perceives this intention as a key task of literature,a conclusion she draws from Poetics, a treatise by her favorite philosopher,Aristotle. According to Rand, Aristotle argues that “fiction was moreimportant than history” since fiction presents things “as they might be andought to be.” Rand not only focusses on Aristotle’s assessment of literature’spotential, but offers a normative reading by claiming that Aristotle hadstipulated the “basic principle [that] the role of a fiction writer is to presentthings, not as they are, but as they might be and ought to be.” In light of thedominance of “naturalist literature,” Rand considers herself to be one of thefew writers who have assumed this task, offering her readers this needed ideal.Only in Victor Hugo’s prose did Rand find the “glimpse of human

grandeur” that she had been aching to find, a writer who “is not a statisticianof gutter trivia, but a Romanticist who presents life,” as Aristotle might argue,“as it might be and ought to be.” Rand’s predilection for lowbrow thrillers

Lewis Nichols, “Talk with Ayn Rand,” New York Times, Oct. , . Stanley Eugene Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), .

Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz, eds., Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, ), – , .

Ayn Rand, The Ayn Rand Column: Written for the Los Angeles Times, rev. edn (New Milford,CT: Second Renaissance Books; first published ), . Subsequent page references aregiven parenthetically in the text.

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like westerns and the stories of James Bond or Mickey Spillane’s MikeHammer (Column –) is just another manifestation of her preference forRomanticism, as such stories are “a simplified, elementary version of Romanticliterature” (The Romantic Manifesto p. ). They share with Romanticliterature their portrayal of “man as a purposeful being who is able to choosehis goals, to fight for his values, to resist disaster, to struggle and to win”(Column ). Rand found such a “purposeful being” in her favorite novel,

Calumet “K” () by Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster, whichdescribes how a young foreman leads the construction of a grain elevator,fighting the resistance of plotting plutocrats. Popular writing is also setapart from “serious” literature, according to Rand, solely on the basis of “theseriousness of approach” (Q&A ), namely the issues addressed in thestoryline. Elitist disdain for such entertaining stories is, in Rand’s eyes,commensurate with disdain for heroism (Column ).Ayn Rand’s interpretation of Aristotle’s comparison between literature and

historiography, however, does not hold, as has been pointed out by LouisTorres and Michelle Marder Kamhi. In the original passage in Poetics(chapter IX), Aristotle states that the “true difference is that [history] relateswhat has happened, [poetry] what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a morephilosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express theuniversal, history the particular.” Aristotle certainly held poetry in high esteem,not only for its ability to develop counterhistories, but also for its universality.Moreover, he did not urge writers to strive to project an ideal world or man, asRand had interpreted his words. Instead, Aristotle simply implied thispossibility, without making any normative claims. Consequently, other readersof Aristotle have suggested that literature could surprise readers not only withthe creation of ideal worlds, but also with the very opposite. As philosopherMartha Nussbaum points out, “Another way of putting this point is that goodliterature is disturbing in a way that history and social science writingfrequently are not. Because it summons powerful emotions, it disconcertsand puzzles.”

Rand’s misreading of Aristotle’s statement is probably less due to her lack ofinsight into his work and philosophy, and more due to her own definitionof art. She defined art as “a selective re-creation of reality according to anartist’s metaphysical value-judgments,” the “voice of his [the artist’s] sense

Thus Rand in “Introduction to Calumet ‘K’,” The Objectivist, Oct. , . Samuel Merwin, Calumet “K” (Hamburg: tradition, ). Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi, What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand(Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, ), –.

Martha C. Nussbaum, Poetic Justice (Boston: Beacon Press, ), .

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of life” (The Romantic Manifesto ). Art, and thus literature, become“the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal” (TheRomantic Manifesto , emphasis in the original). If writers declare figuresof poor character to be their heroes, Rand would argue that these writersthereby betray their actual values, revealing what low values they actually hold.Accordingly, the experimental author Cook in The Fountainhead shows anapproach to life that cannot meet the approval of a Randian hero like HowardRoark, as Cook apparently mocks readers with absurd plots and unlikelyheroes (e.g. a gallstone), which, in Rand’s world, could not feature in actualliterature; literature has to focus on humans, to re-create the world according tothe writer’s values (Q&A ). By contrast, Kira Argounova’s mother had tohide her French novel – probably the work of Rand’s most beloved author,Victor Hugo – as it showed the possibility of “grandeur,” which clashedviolently with the reality of post-Revolutionary Russia. Although literature isan individual achievement, the works cherished by a society are a “barometerof a culture” (The Romantic Manifesto ), and a culture that reveres writerslike The Fountainhead’s Cook, with her Gallant Gallstone, could only bedoomed.In contrast to critics like Irving Howe, Rand did not perceive any tension in

the relationship between politics and literature. Her definition of literature’sobjective was inherently political; unwittingly, she subjected her own writingto her political theories, which she could only deny following her tautologicalreasoning. She did not see herself as a “propagandist” because she believed artalways had to serve ideals – political ones and others. In Rand’s world, it seems,art cannot escape propaganda.

FINDING “HER KIND OF READER”

Rand’s actual verdict on the effect of fiction on individual political thinking isless straightforward than she made it out to be. Although she argued in herRomantic Manifesto that teaching was not the duty of literature, she felt thatwriters should develop ideal counterworlds and heroic characters, in order tomake their readers see what lies within them, or what values they shouldcherish. As much as Rand despised characters like Madame Bovary (Q&A), who lived too much through her reading and tried to liken her life tofiction, Rand wanted her readers to experience her novels and her protagonistsin the way that she had designed them. Unlike Vesta Dunning, the charactercut from The Fountainhead, Rand’s readers should not surrender to a plot andits heroines, but rather find a means to express themselves and resist whatevermight lead them astray, very much in the way that Equality - or LeoKovalensky claim their independence not in least in their reading. From thisperspective, it was fitting for Ayn Rand to claim that she was writing mainly

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for her “kind of reader,” and not to convert anyone to her beliefs: “An artistreveals his naked soul in his work – and so, gentle reader, do you when yourespond to it” (The Romantic Manifesto ).At the same time, Rand explained why her books had to be as political as

they were – why she had to be a “purpose writer,” should we want to useFletcher’s term, even though she did not think of her fiction as “tracts.”Literature and art in general may in Rand’s eyes not have been “the meansto any didactic end” (The Romantic Manifesto , emphasis in original). But ifliterature is a reflection of a writer’s ideal and values, if a writer’s task is topresent readers with ideal characters, then Rand’s protagonists had to turn outto be the individualistic, independence-seeking, and innovative heroes that shemade them out to be, destined to turn against society. This may not reflect adidactic end in Rand’s eyes, yet the effect is identical. What Rand defined asthe purpose of her fiction was congruent with the purpose of her lectures,columns, and essays: to inspire people to become the individuals she wantedthem to be.

Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, .

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