Goddess of the Market

Review by John C. Snider © 2009

Love her or loathe her, there’s no denying that Ayn Rand was a fascinating person.  Born in 1905 in Czarist Russia, Alisa Rosenbaum’s childhood was devastated by the upheaval of the revolution and the subsequent reversal of her family’s fortunes under the Communist regime.  Emigrating to the United States in 1926, Alisa reinvented herself as Ayn Rand, going on to write plays, screenplays and two mega-bestselling novels–The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged–and founding the still-controversial philosophy known as Objectivism.  The perpetually prickly Rand became ever more strident as she grew older, eventually alienating all but a handful of sycophants.  She died alone and embittered in 1982.

Interest in Rand has seen a resurgence in the last couple of years, sparked by the recent economic collapse and paranoid concerns about the Obama administration’s expansive domestic agenda, which many see as fulfilling the “prophecy” of Rand’s masterwork Atlas Shrugged.  And although it’s a project eight years in the making, the publication date could not be more timely for Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (pub. by Oxford University Press, Oct 2009, 369 pp hdcvr, $27.95). This new biography–which emphasizes Rand’s relationship with and influence on the conservative movement–is one of the first works written about Rand which is neither hagiography or screed.  Indeed, it’s a refreshingly objective (if you’ll pardon the pun) and measured look at one of the most overlooked cultural figures of the 20th century.

With access to numerous sources, including the extensive archives at the Ayn Rand Institute, Burns (assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia) provides a portrait of Rand as a tragic figure: bold yet deeply insecure; thrilled by the prospect of the American dream yet disappointed by the American elite’s mid-20th-century sympathy for the Communist experiment.  Rand was an unstoppable creative force, but out of step with the increasingly left-leaning counterculture.  Rand’s philosophy, which fused rugged individualism, laissez faire economics and atheism, guaranteed that she never fully fit in with either the mostly-religious conservative movement or the mostly-secular liberals.

Rands interaction with the American Right included relationships (usually followed by schisms) with such figures as H.L. Mencken, William F. Buckley, Jr., Rose Wilder Lane (libertarian pioneer and daughter of real-life pioneer Laura Ingalls Wilder), journalist Isabel Paterson, economist Ludwig von Mises, and Alan Greenspan.

Burns also touches on Rand’s incendiary personal life, from her alienation from her Russian family, to her long-lasting marriage to the submissive Frank O’Connor, to her bizarre 14-year-long affair with protege Nathaniel Branden, the end of which also nearly spelled the end of the Objectivist movement.  (For more detailed, juicier accounts of the affair, read the memoirs My Years with Ayn Rand and The Passion of Ayn Rand, by Nathaniel Branden and his first wife Barbara Branden, respectively.  The Passion of Ayn Rand was also the basis of a telefilm starring Helen Mirren and Eric Stolz.)

Goddess of the Market is an excellent biography of the controversial Rand.  Generously illustrated, cross-referenced and meticulously footnoted, this extraordinarily evenhanded account will doubtless pique the curiosity of readers not normally interested in Objectivism or libertarianism.

Goddess of the Market is available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Links of Interest

• But Is It Science Fiction? Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (essay by John C. Snider from 2000)
• Five Questions with Nathaniel Branden (interview by John C. Snider from 2005)