The September 16, 2002 National Review has a great comment from Florence King. She writes a column called "The Misanthrope's Corner," and in this issue she writes about her "NOT" file. The "NOT" file is full of stuff that she has for years thought would make great columns, but for one reason or another never worked out. Her best "NOT" file is on Ayn Rand:
I abandoned this one for the simple reason that she exhausts me. That unrelenting intensity and repetitive bludgeoning, that preference for the battle ax over the rapier, that disdain for grace notes and the occasional jeu d'esprit. She's even worse than Alan Keyes--either one of them could kill you. Just thinking about doing a column on her was like thinking about defrosting the fridge or cleaning the oven; I kept taking my notes out and putting them back, telling myself "next time," all the while knowing that next time would never come if I could help it.It's an odd way of feeling about a writer with whom I thoroughly agree, but it's merely a clash of tempertments, not philosophy.
I'm not an Objectivist, and I only agree with Ayn Rand some of the time. But it expresses almost exactly how I feel about her myself. Nevertheless I have little doubt that people will be reading and arguing about The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged long after I'm dead.
I am writing about Rand right now and I am very much encouraged that those who would not give her a fair chance are not writing about her. Saying that I appreciate you directing me here very much. I think that just because one does not agree with all of an author's pronouncements does not mean they should not write. Then again if you are only going to say mean things and can't be objective or keep within the context then you probably have better things that you could be doing. So much of what people write begins with posturing: "Now how am I going to tear this person to shreds and leave nothing but a messy pulp." Why would a person want to write like that? I have read many critics who do just that. Then there are critics like Landow who wrote about John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and Carlyle. He discovered a use of rhetoric and discussed them in the context of Victorian sages. It made a lot of sense because it stayed within the context of Victorian sermon tradition. Can you imagine if he would have begun by saying "John Ruskin was a mad man a crazy insane libelous creature who foamed and frothed at the mouth raged and ranted and condemned everything he saw." That would say more about the critic than about the subject, because when you are writing about someone it is crucial to make it clear to the reader why you considered writing in the first place. I don't consider Landow as a negative critic at all, and I have learned much from his approach. I am going to do something like that for Rand, not to shame her or trash her or be mean spirited, but to make a difference and hopefully fill in some holes that people don't generally know about. Those gaps that I have discovered from exhaustive literary research are positive and hopefully very constructive. On the other hand there are people who have written purely from a negative "sense of life" (see Jeff Walker in the Cult of Ayn Rand). Readers generally learn something even from negatively painted portraits, but I can't see why one would consider it a contribution to scholarship to approach the subject matter with the attitude I described. As an Objectivist I salute your courage and welcome you to visit our site at solohq.com. We are trying to make a difference. We fight it out among ourselves and sometimes it gets really heated, but we try to emphasize benevolence. Please don't think that all Objectivists are mean-spirited loathing creatures with nothing to say about anything. Thank you for offering me the opportunity to write here.
Florence King dedicated part of a chapter of her book "With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy" to Ayn Rand. She called Rand a "life-loving misanthrope." Interesting.
Thank you for contributing, Anthony, and you are welcome to comment here any time you wish.
However I would encourage you to be careful about the assumptions you make. If you've read King's books (I've read them all), you'd know that she's been an Ayn Rand fan since she was a young girl, and she's now in her 60s. Indeed, as the quote above says, Florence King "thoroughly agrees" with Ayn Rand. So in what manner is she not giving Rand a fair chance? Have you considered that she's perhaps given Rand a fair chance and simply come to different conclusions than you?
I highly recommend reading some of Florence King's work--she's one of the most interesting writers alive today. I highly recommend With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look At Misanthropy, or her Magnum Opus, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. The latter book is autobiographical, and has a truly endearing passage where, as a young pre-teen girl, Miss King tries to emulate a scene from The Fountainhead. It had me in stitches. If the stereotype is unfounded and Objectivists really do have a sense of humor, you'll probably laugh as hard as I did.
Dean,
Thank you for the insightful comments and the warm welcome. It is indeed hard to make a correct assumption when you have not read the sources or don't have the right context. I stand corrected and I will read King. I think that it is valid to say that in general people regard Objectivists as humorless, so many are. There is a proper role for humor in Objectivism, but most people don't get the jokes:) Saying that, I approach Rand from a humorous standpoint as well. Once I was presenting Objectivism to a small group and one young neophyte asked me quite deliciously, "What is it that you object to anyway"? We didn't get very far that day, but we had a lot of fun. Now I am going to go find some King to read so I can stir up more trouble in Objectivism-land. LOL
Whittaker Chambers wrote this about Atlas Shrugged in a famous review,
"Big Sister Is Watching You" in National Review in 1957:
"Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world...Out of a lifetime of reading I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained....From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To the gas chambers-go!'
IIRC, in With Charity Toward None King basically attributes Rand's misanthropy to having unresolved feelings about being Jewish.
This is in line with King's thinking (you can hardly write books about "Southernness" and "WASPs" unless you think ethnicity and upbringing are strong determinants of character) but certainly is nothing that Rand would like.
It's known that Mrs. Rand uses a lecturing tone in her novels, but this is only due to her "believe" of what she thinks.
In my opinion she is just clearing her point of view and defending it against its enemies instead of evading a confrontation like many other "philosophers" choose to do today.
It is indeed important to view her books in context. They were written during the Cold War and therefore contain strong anti-socialism. I can understand her sentiments, because I have seen Communist/Socialist nations and what it had done to them (Russia, DDR among others).
She might sound rude to some people, and I think that she left no true heir to her work, but she only tries to apply her values and there aren't many people left that hold values.