(NEW YORK) MintPress — Before her death in 1982, the writer and philosopher Ayn Rand declared, “I will not die, it’s the world that will end.”
The world may still be going strong, but so too is Rand’s legacy. Her books are still selling like hotcakes — about 800,000 a year, on average, for a total of more than 25 million — and two of her novels have been made into Hollywood films.
In the 1990s, Newsweek stated “she’s everywhere,” a documentary about her life was nominated for an Academy Award and the U.S. Postal Service came out with a stamp commemorating the “controversial but respected author.”
More recently, according to a nationwide poll by the Library of Congress, the 1,168-page “Atlas Shrugged” is the second most influential book in the country, after the Bible. Rand described the theme of the novel as “the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest.”
“Atlas Shrugged” unabashedly advocates the core tenets of Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, which she described as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
“The Libertarian Party owes her a major debt. Silicon Valley loves her. CEOs take refuge in her pro-capitalist ideas,” wrote the New York Observer columnist George Gurley in a recent piece.
“Starting with the bailouts and TARP, book sales went through the roof,” he continued, referring to the 2008-2009 rescue of big banks, insurance companies and automakers, “and since Obama took office, over 1.5 million copies of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ have been sold.”
And now, just as President Obama heads into the final days of his re-election campaign against Republican challenger Mitt Romney, stay tuned for “Atlas Shrugged: Part II” the movie.
The producer of the film, Harmon Kaslow, has acknowledged that the Oct. 12 release date for part two of the cinematic adaptation of the novel — the first installment came out last year — is intentional.
Having it in the theaters just ahead of the November election, he told the Washington Times earlier this year, “will give like-minded people an opportunity to get together and sort of discuss the issues, and the course of action that they’re going to take in connection with those elections.”
Rand’s roots
Ayn Rand, whose given name was Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, was born in 1905 in Russia, where she was raised in an upper-middle-class household in St. Petersburg.
She claimed to have begun writing screenplays at the age of eight and novels at the age of 10. She was 12 at the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution, during which her family fled to the Crimea.
After graduating from high school at 16, Rand returned with her family to Petrograd (the new name for St. Petersburg), where, according to biographer Jeff Britting, they faced desperate conditions and on occasion nearly starved.
Rand graduated from the University of Petrograd and then went to film school, where she fell in love with Hollywood. She received permission to leave Russia by saying she was going to visit relatives in America to learn the film business, and she left in 1925 with no intention of returning.
By this time she had decided her professional surname for writing would be Rand possibly a Cyrillic contraction of her birth surname, and she adopted the first name Ayn, either from a Finnish name or from the Hebrew word ayin, meaning eye.
She spent six months with relatives in Chicago before moving to Los Angeles. On her second day there, she bumped into her favorite director, Cecil B. DeMille, who hired her as a script reader and cast her as an extra in a movie about Jesus Christ.
Rand married actor and painter Frank O’Connor in 1929 and later became an American citizen. Throughout the 1930s, she took various jobs to support her writing. Rand spent seven years working on her novel “The Fountainhead” before it was published in 1943.
The book revolves around a young architect, Howard Roark, and his struggle against what Rand described as “second-handers” — those who attempt to live through others, placing others above self. It was rejected by 12 publishers before finally being accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The New York Times raved, saying Rand wrote “brilliantly, beautifully, and bitterly” and assuring readers that “you will not be able to read this masterful book without thinking through some of the basic concepts of our time.”
It began selling widely and, after a couple of years, brought Rand wealth and fame. To celebrate, according to Gurley, she bought herself a mink coat.
Magnum Opus
Rand then spent 14 years writing Atlas Shrugged, which was published in 1957.
The plot centers on a United States in a deep depression, during which the most creative industrialists, scientists and artists go on strike, hide in a retreat in the mountains and build an independent, free economy.
The novel’s hero and leader of the strike, John Galt, describes the strike as “stopping the motor of the world” by withdrawing the minds of the individuals most contributing to the nation’s wealth and achievement.
Although the book was an instant best seller, it received highly negative reviews. “Is it a novel or a nightmare?” asked Time magazine. “This book is written out of hate,” claimed the New York Times. Other critics called it “execrable claptrap” and “longer than life and twice as preposterous.”
In the National Review, writer and editor Whittaker Chambers called it “sophomoric” and “remarkably silly.” Writer, critic and satirist Dorothy Parker quipped, “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
The publication of “Atlas Shrugged” marked the end of Rand’s career as a novelist. Afterward, she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays.
Rand died of heart failure at the age of 77. At the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, there was a six-foot high neon dollar sign next to her coffin.
On the big screen — and the political stage
There was talk for years about a movie version of “Atlas Shrugged,” but many bigwigs, including “Godfather” producer Al Ruddy, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway never managed to pull it off. In 2006, there was speculation that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt might co-star in a film adaptation, but the deal fell through.
Finally, on April 15, 2011, businessman and film producer John Agioloro, who had optioned the novel in 1992, released “Atlas Shrugged: Part I.”
“Despite efforts by Tea Party groups and Fox News personalities to promote it, the movie was a flop,” wrote Gurley in the Observer.
Rotten Tomatoes reported that only 5 of 45 written reviews from critics (11 percent) were positive and summarized the critical reaction as, “Passionate ideologues may find it compelling, but most filmgoers will find this low-budget adaptation of the Ayn Rand bestseller decidedly lacking.”
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film only one star, calling it “the most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault.”
Still, in the run-up to next year’s 70th anniversary of the publication of “The Fountainhead,” Rand is once again making headlines, with the revival being fueled by Romney’s choice of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate.
In a 2005 speech to the Atlas Society, which promotes Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, Ryan said, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”
He acknowledged that he grew up reading Rand’s work, “and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are.” He added, “There is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through (her) writings and works.”
Ryan backtracked somewhat as his political star rose nationally. He recently told Fox News’ Brit Hume that he was not a Rand disciple and that although he’d “really enjoyed” her novels, he “completely” disagrees with her atheistic philosophy.
And in a recent interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Ryan spoke about how his Catholic faith has also informed his approach to public policy.
He asserted, “To me, the principle of subsidiarity, which is really federalism, meaning government closest to the people governs best, having a civil society (on) the principle of solidarity where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that’s how we advance the common
good.”
Yet not everyone is convinced. Commentators like Michael Tomasky maintain Ryan is aligned with Rand’s objectivist philosophy. He opined in the Daily Beast saying that the Congressman getting into politics because of Rand is “sort of the moral equivalent of being inspired to go into the energy business by Enron.”
And economist Paul Krugman wrote in an op-ed titled “Galt, God and Gold,” “What does it say about the party when its intellectual leader evidently gets his ideas largely from deeply unrealistic fantasy novels?”
David Kelley, who ran the Objectivist Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. and is now the founder and chief intellectual officer at the Atlas Society, told the Observer’s Gurley that Rand would have
“credited Ryan for at least trying to frame political issues in terms of principles, but would have seen a contradiction between his religious views and his desire to promote individualism in politics — especially his pro-life stance.
“But the fact that he respects her and the fact that she had a positive influence on him, I think those are wonderful,” he added.
Public impact
As for the influence “Atlas Shrugged: Part II” might have on voter’ decisions, it’s difficult to gauge says Washington Times columnist Michael Warren.
“Fahreneheit 9/11 ” was the most successful documentary feature of all time, and the film won plenty of accolades and acclaim from liberals in and out of Hollywood,” he writes. “For all we know, Mr. Moore’s effort reinvigorated some voters discouraged by the lackluster Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry. But if so, it wasn’t enough to topple Mr. Bush.”
Conversely, claims Warren, “Despite some critical cheerleading for “W.” back in 2008, audiences were lukewarm. Not that it mattered — the country was already on its way to electing Mr. Obama over Sen. John McCain, and voters didn’t need a movie to persuade them they’d had enough of Mr. Bush and the Republicans at the time.
“Atlas Shrugged: Part II” is the second film of a trilogy encompassing the entire book. Part III is due to be released next year.