notes

[calimac]

1. Ayn Rand can't read. My attention has been drawn to a book called Ayn Rand's Marginalia, including the comments she made on a work she can't have been expected to like, C.S. Lewis's moral philosophic treatise The Abolition of Man. What appears to be the complete comments are here, but I was most struck by the one also discussed here (it's from p. 71 of Abolition, 5 pages into chapter 3), at a pro-Rand site, proudly declaring that she "actively judges a writing’s truth and clarity at every stage."

No she doesn't. Truly, she did not read this book, she just glanced through looking for things to ignorantly complain about. In mocking Lewis's claim of "each advance leaves [humans] weaker" she ignores the rest of the sentence ("as well as stronger") even though she underlined it. Nor did she bother to read the previous pages which explained weaker at what. Page 69: "what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument," and thus while the powerful are stronger, the victims are weaker. In power over their lives, not in physical health. Is this a tendentious argument? It sure is, but it requires a closer reader and a more incisive mind than Rand's to rebut it.

Lastly, by using medical advances like the curing of tuberculosis as the evidence for her mockery, Rand shows she's failed to read the very first paragraph of the chapter, in which Lewis endeavors "to make it clear that I do not wish to disparage all that is really beneficial in the process described as 'Man's conquest.'" And what is his specific example of this beneficence? The curing of TB.

They're all like this, actually, a massive continuing display of not getting it, even when the "it" ought to be easily argued against. Rather than publishing this marginalia, the Rand society ought to have suppressed it in shame.

2. Woodstein's sources. The Watergate investigative reporters have always said that Deep Throat was only one of their confidential sources and not necessarily the most important; he was just the most colorful of those who remained hidden after the publication of All the President's Men. Here's an article on some we didn't know about until now. But even that's misleading, because it's the new revelations that make this surprising. When writing All the President's Men, the reporters contacted many of their confidential sources, asking if they'd now be willing to identify themselves. And some said yes. Thus it's no longer news that Hugh Sloan and Judy Hoback (the CRP bookkeeper) were sources; they were even depicted openly in the movie. But they were equally as vital as anyone whose name didn't come out until decades later.

3. Netflix hacks. I may have to try some of these. You might also find them useful.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Is there any indication of when exactly Rand was making those annotations? I'd be curious to know if it was back when The Abolition of Man first came out, or in her late years after her whole life had pretty much fallen apart, or somewhere in between.

I don't think your interpretation of her motives can be the right one, simply because I don't know of anything she wrote where she discussed Lewis's writings or his ideas for any kind of audience—and I'm familiar with her early and middle period nonfiction, up through the early 1970s. (If she wrote about Lewis in her last years I might have missed it. The formulation about "mystics of spirit and mystics of muscle" suggests the late 1950s, though.) What's going on looks more like straightforward bad reading than conscious rhetorical manipulation—which is a different moral failing. But I think it's clear that Rand didn't have the temperament of a scholar, even though she praised the impartial pursuit of truth (and I learned to admire that as a quality partly from her).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There was nothing in the online sources about a possible date. I'd like to check the book, but the nearest copy is in a college library two hours away, and I'm sure not going to buy one. I suspect the marginalia were simply found in Rand's library after her death, and only a time-induced change in her handwriting (if she had that), a reference in her letters, or a known date for her purchase of the book could establish when the marginalia were written.

I didn't mean to convey that "she just glanced through looking for things to ignorantly complain about" was a consciously mendacious process. It was, as you suggest, merely extreme carelessness. She just didn't take the trouble to read the book. She must have flipped through, found sentences that raised her ire, and didn't check the context to see what Lewis meant by that.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I was hoping that was what you meant; it sounds as if we are (the metaphor is singularly fitting!) on the same page, then, on this point.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Another possibility is, that someone else did the underlining and gave her the book. This would explain taking the underlined parts out of context, and perhaps the careless reading of them.

I can imagine her, in courtesy to the friend, skimming for underlines -- then giving her honest opinion!

I wish the movie team would make a good, accurate bio of Rand, especially her later years.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Even that kind of skimming would not be proper scholarship, and would not enable a reader to form an honest opinion of the book. It doesn't live up to the standards of objectivity that I learned, in part, from Rand herself.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of a situation that would not be for serious scholarship, but just as anyone might say "Look at this, it might change your mind." Appropriate for Rand to skim the bits that the friend had underlined, get a bad impression, and say it deserved no further attention. :-)

Anyway forensics should be able to tell us whether the notes and the underlining were done by the same person, or at least with the same pen.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately the trustees of Rand's literary/intellectual estate seem to have less than ideal practices as far as scholarship is concerned. I doubt that we'll get the kind of close graphological analysis that would be necessary for another generation or so.