Ayn Rand - the cultural phenomenon

• Desh's blog
• 982 reads

Ayn Rand has enjoyed almost cult following ever since she burst on the scene. Her fans are aplenty. I still remember that her books were the staple of many in my college times. But what or how was she?

She was proud, grouchy, vindictive, insulting, dismissive, and rash. (One former associate called her “the Evel Knievel of leaping to conclusions.”) But she was also idealistic, yearning, candid, worshipful, precise, and improbably charming.

Interestingly, although she claimed she could figure out the "entire philosophy of life" of someone through what he found sexually attractive, yet she did not want people to get into her history. Her thought, she would claim was not dependent on her relationships and family etc. But was that so?  She lived in Soviet Union and was badly affected by the excesses of the Bolshevik party.

Btw, she was a Russian and born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum.  Rand was probably a Cyrillic contraction of her birth surname while Ayn was a Finnish name that she adopted for her writing career.

Have you read Ayn Rand?  if so, do you have an opinion?

Reference Links:
The One Argument Ayn Rand Couldn't Win -- New York Magazine

Tags: AynRand, Fountainhead