Ayn Rand: Objectively Speaking

Perusing the new book arrivals at the Kansas State University library, I was pleasantly surprised to find a new hardback copy of Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed. This work, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz, contains transcripts of dozens of interviews of Rand. The book begins with a short interview from 1932 when Rand was working as an unknown scriptwriter in Hollywood. The largest section of the book is devoted to the period in the early and mid 1960s when Rand was interviewed on numerous occasions at American universities.

The last section contains interviews from both television and radio. The last part of the book provides fascinating discussions between Rand and such personalities as Mike Wallace, Johnny Carson, and Edwin Newman. This last is one of my favorites. Newman is critical, but not hostile. Unlike most mainstream media types today, Newman knows how to ask intelligent questions that cut to the heart of the matter. At the end of the interview, which took place in 1972 on NBC, Newman asks Rand on whether her novel Atlas Shrugged is "happening today." Rand's answer is just as relevant now as then:

Yes, I see the novel coming true in a more literal sense than I ever expected: the destruction of reason, the orgy of altruism, the demands for sacrifice of everybody to everybody else, complete intellectual chaos, the destruction of the independence of industry. The one thing I didn't predict, because I couldn't have reached that state of imagination, is the ecological crusade. That's the cherry on the cake - the attempt to obliterate industry openly, blatantly, consciously.

One could at that Rand did not anticipate the abject Western surrender to Islam under the guise of multiculturalism as the nuts on top of the cake.

This book is required reading for anyone interested in the ideas of Ayn Rand.

Crossposted at The Dougout