Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q & A (Paperback)

by Robert Mayhew (Editor)
Key Phrases: altruist morality, malevolent universe, copyright bill, Atlas Shrugged, United States, Soviet Russia (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
After the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Ayn Rand occasionally lectured in order bring her philosophy of Objectivism to a wider audience and apply it to current cultural and political issues. These taped lectures and the question-and-answer sessions that followed not only added an eloquent new dimension to Ayn Rand's ideas and beliefs, but a fresh and spontaneous insight into Ayn Rand herself. Never before available in print, this publishing event is a collection of those enlightening Q & As.

This is Ayn Rand on: ethics, Ernest Hemingway, modern art, Vietnam, Libertarians, Jane Fonda, religious conservatives, Hollywood Communists, atheism, Don Quixote, abortion, gun control, love and marriage, Ronald Reagan, pollution, the Middle East, racism and feminism, crime and punishment, capitalism, prostitution, homosexuality, reason and rationality, literature, drug use, freedom of the press, Richard Nixon, New Left militants, HUAC, chess, comedy, suicide, masculinity, Mark Twain, improper questions, and more.

About the Author
Ayn Rand's novels include We the Living and Anthem. Upon the publication of The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) she achieved her spectacular success. Ms. Rand's unique philosophy, Objectivism, has gained a worldwide audience. The fundamentals of her philosophy are put forth in three nonfiction books, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, The Virtue of Selfishness, and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. They're available in Signet editions, as is the magnificent statement of her artistic credo, The Romantic Manifesto.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: NAL Trade (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451216652
• ISBN-13: 978-0451216656
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #278,109 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look at Ayn Rand in action, November 4, 2005

By	Ash Ryan (Salt Lake City, Utah) - See all my reviews

A great compilation of the best of Ayn Rand's question and answer periods following her lectures.

Robert Mayhew's excellent editing organizes the questions and answers into chapters drawn around broad themes (e.g., politics, ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, and art), then into smaller sub-sections. This keeps the reading flowing, instead of jumping around from topic to topic almost at random as would occur in a live Q&A session.

While some of Ayn Rand's answers will be obvious to long-time students of Objectivism, many of them shed new light on her philosophy, and almost all of them give the reader a better picture of Ayn Rand as a person, whether it is her quick wit, her warm benevolence in giving the benefit of the doubt to most questioners and patiently explaining her philosophical principles to them, or her righteous indignation at genuinely dishonest, hostile, or insulting questions. Even her answers to questions on narrow, concrete issues at the time of the session (such as the Vietnam war) are applicable to events today (such as the current Iraq war) because her answers address the deeper abstract principles involved (such as proper foreign policy).

On my first reading, I noticed only two drawbacks. First, a few of her answers leave you wanting more, and you wish that she were still alive and in the room with you so that you could ask her follow-up questions. That's not to say that she doesn't give a full enough answer to the question as asked, given the context of a live public Q&A session, but rather that her intriguing answers leave you feeling sad that you are merely reading a book and not actually in the room during one of those Q&A sessions. Second, if you've ever heard a recording of one of her Q&A's (or were lucky enough to have attended one), you are aware of how much you are missing from the live setting--for example, from the audience reactions, as they audibly gasp in shock or indignation at some remark Ayn Rand makes, but by the end of her answer after she explains the comment, they are cheering. That's an added bonus of the live setting that the book format unfortunately can't reproduce, but if you're a student like me and can't yet afford to spend a few hundred dollars on recordings of all her lectures, this book is the next best thing.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Genius of Ayn Rand, November 7, 2006

By	Michael Renzulli (Phoenix, Arizona) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is a good clear and concise guide to Ayn Rand's thoughts on a variety of issues. From taxes to ethics to Ernest Hemingway to capitalism to homosexuality, Rand forthrightly, clearly and honestly answers many questions put to her.

This book also cleared up many questions I had about Ayn Rand and this book solidifies here as the great intellectual and philosopher she was.

While the book is not, as Robert Mayhew points out, official Objectivism, due to the editing, anyone interested in her philosophy would find this book useful if they would like a short but pointed look at her thought.

As far as the editing is concerned, in my view that's really Robert Mayhew sort of eating his cake and having it too. If it can't be considered Rand's ideas because he edited it then why edit it? Why not release it as she said it? Because if he did they would destroy the myth that she always said brilliant things off the cuff instead of horrible things which she later had to restate and edit.

I also cringe at the term "official Objectivism" since that implies there is a body, in this case the Ayn Rand Institute, that decides what is official. Yet the philosophy itself is supposed to be based on reality. If it is reality based then no one can control it except reality.

I can also see where Dr. Reisman is coming from but, overall, this book is a good introduction to the genius of Ayn Rand.

44 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An Unnecessary and Presumptuous Attempt to Improve on Ayn Rand, March 4, 2006

By	George Reisman (Orange County, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ayn Rand's question-and-answer sessions following her lectures, and following the lectures of Nathaniel Branden, were always a fascinating display of her brilliance. They showed an incredibly powerful mind at work on the spot, instantaneously able to unravel virtual pretzels of mistaken premises, errors of logic, and, not infrequently, one or more forms of dishonesty, and bring everything into the clearest, sharpest light. Watching her do this incredible work, I came to think of her as a kind of avenging angel, routinely righting the intellectual wrongs that were destroying our culture and that almost always went unanswered. She answered them-in spades! I thought of her as taking the questions of intellectual shysters and hanging them with them.

Few things could be more valuable for advancing Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, rescuing contemporary culture from the philosophical poison that is destroying it, and, at the same time, giving a sense to those who never met her of what Ayn Rand was like in person, than making her Q&A sessions available to the public, in the original, spoken form in which they took place and were recorded.

Unfortunately, this was not the approach taken by Prof. Mayhew and Leonard Peikoff, whom Prof. Mayhew credits with having encouraged him to undertake the project. Instead of remaining faithful to the oral nature of the material being presented, they decided to make a book out of it, which it never was and now cannot properly be.

Speaking is not writing. Converting lectures, and still more, spontaneous answers in question periods, into the form of an essay or book requires editing and a process of considerable intellectual refinement. As a result, in order to put her oral material into the form of a book, Prof. Mayhew was placed in the impossible position of trying to improve upon Ayn Rand. This is an assignment that no one in the world would be capable of carrying out but Ayn Rand herself.

It was totally unnecessary to attempt it. Making the attempt must rank as a classic example of context dropping. Of dropping the context that while carefully considered, edited writing is superior to spontaneous speech, it by no means follows that the most carefully considered, edited writing produced by Robert Mayhew is superior to the spontaneous speech of Ayn Rand. Nothing can be gained from attempting such a conversion when there is no one alive capable of reliably carrying out the conversion.

The result of Prof. Mayhew's misguided attempt is a product that, in his own words, "should not be considered part of Objectivism."

In his view, the reason is simply that "no one can guarantee that Ayn Rand would have approved of editing she herself did not see." But these words subsume something much more substantial. This is revealed when Prof. Mayhew says, "I should mention, however, that some (but not much) of my editing aimed to clarify wording that, if left unaltered, might be taken to imply a viewpoint that she explicitly rejected in her written works."

Here we have a confession that the content of some of Ayn Rand's answers has been materially altered, indeed, apparently transformed, at least in part, into the very opposite of what she actually said. We have no way of knowing if what was involved was a mere act of misspeaking, or something of real significance, possibly representing a change in her position on a subject. We cannot know if Ayn Rand was addressing a complexity in her position that was too subtle for Prof. Mayhew to follow and that he mistakenly inferred a contradiction of her published position when in fact there was none. Whatever the explanation may be, the reader will never know. Nor will anyone know what significant new knowledge the world may have been deprived of because Prof. Mayhew assumed that he was entitled to correct Ayn Rand.

Even the most minimal respect for honesty would have required explicitly naming all such Q&As and providing the exact text of Ayn Rand's answers in all such cases. If transcripts were not to be provided for all the Q&As, they should most certainly and absolutely have been provided in cases of this kind. That way, the reader would know what Ayn Rand actually said, not what Prof. Mayhew had decided she should be allowed to say. In his capacity as editor, Prof. Mayhew could have argued for his particular interpretation in a footnote if he wished, but not present his interpretation as though it were the view of Ayn Rand.

But with the most cavalier disrespect for his readers' independence and powers of judgment, Prof. Mayhew not only does not provide the transcripts necessary to know what Ayn Rand actually said, but he does not even tell us which particular answers of Ayn Rand he has altered in this way nor how many answers he has altered in this way. The result is that a reader who has had no first-hand experience with Ayn Rand's answers can never be sure if what he is reading on any given page is the views actually expressed by Ayn Rand in a Q&A or some distortion of Ayn Rand's views invented by Prof. Mayhew. In effect, his policy of disrespect and secretiveness has substantially destroyed the value of the whole book.

Many years ago, there was a young actress to whom Ayn Rand gave the responsibility of directing a production of her play "The Night of January 16th." Toward the close of the play's run, an actor prevailed upon this young woman to allow him to alter one of Ayn Rand's lines in one of the play's last performances. When Ayn Rand learned of this, she was furious and completely ended her relationship with this young woman, who had been in her inner circle for several years. Ayn Rand attached the highest value to her every word and would never agree to her words being altered by anyone, let alone made to represent the opposite of what she said.

I cannot say if Ayn Rand were alive and knew what Prof. Mayhew had done with her words, and what Leonard Peikoff had allowed and encouraged him to do, that neither of these gentlemen would now still be alive. Ayn Rand would not literally have killed them, though she might have thought about it. What I can say is that neither of them would ever again be welcome to touch a single word or thought of hers.