My Years with Ayn Rand (Paperback)

~ (Author) "'I WANT TO SLEEP with you..." (more)
Key Phrases: social metaphysics, disowned self, emotional repression, Ayn Rand, New York, Atlas Shrugged (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Ayn Rand's novels and philosophy have been the object of widespread popular interest since the 1950s. After her death in 1982, there was a spate of biographical and critical interest; her popularity continues with a U.S. postage stamp and a television documentary, both scheduled for this spring. These two books offer divergent perspectives on Rand, her followers, and the Objectivist movement. Branden (The Art of Living Consciously, LJ 3/1/97) offers a revised version of his 1989 memoir. A personal account of his intellectual and romantic relationship with Rand and their famous break, it is useful for its insider's view of the Objectivist movement and may appeal to those interested in gossipy details of the protagonists' lives. While objectivity isn't expected in an insider's account, this memoir nonetheless lacks critical distanceAeven after nearly 50 yearsAand is marred by plodding narrative and wooden dialog. Canadian journalist Walker makes a more valuable and original contribution to Rand studies. He analyzes the Objectivist movement, Rand's leadership role, and the politics of her inner circle in terms of the cult dynamic. This analytical perspective avoids the common extremes of hagiography and vilification that mark many accounts of Rand's schismatic movement. Walker also does a credible job of placing Rand's ideas in the context of philosophies that preceded and followed her, and it offers insightful chapters on three of her major followers: Branden, Leonard Peikoff, and Alan Greenspan. His account is well researched and clearly written, though it is sometimes weighed down by an unsynthesized accumulation of detail. A solid contribution to 20th-century intellectual history.AJulia Burch, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Dr. Branden's account of his complex relationship with the literary great . . . allows us a fascinating glimpse into the passions of their lives--intellectual and personal. . . . [It is] not only a memoir of a mythic woman . . . but a chronicle of a stirring intellectual commitment to a political morality that indivudally could only fail." (NAPRA ReView)

"What a story! It's heroic, romantic, deadly, horrifying, tender-and I couldn't put it down." (George Leonard, author of The Transformation and Education and Education and Ecstasy)

"Relentlessly revealing. . . the myth of Ayn Rand gives way to a full-sized portrait in contrasting colors, appealing and appalling, potent and paradoxical. . . . it takes a special kind of nerve to write such a book." (Norman Cousins, author of Head First and The Healing Heart)

"Non-stop theater. All the ingredients are there: conflict, colorful characters, suspense, and a Greek inevitability of tragedy born of hubris. There's a nexus of sex nearly dizzying in its permutations." (Dale Wasserman, playwright and screenwriter, Man of La Mancha and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"Branden plots his relationship with Rand from a psychological vantage point, with devastatingly articulate results. . . . A fascinating portrait of Rand and her disciples." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Do you know my greatest reward for 'The Fountainhead?' You." (Ayn Rand to Nathaniel Branden)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (February 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787945137
• ISBN-13: 978-0787945138
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #255,136 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating story re-told., March 27, 1999

By	[e-mail] Bryan Register (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

Readers should note that this book is a revised edition of Branden's 1989 memoir "Judgment Day". While it claims to be 'substantially revised', the revisions are not all *that* substantial. The many stylistic changes do make the book read better, and some less relevant sections have been deservedly excised.

Primarily, the book is altered so that Branden's associates from the period covered by the book are shown in somewhat more positive light. Allan Blumenthal, for instance, is no longer a quite conventional mama's boy; Barbara Branden is less clingy and shows up as a more autonomous individual. Her numerous affairs reported in the first edition are trimmed to a much smaller number.

Surprisingly, Barbara Branden is reported to have developed the concept 'psycho-epistemology', perhaps the key to Rand's aesthetics. This single fact should end any notion that Objectivism is all the ideas that Ayn Rand came up with and nothing else.

Nathaniel Branden is less self-aggrandizing in this edition, and he takes more of the blame for his failed first marriage and the personal disaster for many Objectivists which he helped cause. The portrait of Ayn Rand herself is little changed, which would make us wonder why bother with the second edition until we remember that this is not a biography of Rand but a memoir by Branden.

All in all, the book tells a fascinating story, and tells it rather better and more fairly than the first edition. But the changes, while interesting, are generally not radical and readers of the first edition should bear this in mind before they buy the current version. Those who have not read the first edition should definitely find this book of interest; it tells the very self-conscious story of a man, three women, loves of people, ideas, and their interrelationships, and how a something like a cult is formed and destroyed.

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hell hath no fury: Branden's own story is fascinating, December 19, 2001

By	Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

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Many people who are or were admirers of Ayn Rand heard about the devastating fallout of a love affair between Rand and her protege Nathaniel Branden. Rand was a mentor to the young Branden, who first contacted her while he was a teen in Ontario. She was impressed with his grasp of her philosophy Objectivism, and she, Branden, and Branden's future wife Barbara became friends, associates, and business partners.

When Rand began an affair with Branden, they both naively felt it would not affect their marriages (!) nor the functioning of the burgeoning Objectivist movement and the Nathanial Branden Institute. However, the idealism and fascination of a young man for his exciting mentor was ultimately not enough to base an emotionally satisfying relationship between a man and a woman 25 years his senior. Branden wished to withdraw; Rand felt her self worth threatened by a younger, more beautiful woman.

The resulting firestorm of recrimination by Rand against the Brandens was first rumored about, then exposed over a number of years in several books, one by Barbara Branden (The Passion of Ayn Rand) and this book by Branden. How could someone who was so passionate being coldly objective about facts AND emotions go so wildly off-course? Some of the answers, according to Branden as he saw it and experienced it, are here in this book.

What is NOT here is rather surprising from a noted psychologist, such as Branden is today. An in-depth analysis of the logic of Rand's fury is only sketchily guessed at, the logic of emotions as kind of a weather-report about the ego is not much dealt with. And Branden scarcely deals with his own duality in idealizing the woman he's with (either Rand or his wife) with the woman he truly wants (Patrecia.) Nor does he deal in much depth with Rand's monumental ability to deny reality when it pleased her or her form of intellectual bullying; shouting and cold, vindictive fury as a way to intimidate are surprising from someone who knew an ad-hominem attack from a logical argument and would not hesitate to call it out. I would have been interested in an examination of the psychology of this as Branden could have analysed it. But that isn't in this book either. However...if you want the story from Branden's viewpoint, this is a must-read.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting autobiograpy/socio-intellectual history., February 22, 1999

By	Ellen Stuttle <[e-mail]> (Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews

Persons who know the facts of the Objectivist movement's history (facts primarily ignored by the Michael Paxton film) will know that it was Nathaniel Branden who was the prime architect of the movement. Through courses offered by Nathaniel Branden Lectures, later Nathaniel Branden Institute, the philosophy of Objectivism qua philosophy was first taught to the world.

Those familiar with the basic outlines of Nathaniel Branden's eventful life will also know: that he and Ayn Rand met and became friends when he was going on 20 and she was 45; that some years later they began an affair with the consent of their respective spouses; that the dramatic end of their personal and professional relationship in 1968 had explosive effects for the entire Objectivist community.

Branden has previously told the story of his life and relationship with Ayn Rand in the controversial memoir *Judgment Day* (1989). The present memoir is an extensively revised and updated version of the earlier book. Even readers who have read (and reread) *Judgment Day* will be fascinated by the new insights to be gleaned. *My Years with Ayn Rand* is as spellbindingly written as the previous work but it presents a richer, more complete account.

This is a not-to-be-missed by anyone interested in Objectivism -- or simply interested in the engrossing story of some remarkable people.