The World She Made: Heller on Rand

Editor's Note: My interview with Anne Heller originally appeared in the Register-Star Newspaper April 30, 2010.

“She was a complex, contradictory character,” said Anne Heller of the writer-philosopher Ayn Rand.

Heller spent five and a half years working on her 2009 biography of Rand titled “Ayn Rand and the World She Made,” published by Doubleday.

Rand, born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, in Russia in 1905 wrote a number of works, including the two best selling novels, “The Fountainhead” (1943) and 1957’s “Atlas Shrugged.”

She was also a philosopher whose ideas, which came to be known as Objectivism, continue to be influential today as a wellspring for Libertarianism and other ideologies.

Heller, a magazine editor and journalist, first began reading Rand after Suze Orman — the financial advisor and best-selling author — sent her a passage from “Atlas Shrugged” about money, as a way of illustrating the point of Orman’s essay that Heller was editing.

“I’m not even sure if she is a fan of Rand,” Heller said of Orman. But the passage was enough to pique Heller’s interest.

“The passage surprised me by defending limitless wealth in a way that was logical, original, complex, and, though somewhat overbearing, beautifully written,” stated Heller in her book’s preface.

Soon she was reading more of Rand’s work.

Heller made the leap to writing Rand’s biography after she began “looking around at the work out there” on Rand.

She said that most of the books were either written by Rand devotees or by authors who “dismissed her out of hand.”

“There was nothing objective out there,” she said.

Heller’s biography is based on original research done in Russia, along with interviews with Rand’s friends and former acolytes.

She said that while writing the book she was surprised to discover how determined Rand had been throughout her life.

“Nothing was a coincidence in her life,” she said. “She knew what she wanted.”

In Heller’s book she describes a well known scene in which the famed Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille meets Rand for the first time. It has been said that the meeting, which helped launch Rand’s career as a Hollywood screen writer, was just sheer luck. But Heller, based on her research, believes the meeting was more than a coincidence.

“Of the people I talked to nobody believed that happened (by chance),” she said.

Another aspect of Rand’s personality that Heller was surprised, and saddened by, was how Rand’s ideas became more rigid as she grew older.

Rand had a wonderful mind that changed decade by decade, said Heller.

She believes this was due, in part, to the cult-like atmosphere that surrounded Rand in her later years.

Beginning in the 1950s, Rand, while living in New York City, was surrounded by a small group of acolytes, whom Heller called “gatekeepers” who kept those who disagreed with Rand away from her.

“She let it happen,” said Heller. “She was charmed by flattery like the rest of us.”

Rand’s philosophy which places the individual good above that of the collective continues to be felt close to 30 years after her death in 1982.

“You can draw a line from Objectivism straight through to Libertarianism,” said Heller.

She said the Tea Party movement has also latched on to Rand.

“People use her a lot,” she said. “I don’t know if what they are doing has much to do with her ... she was pro-abortion and anti-religion, ferociously so.”

Alan Greenspan, the economist who served as the country’s chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, was also influenced by Rand.

“He was a steadfast friend to her until the end of her life,” said Heller.

According to Heller, Greenspan said that Rand put the moral basis in capitalism for him — the idea that capitalism is the only economic system that respects the individual and is determined by the individuals right to produce.

“A couple of years ago,” said Heller, Greenspan repudiated the theory that it was in a business person’s best interest to be honest, a long held Randian belief.

“It’s shocking to me that he lived at the pinnacle of world economics and didn’t realize that people would cheat if they had the chance,” she said.

Rand’s fiction also continues to do well, with close to a million books being sold in 2009. But for Rand there was no line between her philosophy and her novels.

“Rand used her novels as a way of illustrating her ideas,” said Heller. “She always thought that people are much more influenced by stories than by lectures.”