Interviews

Jennifer Burns

In the fifth edition of our monthly interview series, American Polymath editor Clayton Trutor chats with Jennifer Burns via email. Jennifer Burns is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of a fascinating new intellectual biography of Ayn Rand entitled Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Since its October release by Oxford University Press, Goddess of the Market has received a great deal of publicity. Burns herself appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Goddess of the Market has been reviewed positively in a wide range of publications and appears on a number of year-end “best of” lists.

American Polymath: What piqued your interest in Ayn Rand's life and work?

Jennifer Burns: It was Rand’s ubiquity that really attracted me to the topic – everywhere I went, somebody seemed to be reading Rand. This was in my first year of graduate school, when I was searching for a topic. I visited the library and checked out all the books about her and quickly realized that here was a very important figure who hadn’t been adequately studied by scholars. This is what every young graduate student is looking for! She had an exciting and colorful life so I knew the research would be both fun and significant. Furthermore, I had a number of questions about Rand stemming from my reading of The Fountainhead in college. From that novel I could see she was a politically engaged writer and very much a product of her time, but I really didn’t know how to fit her within broader traditions of American thought. That became the ongoing challenge of my dissertation and book, and spurred me to uncover this ideological world of the American right that has been largely neglected by historians until recently.

AP: I've read that you worked with the noted intellectual historian David Hollinger at Berkeley. How did he react to your choice of Ayn Rand as a dissertation topic?

JB: I’ll never forget the gleam in David Hollinger’s eye when I proposed a seminar paper on Ayn Rand. He thought it was a terrific topic right from the start. Many people envision Berkeley as it was in the 1960s, a hotbed of liberalism and radical leftism, and can’t imagine that anyone there would embrace a dissertation on Ayn Rand. But first and foremost UC Berkeley is a world class research institution, and Hollinger and my other professors in the History Department recognized there was a serious lack of information about Rand in the historical literature. They were all eager to learn more about her, and gave me a lot of flexibility in how I structured my approach and my research.

AP: Rand's use of amphetamines figures prominently in the narrative. Do you have a sense of the drug culture among Rand enthusiasts?

JB: It is difficult to generalize about a whole population, but I will note that the rap on libertarians in the 1970s was “Republicans who smoke grass.” Libertarians are not the same as Objectivists, but many were inspired by Rand. Especially among readers who mingled her ideas with the counterculture and anarchism, you will find a defense of drug use, as both a personal and political issue. Campaigning against the drug laws was part of a larger movement among libertarians against “victimless crimes,” which included efforts to deregulate vitamins, abolish seat belt laws and mandatory helmet laws, repeal laws against consensual sex, etc.

None of this can be attributed directly to Rand’s own habits, because she always spoke out strongly against anything that would affect the mind or impact reason, and she criticized hippies and libertarians for their drug use. She was also secretive about her use of amphetamines, at least to her larger following. Close friends knew about her reliance on amphetamines, which she considered to be medicinal, not recreational.

AP: Are you pleased with the way the book has been received?

JB: Yes, the amount of press and publicity my book has received has been truly awesome, and an author’s dream come true! I think the highlight was my appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart in October. I was deeply honored to have been invited onto his show to talk about my work.

If I had to complain – and since you asked – I would add that it has been somewhat disappointing that many reviews of my book take the form of an extended essay upon Ayn Rand, with little attention paid to my ideas or to the book as a book. Interestingly, the more prominent the review, the more likely this is to be the case. The reviews that evaluate my approach or argument, and give a sense of what it is like to read the book – which is my view the fundamental task of the reviewer – have been smaller, niche outlets, like blogs and conservative websites. I think this is a commentary on the contemporary media landscape and one reason we are seeing such fragmentation. The smaller outlets are offering quality that the big names simply can’t match as they try to appeal to the largest possible audience.

AP: How has the book been received on the right?

JB: In general, the reaction on the right has been very positive, though like Rand, my book is controversial. The first Amazon reviewer gave it five stars, the second gave it one star! Most conservatives and libertarians appreciate that I understand the fine-grained distinctions between different strains of thought on the right. Negative evaluations have come primarily from Objectivists who feel I am too critical of Rand or underestimate her philosophical accomplishments. Most followers of Rand, however, are extremely pleased to read a book that treats Rand seriously and is full of new insights about her life and thought gleaned from her personal papers. I am one of the few researchers who has been granted access to the Ayn Rand archive, and consequently my book contains a lot of information about Rand which has never been published before, including excerpts from her unpublished writing and her unedited letters and diaries. Because my work in her papers has aroused such curiosity, I’ve started a blog series “In the Rand Archive” which can be found at my website, www.jenniferburns.org/blog.

AP: Have you found any common cultural touchtones among Rand enthusiasts (music, film, television, other authors)?

JB: Definitely – science fiction would be one shared interest, particularly in the 1970s among libertarians. Robert Heinlein was a top libertarian favorite, just behind Rand. The Canadian band Rush uses a lot of Randian references in their lyrics. Rand is also extremely popular in Silicon Valley among entrepreneur types, and I know of more than one hedge fund named for her characters.

AP: What other biographies influenced your approach to this book?

JB: I was drawn to biographies that use a historical figure as a way to illuminate a larger time period. In this regard, I was very influenced by David Kennedy’s Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger and Ronald Steele’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century. I also enjoyed reading Debby Applegate’s The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. In the final stages of writing, I read David Herbert Donald’s Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe every night before falling asleep. I also picked up R.B. Lewis’s wonderful biography of Edith Wharton, but it was too fascinating and kept me up late reading, so I had to quarantine it until I finished my own book, after which it became a savory reward.

AP: Has there been much written about Nathaniel Branden, Rand's longtime companion and the father of the self-esteem movement?

JB: There has not been much written about Nathaniel Branden, other than regarding his long-term affair with Rand. This was another aspect of Rand that drew me to the project – a close friend had benefitted greatly from reading his book Honoring the Self, and I knew about his Rand connection. He seemed to be yet another way Rand had influenced American culture. I did not do much with Branden in my book, since my focus was on Rand, but I do think his work merits its own study and his post-Rand career is important to consider in any evaluation of her impact. There is some good new work coming out on the California New Age culture of the 1970s, and I think Branden and his theories of self-esteem will ultimately be recognized as an important part of that world.

AP: In the book, you mention Rand and H.L. Mencken's mutual admiration. Did they have any kind of a relationship?

JB: They exchanged letters at the beginning of her career, when he tried to interest publishers in the manuscript of her first novel, We The Living. He was impressed by the book’s anti-communist message, but correctly anticipated she would have trouble finding a publisher. Mencken was an important influence on Rand, both because of the American Mercury, which helped her become politically aware, and his interest in Nietzsche, which she shared. By the time they exchanged letters, Mencken was in the twilight of his career. Rand picked up many of the themes and sensibilities he developed in the 1920s and carried them forward.

AP: Anton LeVey acknowledged the influence of Rand on the Satanic Bible. Did Rand acknowledge his support?

JB: I don’t believe Rand was aware of LeVey, and she did not to my knowledge comment upon his work. She did receive a few enthusiastic letters from Madalyn Murray-O’Hair, the controversial founder of American Atheists, but did not write back.

AP:  What are your plans for future research?

JB: I’m wrapping up a few loose ends from the book by looking more deeply into Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane, two libertarian women friendly with Rand early in her career. Rose Wilder Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and she helped write her mother’s famous Little House on the Prairie series. I’m fascinated by the coincidence of two women spreading libertarian ideas through popular fiction at about the same time, and will probably write something short more fully examining relationships between Lane, Rand, and Paterson.

For my next major project, I’m beginning an inquiry into environmentalism and its relationship to market thinking, particularly in the American West.