Defending Ayn Rand

Well, it’s a dirty job, but somebody has got to do it. I cannot tell you with what distaste I pick up my pen to write about Carolyn See’s review of “The Passion of Ayn Rand” by Barbara Branden (The Book Review, Sept. 7).

A book review is supposed to be about the quality of the writing of a certain book. This review was an attack on the subject of the book in question. Barbara Branden’s book gets lost in the shuffle. The fact that Ayn Rand is the most brilliant thinker produced in the 20th Century is not mentioned either.

What was addressed? The love affair of Rand and Nathaniel Branden. And the reaction? Moral outrage. What is the unforgivable sin that Rand has committed? She held as a personal ideal the sanctity of her own happiness. She fell in love with a married man while she herself was married and did not follow in the time-honored tradition of deception, lies and evasion. She loved her husband and paid him the tribute of total honesty. Anything else would have been impossible for her. Those around her did not respond in kind.

“Atlas Shrugged” saved my life, affording me the unforgettable experience of feeling a heavy rock-like burden of a lifetime of unearned guilt roll quietly off my shoulders and disintegrate into the air as if it had never existed.

And to paraphrase a line in “The Fountainhead,” what do I think of Carolyn See? I don’t think of her.

JENNIFER JAMES

Hollywood