An Introvert as Guiding Star
Novelist Ayn Rand’s fierce independence and strict adherence to rationality were among her introvert characteristics – admirable to some and disturbing to others.
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was and is a polarizing figure. Born Alisa Rosenberg, Rand grew up as the oldest daughter in a well-to-do St. Petersburg family whose lives were overturned by the Russian Revolution of 1917. Her passionate, lifelong hatred of Communism built on that personal foundation. After immigrating to the US, she infused her explosively popular novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged with enthusiasm for heroic individualism and for capitalism as the morally correct economic system.
Decades after her death, she remains a philosophical lodestar for libertarians and many technology company founders, as well as admirers who embrace her teachings of Objectivism. Detractors, however, condemn her for disparaging altruism, religion and anti-discrimination laws.
When we look into what Rand was like as a person, we find quite a few introvert tendencies that lend themselves to celebration or to criticism, depending on one’s point of view.
First is her temperamental independence. During her childhood, Rand’s mother fretted about her not having friends. Yet Alisa/Ayn did not feel lonely. “I did not like being a child. I did not like being attached to a family,” she told a biographer decades later. In books she found companions – princesses, adventurers, warriors and particularly a swashbuckler in a French serial for children called The Mysterious Valley.” This character, named Cyrus, forever after epitomized her sense of how bold and noble human beings could be.
Ordinary mortals did not measure up to Rand’s valiant ideal. In middle school she became intrigued by a smart classmate and asked her, “What is the most important thing in life to you?” The girl replied, “My mother.” Rand recoiled. “I had thought she was after serious things,” Rand recalled years later, “but she was just conventional and ordinary, a mediocrity, and she didn’t mean anything as a person.” In Hollywood, she gravitated toward another fiercely ambitious woman, like Rand also from a Russian Jewish background. When this woman declared her aim to outdo everyone around her so as to shine in others’ eyes, Rand again pulled back, horrified at the potential friend’s hollow lack of principles.
For some, Rand’s insistence on nearly superhuman, consequential goals or nothing – a theme in her fiction as well as her personal life – is uplifting and inspiring. For others, it shows arrogant disdain for the dignity of modest lives.
In this reminiscence by Leonard Peikoff about his first meeting with Ayn Rand, we can see admiration for her fierce rationality and brilliance:
“From the moment we started talking, she was vibrant, alert, alive. She listened intently to my words, she extracted every drop of meaning and of confusion, and then she answered. She spoke at length, first considering the question as I phrased it, then the deeper implications she saw in it. At each step, she explained what were the facts supporting her viewpoint, what kinds of objections might occur to me later if I pursued the topic, and what was the logical reply to them. She never suggested that I accept what she said on her say-so; on the contrary, she was working diligently to get me to see the truth with my own eyes and mind…
“I was astonished not only by the originality of her ideas, but even more by her manner. She spoke as though it was urgent that I understand the issue and that she forestall every possible misinterpretation on my part. She was wringing out of herself every ounce of clarity she had. I have seen men lecturing to solemn halls of graduate students, and men running for national office, dealing in the most literal sense with issues of life and death; but I have never seen anyone work as hard as she did to be fully understood, down to the root.”
Yet Rand’s penetrating intensity led her to make statements like this one: “There are two sides to every issue: One side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.” According to law professor Sylvester Petro, who knew Rand in the 1950s and 1960s, “She never gave an inch on anything she believed in. No compromises, no qualifications, no ‘on the one hand,’ no ‘on the other.’”
Her all-or-nothing stances predisposed her to cut off associates or friends when a difference arose that Rand considered significant. For instance, when her first literary agent stated that she judged books by her feelings rather than by reasons, Rand took that as a severe personal failing on the agent’s part and fired her. Likewise, when her publisher Bennett Cerf suggested she delete a few passages in her next book and change the title, she furiously withdrew the book from Random House and broke off all contact. Cerf found this hard to understand. “Truly, a profound but honest difference about a publishing matter cannot have affected our relationship this deeply!” he wrote her, and to his circulation manager Cerf commented, “How wonderful it must be to be so sure you are right!” To some, Rand’s conduct was admirably righteous, yet to others, pitifully unforgiving.
Like many introverts, Ayn Rand never made peace with small talk. During her Hollywood years, she would sit silent at social events, unmuting only when conversation turned to topics on which she had passionate opinions. In the words of biographer Jennifer Burns, “At any mention of religion, morality or ethics, she would transform from a silent wallflower into a raging tigress, eager to take on all comers.”
Later, after she and her husband moved to New York City, almost all of her social contact involved an intimate circle of followers, nicknamed The Collective, who regularly gathered at her apartment for intellectual interchange. Greater comfort with small groups is typical of introverts. According to Rand’s lawyer, Henry Holzer, though, within the inner circle “most people were walking on eggshells” to avoid crossing their mentor’s stern, idiosyncratic sense of right and wrong.
Like painter Georgia O’Keeffe, Rand developed a unique, iconic look that enhanced her public image as a steely individualist. All her adult life she wore her hair in a severe, geometric bob, favored streamlined dark dresses and sometimes added a gold dollar-sign brooch or a cape for effect.
More than 40 years after her death, Ayn Rand continues to be revered by millions around the world, including public figures ranging from actress Angelina Jolie and tennis star Martina Navratilova to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan.
Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime remains in print, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold each year: an influential introvert indeed.