| | ET: A stubborn relative I have watched it, but then commented that Ayn Rand was a "priviliged elite" -- writing for other elites. I mentioned how she worked for $20-a-week in a linen factory, but to no avail ("But Ed, $20 was a lot back then."). I gave up at that point.
Your relative does not argue well, but the fact is that while Ayn Rand had a hard early life, as most people do, she found success with The Fountainhead. It was a struggle, to be sure, working in Hollywood, writing and not selling her works, and then seeing them mangled, Night of January 16th being the case in point; but she also found support.
King Vidor shot an abbreviated speech for Gary Cooper, who was having trouble delivering ideas he did not understand fully, despite personal coaching by Ayn Rand. When Rand saw the shooting, she was furious. However, Jack Warner intervened on her side, ordering the speech to be shot as she wrote it. She already had supporters, as in fact, she often did, not the first of whom was Cecil B. DeMille. While her other early works made her known to libertarians, introducing her to Rose Lane Wilder and Isabel Paterson among others, The Fountainhead -- first the book, then the movie -- won exactly the victory she wrote about for Howard Roark. Three years after the book was published, it was now a noted seller.
I am sorry to be inexact here, but I xeroxed a Fortune magazine story about her from 1947 - 1953 which promised a new novel about business as powerful as The Fountainhead. Realize, of course, that by then, she is over 40, approaching 50. You never see the lean years when you meet someone in that context. The fact remains that, Ayn Rand, was indeed, in a privileged elite. She earned it.
We have a cultural prejudice against elites. Maybe we should. At least, we can fear the consequences of a self-defined and self-aware elite class. In school for sure and at home often, we learned to dislike businesses and capitalists and financiers. True, we Objectivists rise up when the issues are explicit. However, in this case, arguing that Ayn Rand was not rich and powerful is a reflex response to a deeply learned prejudice.
Also, myself, in recent years, I made "privilege" a trigger word. Privilege means literally private law. The lord of a manor had privilege. When we expand that word to mean "having more than someone else" the sloppy thinking has harsh consequences. Congressional representatives have privielge. Writers do not.
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 8/08, 8:27am)
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