Wisdom of Life: It’s seldom that anyone moves straight to the top in their career. Ayn Rand wanted to become a writer, however, she had to work as a movie extra, junior screenwriter, filing clerk, head of the wardrobe department, freelance script reader to achieve her goal. But she always made sure that she carved out the time to write.
Introduction: While getting a taste of American life via the American films she watched in university, Ayn Rand knew that she would some day live there. While living in Chicago for six months with her relatives, she changed her name from Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum to Ayn Rand. She took Ayn, a variant spelling of a Finnish author because she simply liked the way it sounded and Rand from her Remington Rand typewriter. Rand had always had a brilliant mind, and a country which offered many opportunities, allowed her to spread her wings and soar. Ayn Rand developed a branch of philosophy called objectivism and was the author of the international bestsellers Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, which are often selected as books that have a profound impact on the lives of others.
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Name: Ayn Rand (Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum)
Birth Date: February 1905 – March 1982
Job Functions: Author, Philosopher, Lecturer
Fields: Literature, Philosophy
Known For: The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged
Favourite TV Programs: Charlie’s Angels and Kojak
Favourite American Author: Mickey Spillane
Short Biography of Ayn Rand
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905, Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum later known as Ayn Rand was the first of three daughters. Her father Zinovy Zacharovich, a chemist, owned a pharmacy business which he had built by himself. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the communist government which was now in power, took ownership of the pharmacy – the reason being that one should live for the state and not for the self. In the blink of an eye, the fortunes of the Rosenbaum household changed and now there was little money.
Before the Russian Revolution, Rand and her family traveled across Europe – Austria Switzerland, England. She was a voracious reader, taught herself to read at age six, and was influenced by The Mysterious Valley by French writer Maurice Champagne, and the writings of Victor Hugo and Walter Scott. The works had “man as hero” as their underlying theme, which later formed the basis for Rand’s objectivism philosophy and her other works. It was on those vacations that Rand knew that she wanted to become a writer. Rand always had a strong interest in literature and films, and as a child, she wrote stories which emphasized heroism.
After completing high school in 1921, Rand attended University of Petrograd where she studied history with a minor in philosophy. While attending university, Rand got the opportunity to watch American movies, and she saw how different the two countries were – America versus Russia. Rand graduated from university in 1924, after which she started gathering the necessary paperwork that would allow her to travel to the United States. She had relatives living in Chicago who invited her to visit them there. While gathering the paperwork to visit the United States in 1924, Rand studied screenwriting at the State Institute for Cinema Arts.
Rand left Russia in January 1926 and never returned. On February 18, 1926, she arrived in New York City with $50 then traveled to Chicago where she stayed with relatives for six months. Her next stop was Hollywood, California where she worked as an extra on King of Kings a film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Rand met actor Frank O’Connor whom she married in April 1929. She became an American citizen in 1931.
Pontius Pilate Judges Jesus in Cecil B DeMille’s King of Kings Pt 1
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Rand worked in various jobs in the film industry – movie extra, junior screenwriter, filing clerk, head of the wardrobe department, freelance script reader – but she always made time to write on the weekends. She sold Red Pawn in 1932 to Universal Studios though it was never produced, and she wrote the play The Night of January 16th in 1934, which was ran in Hollywood and then spent seven months on Broadway in New York. Though she completed her novel We, the Living in 1933, it was accepted for publication in the US and England in 1936.
Rand and her husband moved to New York City in 1934 where she spent time mastering English, writing screenplays, short stories (Anthem (1938)). Her hard work and talent as a writer paid off because two of her screenplays appeared on Broadway. Rand gained international acclaim in 1943 when The Fountainhead, which took seven years to write, was published, but it was Atlas Shrugged which was published in 1957 that was her literary masterpiece. She used her novels to express her objectivism philosophy, which espoused that “…reason is human being’s means of survival. Only through a process of reasoning – cold, hard, scientific, logical thought – can an individual understand the world and thus survive and prosper in it.”
The Fountainhead – Howard Roark Speech (Ayn Rand)
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Because Rand witnessed the introduction of communism in Russian and her father losing a business he built up, she was very anti-communism, and had a strong sense of individualism. In 1947, she testified in front of the US House of Un-American Activities(HUAC) about communist penetration in the film industry. The process of the HUAC committee hearing resulted in people being blacklisted and that whole era is known as the McCarthy Era.
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Rand and O’Connor moved back to Los Angels in 1943 to write the screenplay for The Fountainhead. She and her husband returned permanently to New York in 1951. After writing Atlas Shrugged, Rand stopped writing fiction and became a visiting professor to Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, Johns Hopkins, Ford Hall Forum, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the United States Military Academy at West Point where she lectured on her philosophy. She edited and published The Objectivist, and refined her philosophy over the years.
While Rand was writing Atlas Shrugged she met Canadian psychology student, Nathaniel Branden, who was studying for a doctoral degree in psychology. Both Rand and Branden were secular Jews who had changed their names. It is reported in many sources that Rand had a torrid affair with Branden, 29 years her junior. The affair lasted for 14 years. Rand encouraged Branden to develop a lecture series based on her novels – Rand’s basic philosophical principles. The initiative resulted in a 20-lecture course called “The Basic Principles of Objectivism,” offered through the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI). Branden charged $3.50 for each lecture or $70 for the entire series, which began in 1958.
Ayn Rand, along with Branden, his wife Barbara, Alan Greenspan, and a few others had launched the Objectivist movement. The cause was very successful and prosperous. In 1968 when Branden decided he wanted to split with Rand because he’d taken another lover, she was furious and expelled him. There were other incidents and activities going on the movement that Rand was against. The split between Rand and Branden resulted in the demise of the Nathaniel Branden Institute.
Why Ayn Rand’s Contribution Matters
A 1991 survey sponsored by the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club found that after the Bible, Atlas Shrugged was the most influential book in the lives of Americans. In 1998, a poll by Modern Library where readers chose the best 100 novels of the twentieth century, Atlas Shrugged took first place, The Fountainhead, second place and Anthem and We, the Living took seventh and eighth place.
Ayn Rand’s Steps to Success
- Knew what her passion was and pursued it relentlessly.
- Rand not only renamed herself, but also reinvented herself when she came to the US.
- Even when Rand worked odds jobs she wrote on weekends.
- Today it’s not uncommon for films or other literary works to have two endings. Rand wrote two endings for The Night of January 16thbecause it required 12 people from the audience to act as jurors, so the ending would depend on whether or not the jurors found the defendant guilty or innocent.
- While writing The Fountainhead, Rand worked at an architectural firm in New York without pay so she could understand the way the business worked to make her novel authentic.
- Didn’t give up: The Fountainhead was rejected 12 times before Archibald G. Ogden, a young editor at Bobbs-Merrill accepted it for publication.
- Right or wrong, Rand had the courage to live what she believed.
- Ayn Rand, Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov were among a few writers to attain literary success in a language other than their own.
Pearls of Wisdom from Ayn Rand
- Take the time to discover what your passion in life is and pursue it relentlessly.
- Make whatever changes you need to make to become the person you were meant to be.
- Find time to practice and master your craft.
Why Ayn Rand Makes an Excellent Invisible Mentor
When you observe people, it’s important to pay attention to their good, and not-so-good traits. Confucius emulated the good qualities he observed in others, and checked himself for their not-so-good qualities. Ayn Rand created an impressive body of work, which we should aspire to do. And she pursued her passions relentlessly.
Ayn Rand’s Works
- We, the Living (1936)
- The Night of January 16th (1936)
- Anthem (1938; revised 1946, 1995)
- The Fountainhead (1943, film version 1949)
- Atlas Shrugged (1957)
- For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1961)
- The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
- Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966, 1976)
- Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967, 1990)
- The Romantic Manifesto (1969, 1971)
- The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
- Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982, 1984)
- The Early Ayn Rand: A Selection From Her Unpublished Fiction (1986)
- For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1996)
- Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her Critical Comments on the Writings of Over 20 Authors (1996)
- The Letters of Ayn Rand (1997)
- The Ayn Rand Column: Written for the Los Angeles Times (1998)
- The Journals of Ayn Rand (1999)
- The Ayn Rand Reader (1999)
Works Cited/Referenced
American Women Writers
Encyclopedia of World Biography
Modern American Literature
Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics
Concise Major 21st Century Writer
Women in World History
Encyclopedia Judaica
Cold War Reference Library
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Related articles
- How Ayn Rand Seduced Generations of Young Men and Helped Make the U.S. Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation (alternet.org)
- What Ayn Rand Told Me (harveyardman.wordpress.com)
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