Selling Sex, Not Ideas
Two new books on Ayn Rand are out, one that we've been promoting, which focuses on the life of Rand's ideas and their evolution. It also includes new details about her personal life and her work associations and how they affected the growth of the movement that adopted her ideas.
This is appropriate given how central ideas were in Rand's life. Whatever your opinion of her work, it is a great thing to encounter a figure who believed very seriously in the notion that what you believe about the world really matters. In fact, she arguably took this notion too far, believing that ideas are the foundational source of all ownership - even to the point of owning the ideas themselves. The book that draws attention to this is Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns. This book caused my own admiration of what she accomplished to go way up. To me, this book is a model of what a serious biography of a serious person should be like.
In contrast, there is Any Rand and the World She Made, by Anne Heller of Esquire and Redbook, a book that focuses on Rand's sex life and loves and any other prurient details she can dig up at the expense of the ideological core of Rand and her life. The author apparently can't conceive of the possibility that Rand's life was really all about ideology and ideas and why they matter. So guess which book gets the headlines in the New York Times while Burns's serious work is relegated to a parenthetical statement? To ask the question is to answer it.
Comments (15)
DixieFlatline
This is a reflection of consumer preferences, manifest in the market.
Published: November 2, 2009 1:08 PM
Barry Linetsky
To take Ayn Rand's ideas seriously requires first that one take ideas seriously. To do that is to challenge AR at the level of her ideas. There are very few capable of doing so seriously. Those who can't refute her and simultaneously don't take ideas seriously resort to smears and belittling, thereby proving that they are unable to take ideas seriously.
Published: November 2, 2009 1:21 PM
Barry Linetsky
JT writes: "This book caused my own admiration of what she accomplished to go way up." I would have thought what AR wrote would have caused your admiration of her to go way up. Oh well, better late than never. Nice to see you're coming around.
Published: November 2, 2009 1:25 PM
John D
I am sure the "The New York Banner" would have also chosen this book as well..
Published: November 2, 2009 1:43 PM
DixieFlatline
I meant to add, this is a reflection of consumer preferences, manifest in the market.
As people trying to market ideas, it is paramount that we understand who our audience is and who it is not.
Which was part of my comments about the media page. The reasons why a Michael Moore has broader appeal, is related to his celebrity, which is related to his capacity to anti-intellectualize and manipulate emotion.
I'm not suggesting LvMI or libertarians propagandize, but to recognize that the market for reality is much narrow than the market for fantasy, thus targeting their efforts more efficiently.
Published: November 2, 2009 1:51 PM
Horst Muhlmann
John D: LOL! Good one.
Published: November 2, 2009 2:31 PM
Abhilash Nambiar
DixieFlatline
This is only my opinion. But it seems to me that the market of reality operates differently from the market of fantasy.
Very rarely does reality have popular appeal. And I am not sure that it is a very good idea either. It is better for reality to have enduring appeal rather than popular appeal. Although enduring and popular would be ideal.
The market of fantasy may capture the attention of a huge crowd with a short attention span, but the market of reality captures the attention of a small crowd over with a longer attention span. Over the long run, their influence will be felt more profoundly because they appeal with truths that are not impacted by time and that is their trump card. We feel Mises’s influence today, because of that.
The lack of breadth is easily compensated by the presence of depth.
Published: November 2, 2009 2:35 PM
Mill Town
Abhilash Nambiar,
"Very rarely does reality have popular appeal. And I am not sure that it is a very good idea either. It is better for reality to have enduring appeal rather than popular appeal. Although enduring and popular would be ideal."
So, in other words, what you're saying is that stupidity is normal and wizdom is abnormal.
Psychiatrists use the violence of the state and police officers to force people to be normal.
It would seem that mankind is genetically designed to be massively stupid at the base and scarcely wize at the top.
It would seem that nature wants stupid but strong drones at the base to be the slaves of the few wize and talented at the summit.
How can libertarianism ever succeed when genetics and all the might of nature works against us ?
Published: November 2, 2009 3:07 PM
Craig
Attempts to discredit Rand's philosophy by bringing up the more salacious details of her private life remind me of recent efforts to discredit the American founding fathers and by extension the United States.
Since they failed to live up to the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, the entire project is pronounced a failure. They always ignore the ideas.
Published: November 2, 2009 6:39 PM
Ben Ranson
Well... I think it is worthwhile to point out that some of the appeal of Rand's work is its sometimes racy content. As the saying goes, sex sells.
I have not read "Any Rand and the World She Made." Is the truthfulness of this work in question? If not, what exactly is there to complain about?
Published: November 2, 2009 7:02 PM
Mike
Have you ever noticed that any time somebody pries into somebody else's sex life, what they find is scandalous? I think this speaks more about people in general than Rand or any person in particular. This also illustrates a method of speculating on aspects of human behavior that are otherwise difficult to study, whether anecdotally or through voluntary surveys.
In short, everybody's mind thinks up some kinky shit.
But everybody also clearly wants to keep their kinky shit private. Which is fine and not something I can disagree with. But it does give us a clue that maybe this stuff is irrelevant to who a person is in every other respect?
Published: November 2, 2009 7:29 PM
DixieFlatline
Craig,
Doesn't take a lot of effort to discredit the empire and its motives. The Founding Fathers were a collection of classic liberals, and mercantilist whigs. The notion of a "founding father ideology" is silly given that Hamilton was as much an imperialist as Jefferson was not.
Also, the Constitution was a mess. The Articles of Confederation were much better.
Published: November 2, 2009 9:02 PM
mushindo
I have no brief for either of the biographers under discussion, but lets not hold the NYT to a different standard from that we expect of any other consumer-pleasing business: They print what sells, and nothing sells quite like the nexus between celebrity and sex.
And besides, ideas do not exist in a vacuum, they emerge from a mind that is immersed in social influences, appetites and interests, and often the context sheds light on the origins of the ideas themselves. And often, the private life of someone known for one idea or another highlights the distance between words and actions - hypocrisy, in a word.
When ideas themselves are under debate, the sexual proclivities( or hypocrisy for that matter) of their creators are not valid grounds on which to refute them. But when it comes to the writing of history, Ayn Rand's sexual proclivities, no less than Keynes's, are fair game for any biographer. It would be remiss to ignore them.
Whether this is done in good taste is another matter altogether, but one expects any Austrian to recognise the intractable subjectivity on this point.
Published: November 3, 2009 7:03 AM
Abhilash Nambiar
Mill Town
I do not think stupidity is normal and wisdom is abnormal. I think in the short run, people are biased to towards believing things that make them feel good whether or not it is true (usually it is not). And then they look to each other for reassurance. Why people are reassured when others believe the same things they do, I am not sure. Could be a vestige from our forest dwelling ancestors who relied on group cohesion for survival.
Published: November 3, 2009 9:22 AM
Stephen Grossman
Inspired by Rand, I spent four years studying philosophy in a university. The corruption of the humanities professors is nearly total. With rare exception, they delight in confusing students with an empiricist jumble of facts and a rationalist miasma of floating abstractions. They are aggressively superficial and angrily resent any attempt to connect ideas and facts. The economics professors were as intellectually chaotic as the rest.
Published: November 4, 2009 1:20 PM