Image via YouTube, 1959 inter­view with Mike Wal­lace

I recent­ly hap­pened upon the Mod­ern Library’s “100 Best Nov­els” list and noticed some­thing inter­est­ing. The list divides into two columns—the “Board’s List” on the left and “Reader’s List” on the right. The “Board’s List” con­tains in its top ten such expect­ed “great books” as Joyce’s Ulysses (#1) and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (#6). These are indeed wor­thy titles, but not the most acces­si­ble of books, to be sure, though Ulysses does appear at num­ber eleven on the “Reader’s List.” At the very top of that more pop­u­lar rank­ing, how­ev­er, is a book the literati could not find more wor­thy of con­tempt: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Just below it is Rand’s The Foun­tain­head, and at num­bers sev­en and eight, respec­tive­ly, her Anthem and We the Liv­ing. (Also in the top ten on the “Read­er’s List,” three nov­els by L. Ron Hub­bard.)

One obvi­ous take­away… mass­es of ordi­nary peo­ple real­ly like Ayn Rand. Which is odd, because Ayn Rand seemed to pos­i­tive­ly hate the mass­es of ordi­nary peo­ple. As Michael O’Donnell writes in Wash­ing­ton Month­ly, “Rand… lived a life of con­tempt: for peo­ple, for ideas, for gov­ern­ment, and for the very con­cept of human kind­ness.”

Per­haps her most sym­pa­thet­ic read­er, econ­o­mist Lud­wig von Mis­es, summed up the over­ar­ch­ing theme of her life’s work in one very tidy sen­tence: “You have the courage to tell the mass­es what no politi­cian told them: you are infe­ri­or and all the improve­ments in your con­di­tions which you sim­ply take for grant­ed you owe to the effort of men who are bet­ter than you.” This is appar­ent­ly a mes­sage that a great many peo­ple are eager to hear. (And if any fic­tion is “mes­sage dri­ven,” it is Rand’s.)

But imag­ine, if you will, that you are not a read­er of Ayn Rand, but a fam­i­ly mem­ber. Not by blood, but mar­riage, but con­nect­ed, nonethe­less. You are Ayn Rand’s niece—Rand’s hus­band Frank O’Connor’s sister’s daugh­ter, to be pre­cise. Your name is Con­nie Papurt, you are 17, and you have writ­ten Aun­tie Ayn to ask for $25 for a new dress. Have you done this sim­ply to be cheeky? You do know, Con­nie, how deeply your Aunt Ayn despis­es moochers, do you not? No matter—we have nei­ther Connie’s let­ter, nor a win­dow into her moti­va­tions. We do have, how­ev­er, Rand’s replies, plur­al, from May 22, 1949, then again—in response to Connie’s follow-up—from June 4 of that same year. The ini­tial request prompt­ed some earnest ser­mo­niz­ing from Rand on the val­ue of hard work, and of being a “self-respect­ing, self-sup­port­ing, respon­si­ble, cap­i­tal­is­tic per­son.” Etcetera.

Now, to Rand’s cred­it, the first reply let­ter con­tains some com­mon sense advice, and describes some sit­u­a­tions in which oth­er close con­nec­tions appar­ent­ly took advan­tage of her gen­eros­i­ty. She seems to have cause for leer­i­ness, as, grant­ed, do we all in these sit­u­a­tions. Bor­row­ing from fam­i­ly is very often a tricky busi­ness. As was her wont, how­ev­er, Rand seized upon the occa­sion not only to dis­pense wis­dom on per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, but also to mor­al­ize on the worth­less­ness of peo­ple who fail her test of char­ac­ter. As The Toast com­ments, the let­ter is “30% very good advice, 50% unnec­es­sary yelling, and 20% non­sense.” First, Rand lays out for Con­nie an install­ment plan:

           Here are my con­di­tions: If I send you the $25, I will give you a year to repay it. I will give you six months after your grad­u­a­tion to get set­tled in a job. Then, you will start repay­ing the mon­ey in install­ments: you will send me $5 on Jan­u­ary 15, 1950, and $4 on the 15th of every month after that; the last install­ment will be on June 15, 1950—and that will repay the total.

            Are you will­ing to do that?

Notice, Rand assess­es no interest—a kind­ness, indeed. And yet,

            I want you to under­stand right now that I will not accept any excuse—except a seri­ous ill­ness. If you become ill, then I will give you an exten­sion of time—but for no oth­er rea­son. If, when the debt becomes due, you tell me that you can’t pay me because you need­ed a new pair of shoes or a new coat or you gave the mon­ey to some­body in the fam­i­ly who need­ed it more than I do—then I will con­sid­er you as an embez­zler. No, I won’t send a police­man after you, but I will write you off as a rot­ten per­son and I will nev­er speak or write to you again.

Accord­ing to her 2012 obit­u­ary, Con­nie went on to became a local Cleve­land actress and nurse, a per­son “ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing the lives of oth­ers bet­ter.” Accord­ing to her aunt, she should have noth­ing bet­ter to do—for anyone—but to pay back her debt, should she wish to remain in the good graces of the great Objec­tivist. We do not know if Con­nie accept­ed the terms, but she appar­ent­ly wrote back in such a way as to leave quite an impres­sion on Rand, whose June 4 reply is “damn charm­ing!”

          I must tell you that I was very impressed with the intel­li­gent atti­tude of your let­ter. If you real­ly under­stood, all by your­self, that my long lec­ture to you was a sign of real inter­est on my part, much more so than if I had sent you a check with some hyp­o­crit­i­cal gush note, and if you under­stood that my let­ter was intend­ed to treat you as an equal—then you have just the kind of mind that can achieve any­thing you choose to achieve in life.

The let­ter goes on in very kind­ly, even sen­ti­men­tal, terms. In fact, it may con­vince you that O’Donnell is dead wrong to sin­gle out con­tempt as Rand’s defin­ing qual­i­ty. And yet, he argues, her biog­ra­phers show that “she hap­pi­ly accept­ed help from oth­ers while denounc­ing altru­is­tic kind­ness” (and those who accept it), espous­ing “an indi­vid­u­al­ism so extreme that it does not mere­ly ignore oth­ers, but actu­al­ly spits in their faces.” While Con­nie man­aged to escape her wrath, such as it was, most oth­ers, through their own fail­ings of true cap­i­tal­is­tic char­ac­ter or the cru­el­ty of cir­cum­stances beyond their con­trol, did not.

Read both of Rand’s let­ters here.

via The Toast

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

In Her Final Speech, Ayn Rand Denounces Ronald Rea­gan, the Moral Major­i­ty & Anti-Choicers (1981)

A Free Car­toon Biog­ra­phy of Ayn Rand: Her Life & Thought

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness