Questions and Answers?

Transcriptions of a writer's conversations and off hand remarks sometimes can be interesting, useful, and even important. Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe is an outstanding example, for both its contents and  the insights it provides about the great man.  Boswell’s recollections in his biography of Samuel Johnson of their  conversations are probably the most famous example in English literature. Both are accepted as  attempts at accurate representations of what their subject said, within the limits of memory. Last week while looking around on Amazon’s web site, I learned about a book called Ayn Rand Answers which was described as transcriptions of her taped responses to questions in various venues including sessions after her speeches at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston. I was curious and so read a few of the reviews people had posted on the site. In doing so I found out about another strange controversy involving the custodians of Rand’s literary estate. 

It seems the transcriptions are not actual transcriptions at all, but edited versions with undisclosed redactions and interpolations by the editor and  the same bowdlerizing and  exegetical airbrushing  that observers have noticed in other compilations released through the estate. The critical reviewers cite various examples, enough, along with the editor’s statements about how he handled the material, to make their case.  In particular the editor mentions purposely omitting remarks in which  Rand in his opinion said things which contradict any of her  written pronouncements. (The few examples of changes mentioned by reviewers vary in importance with some seeming odd or even hard to understand, as when the editor deletes a positive comment about tobacco Rand made in an answer to a question about drugs and regulation. Since it is common knowledge that she, like many of her generation, was wrong about the dangers of smoking and suffered greatly for it, it is hard to see a point in this except perhaps to support the illusory notion that she was never wrong about anything.) 

This approach and pattern of behavior would be bad enough coming from anyone. From people claiming to represent a philosophy which rightly emphasizes facing the facts as they are and not pretending (or trying to convince others) they are otherwise, it is considerably worse, even bizarre. The people running the estate may prove nothing against the philosophy, but they surely do manage to give it a black eye.

The editor also notes that this book should not be considered part of objectivism, since Rand, being dead, did not sanction its publication or contents. Reading that, it is hard not to think of monks  and bishops and councils to determine which texts will be holy writ and which will not. Of course philosophies have no holy texts, just ideas,  and  the ideas can speak for themselves irrespective of  the strange behavior of any group of people who try to promote them.  So a person should laugh the editor and his pretentions of authority off. After all it is kind of funny, since, stripped of the pretentions, it almost amounts to claiming that Rand – to paraphrase a quote attributed to  Yogi Berra – didn’t say all those things she said.

Still, after reading some of the free sample at Amazon, I think I’ll probably  buy the book anyway, thinking it might  be interesting even if far from what it could and should be.