Thursday, June 05, 2025

Objectivist Round-up, June 2025

 1. The Ayn Rand Institute Archives are now searchable, but the on-line Archives seem limited to Rand’s letters.

2. Sam Tannenhaus just published his long-awaited biography of William Buckley, coming in at 900 pages (plus endnotes).  I was naturally interested in what he said about Ayn Rand.  It’s only one paragraph and oddly refers to Rand as an “[Alfred J.} Nock disciple.”  He confirms (citing an interview of Buckley by Anne Heller) that Rand’s first words to him were, “You are too intelligent to believe in God.”  I was surprised that Tannenhaus (who wrote a biography of Whittaker Chambers) didn’t mention Chambers’ review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review.

-Neil Parille

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Should have been "Albert J. Nock." I'm not sure they ever met. Rand was more of a disciple of Isabel Paterson than any person I can think of, off the top of my head.

-NP

Anonymous said...

>“You are too intelligent to believe in God.”

I wonder if Rand (or any of of her acolytes) would've said the same thing to Isaac Newton back in his day.