Ayn Rand Fun Facts!

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Ayn Rand Fun Fatigue

The Ayn Rand Fun Fact Factory is on indefinite hiatus. I, frankly, completely burned out on researching Ayn Rand trivia. You try spending this much time with a nut like that!

It's not inconceivable that I will stumble upon the occasional Fun Fact in the future. If you want to know when/if that happens, follow @AynRandFunFacts on Twitter, or to Like the Ayn Rand Fun Facts page on Facebook.

Meanwhile, you can find a ton of Randian Reading in the Bibliography, or browse some of the Fun Fact Faves:

#2 (Cats!)

#3 (Abysmal Personal Hygiene!)

#5 (In Which All Is Explained!)

#7 (Go Back to Russia!)

#13 (FINALLY!)

#16 (The Tree Story!)

#21 (Fudge!)

#26 (Worst Housguest EVER!)

#27 (the house favorite: "You Aren't Being Altruistic, Are You?!?!")

#35 (Mrs. Frank O'Connor!)

#36 ("Oh, nevermind!")

#44 (EVERCLEAR!)

#45 (Kevin Bacon!)

#48 (Rod Serling Cracks Up!)

#50 (Divine Retribution!)

#51 (Eau de Rand!)

#63 (Little Objectivist on the Prairie!)

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Ayn Rand Fun FAQ

Q: Do you mock Ayn Rand because it's much easier to make fun of her than to understand her ideas and philosophy??

A: Yes. And it's usually a little too easy.

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 75

Marcella Rabwin, Rand's next-door neighbor in the 1930's, remembers her this way: "[She dressed] like a dowd. She was the worst-dressed woman I have ever known in my life."

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 74

Harry Binswanger, a longtime associate of Rand's, remembers her indulgent attitude toward her cats this way: "She mentioned that the cat had scratched the furniture...I turned to the cat and said to it, 'Bad cat!' Ayn immediately said, 'No--good cat who took a bad action.'"

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 73

The unattainable, yet intense, crushes of Ayn Rand:

Cyrus Paltons, a fictional character in a story called The Mysterious Valley, which appeared in a French children's magazine Rand read as a young girl. Particularly taken with the pen-and-ink illustrations of him, she remembered him as "tall, long-legged, wearing a soldier's leggings but no jacket, just...an open-collared shirt, torn in the front, open very low, sleeves rolled at the elbows and hair falling down over one eye."

William Edward Hickman, a notorious murderer. She described the man who strangled and dismembered a 12-year-old girl in 1927 as a "genuinely beautiful soul" and a "brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy" who had the "true, innate psychology of a Superman."

Art Alexakis, lead singer and guitarist of Everclear. Story in Fun Fact # 44.

Eric Braeden (né Hans Gudegast), star of The Young and the Restless. Several of her friends remember that she fell "in love" with him after seeing reruns of Rat Patrol. Harry Binswanger remembered, "She started researching [Braeden] through her agents, getting a list of everything [he] had ever been in. She arranged to take pictures of him off the TV. It's technically hard to do, or so she was told, so she had a lab make some pictures. She read interviews of him. She rented the movies he was in. She tracked down all the information she could."

Morris the Cat, advertising mascot for 9Lives cat food. "Morris the Cat was her hero," a friend recalled, "She loved him."

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 72

When Docky Wolfe, niece of Rand's husband Frank, was asked what her strongest memory of Rand was, she replied, "That she had absolutely no sense of humor."

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 71

Rand discouraged her friends from giving her gifts, in part because she so detested altruism and in part because she believed people should "work for things." However, Mary Ann Sures remembers, "not once did she ever refuse fudge or discourage us from giving it to her."

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Ayn Rand Fun FAQ

Q: Um, have you actually read Ayn Rand's writing?

A: Yes. And I find it unreadable.

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My ten-year-old draws Ayn Rand

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 70

Rand adored Hugh Hefner, describing him as "very intelligent." After she visited the Playboy Club, she declared it "a wonderful place and a brilliant undertaking."

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 69

Rand revered the American dollar, and the dollar sign was her personal motif. She sported a gold dollar sign brooch, and arranged to have a six-foot-tall dollar sign next to her coffin at her funeral.

The dollar is, of course, issued by the U.S. Government. Here's Ayn Rand on the limited role government ought to play: "The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."

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Ayn Rand Fun Facts # 68

Randian mythology describes her quitting smoking this way: At an appointment with her doctor in 1974, he once again ordered her to quit, and Rand shot back, "But why? And don't tell me about statistics; I've already explained why statistics aren't proof. You have to give me a rational explanation. Why should I stop smoking?" Her doctor pointed to a white shadow on her lung X ray, and said, "That's why." In response, stubbed out her cigarette, never to touch one again. Her rationality and strength of will won out immediately and absolutely over decades of nicotine addiction.

But in 1980, 27-year-old Steve Mariotti began a brief, bizarre acquaintance with Rand. He took her to lunch at their first meeting, where she ate nothing. Instead, "[s]he lit a cigarette and didn't stop smoking and blowing smoke in my face for the next four hours...When it was apparent that I was uncomfortable with her smoking, Ayn shrugged and said, 'I can't do this in front of my housekeeper because it's bad for my health. Do not be such a complainer.'"

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 67

Rand despised what she called "small talk." Unless she was engaged in a political or philosophical argument, she floundered in converation, and parties were excruciating for all involved. At social events, her ever-helpful husband Frank would sneak her little slips of paper with conversation topics and suggestions for things she might say.

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Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 66

When asked if Rand tended to "dominate" conversations, her attorney, acolyte, and longtime friend Charles Sures said, "Dominate? Only in the sense that she usually had more to say than anyone else."

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Ayn Rand Fun FAQ

Q: Did Ayn Rand sleep with Alan Greenspan?

A: No.

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My ten-year-old draws Ayn Rand

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Ayn Rand Fun Facts # 65

More parenting tips from Anna Rosenbaum, Ayn Rand's sainted mother.

Anna would frequently flip out into rages, or "fit[s] of temperament," as Rand remembered them. During these rampages, she would berate her eldest child for her failure to make friends. Once she broke the legs of Rand's favorite doll; another time she ripped up a picture of Alexander Kerensky that the child particularly cherished. Then there was the time she told all her daughters that "she had never wanted children, hated caring for them, and did so only because it was her duty."

Here's the grown up Ayn Rand on the subject of duty:

One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy is the term “duty.”

An anti-concept is an artificial, unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The term “duty” obliterates more than single concepts; it is a metaphysical and psychological killer: it negates all the essentials of a rational view of life and makes them inapplicable to man’s actions.

So, any Objectivist parents-to-be out there who dream of unleashing a new little Ayn Rand upon the world, take heed!