100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand by Scott McConnell (review)

Anyone interested in the life of Ayn Rand will find 100 Voices well worth reading. As advertised, this thick volume includes one hundred interviews with people who came in contact with Ayn Rand, for short or long periods, for better or for worse. Mostly for better. Which is probably not coincidental, since the author, Scott McConnell, founded the oral history program at the Ayn Rand Institute. Researchers can contact the institute to gain access to its archives.

Between 1996 and 2003, McConnell interviewed more than 160 people. Interviews ranged from three minutes to fifty-two hours and resulted in more than three hundred hours of interviews and five thousand pages of transcripts. Narrators were in Russia, Switzerland, Australia, and the U.S., and McConnell interviewed most of them over the telephone. The only two people McConnell didn’t interview himself were Rand’s sister, who was interviewed in Russian, and a cousin who speaks French. In those cases, he prepared the questions. Presenting each edited interview separately, McConnell arranges the book in chronological order, starting with people who knew Rand in her early life. The reader watches Alisa Rosenbaum develop into Ayn Rand. Love her or hate her, the development of a woman who had such lasting power and influence is fascinating, as is watching her wield that power.

Rand was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905. Fern Brown was eight years old in 1926 when her Russian cousin arrived in Chicago. Brown’s family initially called their cousin by the Americanized name, Alice. Her habits—showering in the middle of the night, typing at all hours, repetitiously singing “I’m Sitting On Top of the World”—were at odds with those of her Chicago relatives. Brown helped her cousin choose her new surname, which they took from a Remington-Rand typewriter.

McConnell tracked down an impressive array of Rand’s acquaintances. Some of her admirers’ accounts (such as of attending Rand’s lectures and discussing philosophy with her late into the night) get repetitive. But other narrators are unexpected, including an actress who remembered Rand’s stint as a humble wardrobe girl at RKO Pictures, one of her first jobs in the US; the veterinarian for Rand’s beloved cats; and detective writer and friend Mickey Spillane.

From 1944 until 1951, Rand and her husband Frank O’Connor lived on what they called their ranch in Chatsworth, California. Then they moved to New York. Rand spent her time writing her bestselling novels and developing, writing, and lecturing on her philosophy of Objectivism, which centered around reason, self interest, and capitalism. She inspired love and hate both during her life and posthumously. Her devotees remember her unflagging energy, laser-like thought processes, and blazing eyes. Most everybody interviewed remembers Rand’s extreme passion and admiration for her husband, as well as the tender girlishness he inspired in her. They remember his devotion to her and comment upon his movie star looks. But nobody seems to remember the affair she had with her acolyte Nathaniel Branden.

The story of their affair—reportedly embarked upon with the knowledge and reluctant consent of their spouses—and their personal and professional falling out seems to be common knowledge on Objectivist websites. Yet 100 Voices includes only veiled references, such as one narrator remembering seeing Rand and Branden walking close together in the rain, with O’Connor trailing behind. Is McConnell being discreet? It’s not as if other personal details are off limits. The reader learns, for example, that O’Connor raised white peacocks, that Rand collected stuffed lions, and that she halted her writing workshops for an hour to watch Perry Mason. But something as impactful on her life, work, and marriage as the affair with Branden is almost entirely ignored. Readers might wonder what else McConnell deliberately left out.

Despite the closed lips on Rand’s sex life, the funniest story in the book involves Ayn...