The View from the West

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Oh, you meant that Ayn Rand

By: Tom Ford

Posted: 11/9/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

11To Rand, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, business people were everything and politicians were nothing. She's become popular again because Americans are debating how far government should intervene in health care and the derivatives market.

Long ago, when she was visiting Toronto, my boss, Nathan Cohen, entertainment editor of the Toronto Star and Canada's leading theatre critic, sent me out to interview her.

For some reason, I thought I was going to talk to Sally Ann Rand, the famous stripper. I assiduously studied how she was able to take off her clothes in a giant, plastic martini glass. Then, I walked into a hotel room to discover the other Rand.

Ayn Rand was a tiny, thin-faced woman with severely cut, straight black hair and huge dark eyes that fixed you with a cobra's stare. She was dressed in black, with a dollar-sign brooch on her lapel.

All I knew about her was that in my young, mushy world, she was the meanest woman alive.

"Excuse me," I said, "I have to go into the other room and call my editor." It was the first of several calls.

"Nathan," I told him. "I thought I was going to interview Sally Ann Rand, but I'm here with Ayn Rand. What do I ask her?"

I could hear Cohen's deep-throated laughter. I didn't know it at the time, but I, a naïf, was about to become the ball in a tennis match between two adversaries, who had never met each another.

Looking back on the incident and with the benefit of Cohen's teaching that there's something behind everything, I now realize I was caught between Rand, a Russian Jew who witnessed the Russian revolution and its aftermath and Cohen, a Jewish native of Sydney N.S. coal-mining country who once worked for a newspaper published by a union.

I knew about Cohen's union cred because he and I and a small, quiet woman from the social department formed one of the picket lines at a writer's strike at the Star. Cohen, a bear of a man, loved the line. He swirled his cape, waved his ivory-tipped cane, and in stentorian tones criticized the scabs with snippets from Shakespeare.

Cohen, however, was kind to new actors and reporters. He told me on the phone: "Rand loves setting up chapters dedicated to her in various cities. Why don't you ask her to set one up in Toronto?" A lifeline. What I didn't know was that she treated these chapters like scum.

Two new books on Rand -- Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Anne Heller) and Goddess of the Right (Jennifer Burns) -- detail her relationships with her followers. She forced her husband to wear a bell so she could hear his movements. She badgered her leading acolyte, Nathaniel Branden, to have sex with her twice a week -- and informed her husband and Mrs. Branden that this was rational.

She dismissed her inner sanctum as the "collective" and hated dissent among its members.

I didn't know any of this when I was interviewing her. The "opening new chapters" theme was all I had, so I pursued it assertively. Even Rand was impressed.

"Perhaps, I should set up a chapter in Toronto with you at its head," she said.

Later, I sheepishly reported to Cohen how I had mucked up the interview. He seemed most interested in whether or not I had agreed to set up a Rand chapter in Toronto. I was tempted, I said, because I was desperate for a lede, but I didn't do it because I couldn't stomach her cause.

"Good," he said, chortling. "Don't be too crestfallen," he added. "Someday this will all make a good story for you."

"Never," I told him. "Never. Never."

Tom Ford is managing editor of The Issues Network.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 9, 2009 A15

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