| | Michael,
With so much glowing praise of Rand's virtues available from SO MANY SOURCES (really, the Brandens exaggerrate terribly the central role they played in her life) how could they expect their books to be considered credible unless they acknowledged what so many other people had said about her, and, to an extent, what they had said about her themselves? If they hadn't said these things their accounts would have been incredible, and their negative claims would have carried no weight. Are you really arguing that the flimsy tissue of "evidence" they provide to make claims that she was out of touch with reality, alienated from the physical world, repressing familial and social scars, incapable of human warmth, humorless, authoritarian, insanely jealous, driving her husband to drink, driven by the one motivation, at the end, to see Nathan destroyed, etc. etc., ad nauseum, is CREDIBLE? The onus of proof is with you, my friend, and the Brandens aren't going to be able to back you up on this one. While evidence is one thing none of these claims has in common, their motive certainly is: she broke with us and repudiated us not because we were hoodwinking her personally, financially, and intellectually, but because she couldn't take being replaced by a younger woman -- she was a woman scorned! Everyone's gonna believe that, right? Right, unfortunately for Rand. Even though the evidence now available proves that even after Branden told her that he had been lying for years about his physical attraction to her and that the age difference had become what he later termed "an insuperable barrier" she continued to deal with him and searched for a way to continue their business relationship. And that it was only AFTER she found out about the affair with Patrecia that had gone on throughout the bogus counseling sessions and back 4 and 1/2 years that she blew her stack.
I bet that most folks at Solo don't know that Barbara had affairs, secret from Nathaniel while she was married to him, BEFORE he ever initiated an affair with Rand. Yep. That casts the "terrible pain" she suffered from Rand's honest and open affair with her husband in a different light, I bet? Now the need to cast Frank as a victim becomes a bit more obvious, doesn't it? If Frank was a happy husband, continuing to soiree his wife around Manhattan for dinners with Mickey Spillane, etc., that would not fit the template of a heartless and callous Rand, would it? It is the Brandens' specific and unique negative assertions about Rand, not the positive ones, that clash with everyone else's testimony about her. Some of their negative assertions echo those of others who criticized her movement, of course -- a movement whose character was largely established by the Brandens themselves in terms of cultish authoritarianism, etc.
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