Thoughts on the literary present as it relates to Ayn Rand

Jennifer Burns is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

Thoughts on the literary present as it relates to Ayn Rand

July 12 2009

I got into a wrangle earlier this summer with my copy editor. She wanted to use the literary present for everything and I wanted to use it only for Rand’s novels. So in my book, Ayn Rand “argued,” “asserted,” or “concluded,” but John Galt, Dagny Taggert, Hank Rearden, et al “resist,” “create,” or “realize.” They live out their lives in the empyrean realm of the literary present, condemned to Nietzsche’s eternal return, never moving from the present to the past.

Until I began copyediting, I had never questioned this choice. My usage of both tenses was intended to mark off the distinct genres of fiction and nonfiction Rand wrote in, to emphasize the separateness of each. Yet as I thought it over, I realized that for me, Rand’s ideas are grounded, in the past, in a way that her novels are not. I’ve historicized her arguments, pinned them down in context, but her fiction floats free, without the burden of history. The ideas, they come clothed in the fragments of their past, in what they did and how they worked in life. The stories, they tell themselves anew each time somebody picks up a Rand novel.

But is that really true? Aren’t the arguments as alive today as they ever were? In a world where Rand’s ideas are touted by Rush Limbaugh and her novels are selling more than ever before, can she really be consigned to history? Ought her ideas live in the literary present, too? And how does one tease apart the novels and the ideas, anyhow?

I realize part of the difficulty comes from Rand herself, from the puzzle of figuring out if she belongs to history or philosophy or literature. Just as Rand herself crossed the boundaries of genre, I’ve had to bend my writing to follow her, to blend history with literary analysis with philosophical exegesis, and past with present. I could never have written about Rand without using the tools and approaches of these other fields, nor being an historian, without reference to the past.

So the alternation of tense comes then both from me and from her, and marks the history of our encounter in text. I could put all of Rand’s nonfiction arguments in the present, but to me they happened at specific markers in her career, and fix the points, the transitions along the arc I am tracing. The choice of tense also foreshadows my argument in the book, my sense that it is Rand’s novels which are transcendent, far more than her analyses of Barry Goldwater in The Objectivist Newsletteror the other topics I cover.

So I’ll stick with the way it is, using the literary present for her novels and the past tense for everything else. Perhaps later I’ll regret it, yet I want it as a marker, a signpost of some kind, a residue of the meeting between me and Ayn Rand.

Comments (2)

|2009-10-30 12:46:54 Bob Gaston - Some Points

Atlas Shrugged has sold over 7,000,000 copies since being published. It is on track to sell in excess of 300,000 copies this year. I would imagine the list of books published in the mid-1950s, and that are still in print is fairly short. To still be selling in excess of 100,000 copies a year is nothing short of amazing.

What I find most interesting is that Rand was working at a time when the literary world was owned by the left. Jean-Paul Sartre was defending Stalin the same time Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead were being published. Other leading figures included Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets and Lillian Hellman. That would not matter much today because the literary world has largely disappeared.

I think the reason for her continued popularly is that she wrote about freedom in an era political orthodoxy (correctness). It may be that her renewed popularity is a warning about (reaction to) our mass media techno-conformity.

Don’t forget to duck and cover.

|2009-11-02 11:19:33 cameron craig - Criticism of Ayn Rand

Criticism of Ayn Rand seems heavily weighted toward her personal life, her writing style, her lack of enthusiasm for academia and because she and her works were not praised by philosophers or intellects, past or present.

In 45 years of studying Objectivism I have never heard or read a serious refutation of Objectivist philosophy save “It isn’t practical” or some or foggy generalization.

If someone can point me to a serious intellectual, clearly and articulately written, criticism of Objectivism, please do so. I want to continue to learn and understand.