The Allure of Anna Granite or Mirroring Ayn Rand's Persuasive Power

Abstract

To the respondents of a survey by the Library of Congress in 1991, she is the author of the most influential book, second only to the Bible; to many conservatives, libertarians and Tea Party adherents, she was what historian Jennifer Burns dubbed "a gateway drug to life on the right"; to many scholars, she was simply the author of bad novels who paraded as a philosopher but did not get involved in the academic discourse; and to "The New Republic," she is just one of the most overrated intellectuals: Ayn Rand (1914-1982), repeatedly believed to be no longer relevant, polarized during her lifetime and still does so today. Many wonder, not least in the Western European press, how she could achieve such iconic status in spite of the literary qualities of her work and her difficult personality. This paper tries to grasp what made Ayn Rand such a compelling figure and her ideas so pertinent to many. To this end, it approaches Rand and her philosophy through novels and other works of fiction that are either inspired by Ayn Rand or feature her as a character. It will thus show how this libertarian intellectual is re-imagined in novels like Tobias Wolff's "Old School" (2003) or Mary Gaitskill's "Two Girls, Fat and Thin" (1991), and how these novelists try to put their finger on what made Rand so convincing. In a similar fashion, the paper will discuss how recasting Rand's political ideas in science fiction, for instance in Nancy Kress's "Beggars in Spain" (1991), reveals both the allure and the danger of Rand's world of ideas.