*Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success*

 [[{“value”:”An excellent book, stressing Rand’s Jewish heritage and its ongoing influence over her work, in spite of her self-professed atheism.  The author is Alexandra Popoff, who wrote the wonderful biography of Vassily Grossman as well. Here is one bit from the preface: I believe that writers cannot hide themselves in a literary text, even when
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An excellent book, stressing Rand’s Jewish heritage and its ongoing influence over her work, in spite of her self-professed atheism.  The author is Alexandra Popoff, who wrote the wonderful biography of Vassily Grossman as well.

Here is one bit from the preface:

I believe that writers cannot hide themselves in a literary text, even when they later go back to revise it, as Rand had done.  She had claimed that being Jewish did not matter to her, but her Jewishness was about the text, crrammed full of ideas, parables, paradoxes, questions, and arguments.  Her fictional stories are moral and legal at the same time.

Rand was at one point slated to write the screenplay for a movie about Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb, though the project never realized.  Here is an excerpt from the latter part of the book:

In her declining years Rand pursued her passion of stamp collecting.  She attended stamp shows and auctions with fellow collectors, one of whom was her surgeon Dr. Cranston Holman.  She shopped at Gimbels, her favorite store, played Scrabble with visitors, read Agatha Christie, watched TV cops and robbers, and in her mid-seventies, studied algebra.

The Burns and Heller biographies of Rand are excellent, but this one has plenty of fresh material and insight.

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