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THE REAL ROOT OF EVIL 131
may have been trying to keep conversation on safe territory, but Rand
had little interest in a nonintellectual relationship. Known for her irascible
temperament, in California Paterson was particularly disagreeable.
Rand had arranged several social evenings at her house, which Paterson
systemically ruined. She called two of Rand’s friends “fools” to their
faces and told Rand after meeting Morrie Ryskind, “I don’t like Jewish
intellectuals.” Rand was blunt in her response: “Pat, then I don’t know
why you like me.” 83 Tension between the two old friends was building
with each hour. Paterson even let it be known that she had passed up the
chance to review The Fountainhead so many years before.
The fi nal insult came when Paterson met William Mullendore, by
now one of Rand’s closest political allies. Paterson was seeking backing
for a new political magazine, but when Mullendore began questioning
her about the venture she lost her temper. Rand remembered, “She
exploded, but literally. And she started yelling that none of them appreciated
her, hadn’t she worked hard enough, why should she have to write
samples. Couldn’t they take her word?” Mullendore, who had been forewarned
about Paterson’s character, was prepared for the outburst and
kept his cool. 84 But Rand was mortifi ed. When Paterson offered to leave
the next day, Rand agreed. And when Paterson tried to change her mind
in the morning, Rand held fi rm and sent Paterson on her way. It was the
last time the two women would meet.
With the ending of their friendship, one of Rand’s rare intellectual
idols had crumbled. Rand had always been extravagant in her praise of
Paterson, identifying her as one of the few people who had infl uenced
her intellectual development. Even in the lead-up to their fi ght she was
still assuring Paterson, “I learned from you the historical and economic
aspects of Capitalism, which I knew before only in a general way.”
But afterward she would revise her estimate of Paterson, calling her
“completely unoriginal. . . . She was a good technical, competent, ladynovelist—and
that was all.” Paterson, famous in conservative circles for
being “diffi cult,” bears much of the responsibility for the ending of the
friendship. As William F. Buckley Jr. later wrote in her obituary, Paterson
was “intolerably impolite, impossibly arrogant, obstinately vindictive.”
But the friendship’s end speaks to Rand’s weaknesses as well. Unable to
meet Paterson’s demands for connection, she retreated into silence, a
move that exacerbated any intellectual differences between the two. After
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