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FROM NOVELIST TO PHILOSOPHER, 1944–1957
students at New York University, where Barbara and Nathan were now
enrolled. These young people were fascinated by Rand, drawn by her
strong personality, her bold presentation of ideas, and her literary fame.
Rand’s new group of fans dubbed themselves the “Class of ’43” after
The Fountainhead, or tongue-in-cheek, “The Collective.” Rand granted
her inner circle a rare privilege: the chance to read chapters of Atlas
Shrugged as they poured off her typewriter. Objectivism as a philosophy
had been long germinating in Rand’s mind. Now Objectivism as a social
world began to take shape around her.
Rand also remained a magnet for libertarians. She became friendly
with Herbert and Richard Cornuelle, two brothers who worked for FEE
and the Volker Fund. The Cornuelles were the same type of businessoriented
libertarians she had met in California. After studying with Mises,
Herbert pursued a corporate career with Dole Pineapple, and Richard
served as the head of the National Association of Manufacturers and
later as an advisor to Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Richard found Rand
“electrifying.” When he visited her apartment she seemed a dynamo
of energy, perched high atop an ottoman “smoking cigarettes with a
long holder with a very characteristic, rather severe hairdo and a kind
of intensity in the way she looked at you when she was talking to you,
which I found kind of fascinating and frightening almost.” One evening
the Cornuelles brought Murray Rothbard to Rand’s home. A Brooklyn
native, Rothbard had stumbled across organized libertarianism by way
of the infamous Roofs or Ceilings? pamphlet that had caused so much
grief for Leonard Read. Given a copy in 1946 while a graduate student,
he contacted FEE and was then introduced to the work of Mises. By
the time Rand returned to New York Rothbard was pursuing a Ph.D.
in economics at Columbia University and was a regular at the Mises
seminar. 29
Meeting Rand, Rothbard quickly discovered that she was not his “cup
of tea.” It was a curious reaction, for the two had much in common.
Both loved to argue, staked out extremist positions, and criticized anyone
who strayed from pure ideology. Although he was an economist,
Rothbard, like Rand, approached libertarianism from a moral point of
view. But Rothbard found Rand exhausting. Her intensity, her “enormous
hopped-up energy,” overwhelmed him. 30 (He had no idea that
Rand was a regular user of amphetamines, but he seems to have detected
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