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A ROUND UNIVERSE 147
exceptional young man with a profound intelligence. Barbara admired
Nathan and shared his values. According to Rand, they had all the necessary
ingredients for a successful relationship. Against her instincts
Barbara followed Rand’s advice. Nathan and Barbara’s subsequent decision
to change their last name to Branden symbolized the new strength
of Rand’s growing circle. “Branden” had the crisp, Aryan ring of characters
in Rand’s fi ction; it also incorporated Rand’s chosen surname. 35 As
in the case of young Alisa, the symbolism was clear enough. Barbara and
Nathan were reborn not only as a married couple, but as a couple with
an explicit allegiance to Rand.
After their marriage the Brandens and the Collective formed the
nucleus of Rand’s social life to the exclusion of all others. Rand sequestered
herself during the day, laboring on Atlas Shrugged. At night she
emerged for conversation, mostly about the book. Saturday nights were
the highlight; no matter how intense her writing, Rand never canceled
their salon. The Collective gathered at Rand’s Thirty-sixth Street apartment,
a small, dimly lit space “reeking with smoke” and fi lled with hair
from the O’Connors’ Persian cats. 36 The apartment could not compare
with the magnifi cent estate at Chatsworth, but Rand loved that she could
see the Empire State Building from a window in her offi ce. Modernist
furniture in her favorite color, blue-green, fi lled the apartment, and
ashtrays were available at every turn. When Rand fi nished a chapter, it
was a reading night, with the Collective silently devouring the pages she
drafted. Other nights were dedicated to philosophical discussion.
During these evenings Rand taught the Collective the essentials of her
philosophy. No longer content to celebrate individualism through her
fi ction, she now understood, “my most important job is the formulation
of a rational morality of and for man, of and for his life, of and for this
earth.” 37 Objectivism, as she would soon be calling her ideas, was an ingenious
synthesis of her ethical selfi shness and the Aristotelian rationality
that had captured her interest after she completed The Fountainhead.
Stitching the two together, Rand argued that she had rationally proved
the validity of her moral system. Unlike other systems, she claimed,
Objectivist morality was not based on theological assumptions, but on
a logically demonstrable understanding of what man’s needs on earth
were. In essence, Objectivism was Rand’s rebuttal of the skeptical and
relativistic orientation that had characterized American intellectual life
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