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RADICALS FOR CAPITALISM 199
is now ‘lost.’ ” 24 Rand, though, was interested in both truth and beauty.
She defi ned herself as a leader of the nearly lost Romantic school and
attacked Naturalistic writers and artists as “the gutter school.” Alluding
to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Rand criticized modern intellectuals and
writers: “They feel hatred for any projection of man as a clean, self confi
dent, effi cacious being. They extol depravity; they relish the sight of
man spitting in his own face.” 25 She preferred the popular mystery novels
of Mickey Spillane, featuring a hard-boiled detective who doggedly
tracked down evildoers.
Objectivism was also appealing because it promised sure footing on
the slippery terrain of right and wrong. Rand insisted that ethics could
be scientifi cally derived from the nature of man, properly understood.
Man was a rational being and therefore, that which served his life, qua
man, was the good. More important than her elevation of selfi shness was
Rand’s insistence that her ethics could be proven and defended objectively.
Remembering his turn to Objectivism, a radio host explained,
“I think the biggest change that occurs is that you recognize that there
are absolutes, that there are guidelines as criteria, that you can know
and understand.” The absolutist and rationalistic form of Rand’s ethics
appealed as much as their content. “Above all, Dagny is sure of herself,
and lots of young people want to be sure of themselves,” one college fan
told an interviewer. 26
It was not certainty alone that Rand offered, but the idea that things
made sense, that the world was rational, logical, and could be understood.
Order was the particular reward of Atlas Shrugged, which portrayed
a world in which politics, philosophy, ethics, sex, and every other
aspect of human existence were drawn together into a cohesive narrative.
Just as Rand had provided businessmen with a set of ideas that met
their need to feel righteous and honorable in their professional lives,
she gave young people a philosophical system that met their deep need
for order and certainty. This aspect of her appeal rings through again
and again in accounts of her infl uence. One young fan told Rand that
before fi nding her work, he was “a very confused person” but “You gave
me the answers, and more important, a moral sanction for existing.”
Often the lure of Rand’s intelligible world was enough for readers to
trade in long-standing beliefs overnight. A self-described former “altruist
and socialist” started her books skeptically but soon found in Rand
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