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274
LEGACIES
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neither sister could let go of her disagreement and reach for common
ground. By the close of the visit, both knew it was impossible for Nora
to settle in the United States. When Nora and Victor returned to Russia
Rand was deeply disappointed. She had offered her sister freedom, and
Nora had chosen dictatorship. Nora was not like her at all—and so
much like her yet.
Not long after Nora left, Rand was diagnosed with lung cancer. She
had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for decades, resolutely insisting
that statistics about their health risks were not reliable evidence.
Now the proof was in her own labored breathing and fading energy.
Before undergoing surgery on her left lobe she accepted an invitation to
speak at the West Point commencement ceremony. Facing an enthusiastic
audience of cadets Rand gave a rousing speech, “Philosophy, Who
Needs It?, later reprinted in the West Point curricula. That summer she
scheduled her operation. It was a success, but her recovery was painful
and slow. The Ayn Rand Letter fell almost a year behind its supposed
publication schedule. Rand mailed the August 1974 issue in May 1975,
telling readers that the letter would soon become a monthly. After two
more issues she knew it was no use. The November–December issue, she
announced, would be the fi nal one.
In the fi nal Ayn Rand Letter, her effective exit from public life, Rand
sounded somber yet familiar themes. It was sad to cease publication, she
told her readers, but also a relief. Month after month she found herself
saying the same things: “I do not care to go on analyzing and denouncing
the same indecencies of the same irrationalism.” She had lost the
sense that she was leading an effective crusade that could reverse the
drift toward collectivism. Gone was the optimism that had led her to
endorse Goldwater, to rouse campus audiences across the country, to
dissect the popular culture and media. Now she was “haunted by a quotation
from Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘It is not my function to be a fl y swatter.’
” Rand recognized her own weariness, and also her own circularity.
For all the distance she had traveled in her life, a few fundamentals still
guided her thought. Russia haunted her still, an object lesson in what
might happen if the wrong ideas triumphed. The injustice served her
father resonated in the welfare state she opposed, both starkly demonstrating
the evils of altruism. Capitalism dragged under the weight of
compromise and contradiction. For all the emotional upheavals she had
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