Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [203]
The breaking point came at an academic conference held at Harvard University, at which Hospers arranged for her to speak. She had frequently complained to him that university philosophers paid no attention to her; the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, of which he was the program chair, seemed a perfect occasion on which to begin to remedy the situation. She agreed to speak on the condition that Hospers be the person appointed to deliver comments on her presentation afterward, in the academic manner. She gave a formal twenty-minute paper titled “Art as Sense of Life,” which was an interesting meditation on the sources of art in the creator’s subconscious evaluation of the nature of man and his place in the universe. When she sat down, he rose to perform his part, which was to point out strengths and weaknesses in her argument. According to Barbara, who was present, some of his comments were sarcastic, “probably out of nervousness at [having to criticize] her publicly, while she sat listening.” To his horror and his colleagues’ outrage, she responded to his remarks by lashing out with a coarsely worded personal attack on Hospers. In an especially severe instance of cultural tone deafness, perhaps, she assumed that her friend had deliberately ambushed and betrayed her. She and her retinue of followers swept out of the room and went off to a planned party at her hotel. Hospers had been invited, too, but when he arrived no one would speak to him. He had been excommunicated, just like that. He had seen it happen to others, but never so swiftly, silently, or crushingly, he thought. He left the hotel and never saw her again. But he mourned her loss for many years. Three and a half decades after their parting, he remembered his evenings with her as among the most intellectually exhilarating of his life. The memory of her early-morning send-off, “Good premises!” brought him close to tears every time he thought of it.
She was far from finished with discarding friends. In late September 1963, she returned in style to Chicago, the city that had introduced her to American life. A fan named Ed Nash, who managed the Chicago NBI tape-transcription business, rented a hall at McCormick Place, then the world’s largest exposition center, as the forum for a speech called “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” On a cool, cloudy Sunday evening she spoke to twenty-five hundred fans, many of whom had traveled hundreds of miles to hear her. Mimi Sutton and her sister Marna were there, along with Frank, representing the O’Connor clan. On Rand’s mother’s side, Fern Brown, Fern’s parents Sam and Minna Goldberg, Rand’s second cousin Burt Stone and his wife, daughter, and granddaughter were also present, at Rand’s invitation. Shortly after she began to speak, there was a bomb scare. Luckily, it was a hoax. But during intermission in the dressing room, she had a moment of panic. Barbara and Nathaniel were busy in an adjacent hallway, and Frank was elsewhere, so Mimi and Marna were soothing her when the Chicago relatives came in. In the hubbub, Burt Stone’s granddaughter noticed that Rand’s black dress was on inside out, seams and label showing through a sheer chiffon overdress. She wondered if she ought to mention it. But there was no time. Rand greeted Fern, the Goldbergs, and the Stones by holding out her hand: “It was polite but formal, and not warm,” Mimi recalled. “She was like a queen on a throne,” said Fern. She returned to the stage to a roar of applause and went on to inveigh against political interference in business, specifically the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and other antitrust laws. Afterward she, Frank, Frank’s nieces, and the Brandens left for a small reception given by Ed Nash and NBI. Although her Chicago relatives disapproved of her philosophy by then, Minna Goldberg still felt slighted at not being asked to the reception. When Burt Stone died two years later and Rand didn’t come to the funeral, family communication ceased. Rand never