The childhood of Ayn Rand: some very familiar features

We may not be as unique, unusual or individual as we thnk we are.

I have seen many examples online of people saying such things as, “I could have written that myself” and, “Are you me?” and, “That is a perfect description of MY mother.” They seem surprised to find that there are others out there who are just like them or who have had exactly the same experiences.

I have been reading about the early life of Ayn Rand. Her generation, nationality and family situation are very different from mine, yet much of her early life seems like a description of my early life. Many of her characteristics, views and experiences are very familiar; some of it reminds me of what I have read about the early lives of some writers of interest.

Some basic elements of her personality

In her biography The Passion of Ayn Rand, Barbara Branden tells us that Ayn Rand was not very interested in other children and didn’t fit in with or get on well with them; I was much the same: on the whole, they seemed alien, boring, incomprehensible and sometimes dangerous.

She was very serious and intense, too much so for the liking of her fellow schoolgirls. I was too. She felt that she failed them by not reacting, responding or behaving according to their expectations. Some of us are wired very differently on the inside from the majority of our contemporaries and just cannot fit in with them.

Ayn Rand obtained positive attention from the people around her only because of the qualities of her mind. The only time I got positive attention was when I repeated the ridiculous political ideas that I was force-fed and brainwashed with.

Ayn Rand’s intelligence ‘created a pressure to be fed’. My mind too demanded huge amounts of food and fuel in the form of books and information. I was always hungry for more.

She felt a driving ambition from an early age; I did too.

She was future-oriented from earliest childhood; I was too.

She loathed physical activity; I hated some of it too, although in my case it was not only because organised exercises and games in school seemed pointless but also because I was weakened by being eaten alive by energy vampires. Stella Gibbons too hated being forced to play team games at school; she had no interest in them and didn’t care who won.

Two bus breakdowns: accidental or not?

I was feeling very worried and under the weather a few weeks ago. I went for a series of long bus rides just to get away from things and see some new areas, buildings, houses and parks. Perhaps I should have stayed in until the bad feelings passed, as on one occasion there was a minor incident.

I was on a single-decker bus that stopped at the foot of a steep hill to pick up some people. When the driver tried to move on, it just made strange noises and juddered a bit. He was unable to get it going again, despite making every effort. He radioed for help, and was instructed to get us all off so that we could catch the next bus.

As the driver stepped off the bus, he turned to me and said:

“This is all your fault!”

He was only joking, but many a true word is spoken in jest.

No one was inconvenienced for very long: the next bus came along in under 10 minutes. The driver obviously appreciated a break in routine, a little excitement and the chance to have a cigarette. Even so, I did feel a little guilty.

I have had strange experiences with malfunctioning electrical equipment in the past, always when I was feeling very jangled. I also remembered a day many years ago when something similar happened.

Robin Jarvis’s witchmaster Nathaniel Crozier: Part II

The end of Nathaniel Crozier’s visit to Whitby

We left Nathaniel Crozier just after he had tortured and killed poor old Mr Roper.

His next evil deed is to send the horrible fish demon he has secured to his service to kill Ben so that he can then destroy the magical artefact that Mr Roper passed on to the little boy.

Luckily, the monster follows the wrong trail; it kills another boy instead. ‘By chance’, this is someone who has bullied Ben in the past.

Miss Boston returns from a harrowing visit to London, and finds that all hell has broken loose because Nathaniel Crozier has destroyed two of Whitby’s guardians. Once again, she decides that she must confront an evil newcomer who is about to destroy Whitby. This at the age of 92: if she isn’t a good role model for older ladies, I don’t know who is.

Miss Boston knows that she has taken on what looks like an impossible task, but she sees it as a good sign, a sign of weakness, that the appalling man wanted her out of the way and used his agents to try to destroy her in London.

She has an advantage in that Nathaniel Crozier underestimates her. He never has a good word to say about anyone - he called his wife Roselyn stupid and greedy and Miss Boston an odious hag - and he thinks of Miss Boston as a senile, dabbling amateur.

Crozier would get on well with Lord Voldemort, who also underestimates the opposition and believes that “there is no good and evil, there is nothing but power and those too weak to seek it”. Crozier boasts of being a master of control and domination; he scorns limits and warnings – they are for the weak.

Rudyard Kipling and Sol Invictus

Inspired by a reference to Sol Invictus, I and several others on the - now closed - Conservative Conspiracy Forum searched for and posted about many relevant associations. We included the well-known Invictus poem, sun gods, sun cults, sun symbols, black suns, freemasons, sunflowers, neo-fascist groups, metal music, Constantine and many other connected topics and people.

Now Rudyard Kipling joins the party. As he is featured on this blog, his connections are best presented in an article here.

Rudyard Kipling and Invictus
Rudyard Kipling was a friend of William E. Henley, the author of the inspirational Invictus that was President John F. Kennedy’s favourite poem and that has been featured in the news recently because of its association with Prince Harry’s Invictus Games. 

Henley and Kipling were united in their admiration of the Empire and detestation of the ‘aesthetic’ style in literature and life. They exchanged books and many letters. After receiving a book from him, Kipling wrote to Henley:

“You have been where I have yet to go so I dare not ask why you are so tired. When you get my stuff you will see how far I have walked and where.”

This suggests to me that Henley inspired and was a good influence on Kipling. Invictus was first published in 1888, with Rudyard Kipling’s inspirational poem If appearing in 1910. Perhaps the one inspired the other.

Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: witches and writers

Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel has inspired two previous articles:

Angel’s Imagination covers the ways in which a very strong, active imagination can be a liability in everyday life.

Angel’s Life and Personality describes Angel and her life mainly in modern-day, this-world terms.

Much of Angel is familiar not only because I have read the biographies of Ouida and Marie Corelli that were the source of some of the material in Elizabeth Taylor’s novel, but also because it reminds me of what I have read, and sometimes written, about other people of interest.

Angel Deverell has many characteristics and events in her life in common with both fictional witches and real-life creative writers.

Angel and some fictional witches

I had read only a few pages of the book when Diana Wynne Jones’s young witch Gwendolen Chant came to mind. They have selfishness, an abrupt manner and single-mindedness in common. Gwendolen wants to rule the world; Angel wants to dominate the world.

There is a scene in Angel where she visits her publisher at his home; she ignores his wife. This reminds me of something I quoted about C. S. Lewis’s witch Jadis in the article about Gwendolen Chant: 

“In Charn she [Jadis] had taken no notice of Polly (till the very end) because Digory was the one she wanted to make use of. Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical." 
From The Magician’s Nephew

Both Gwendolen and Angel are quick to take offence and become furious when thwarted. Both hate to see others in possession of things they want for themselves. Both are outraged when they don’t get the recognition they think they deserve.

Neither girl is interested in academic achievement; they just concentrate on their one obsession to the exclusion of everything else, with Angel exercising her imagination and Gwendolen her magical powers.

Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: her life and personality

Angel Deverell is the main character in Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel.  She has provided much more article material than I was expecting. After describing how she lives in her imagination rather than in the real world, we will now cover something of her life, personality and behaviour.

We left Angel at the point where her lies have been exposed and she escapes into illness and her imagination.

Angel Deverell becomes a romance writer

When her mother confronts her, Angel faces blankness and despair and longs for death, seeing no other way out.

When certain people feel that all avenues are closed and cry out on the inside for a miraculous deliverance, something may hear them and come to their rescue, offering what seems like a possible way out…for a price. It may even be that the avenues were deliberately closed, so that the victim chooses the path that they were intended to take all along.

Angel remembers something that for once made her feel happy: it was when she wrote an essay. She decides to write a book. It comes easily: the words flow effortlessly because she just gets some of her fantasies down on paper. Angel’s imaginings are all very visual, pictures seen in the mind’s eye. The words and narrative are not important to her.

Angel has never grieved over any human beings and doesn’t care that a neighbour’s daughter might be dying, but she cries over the funeral she writes about. Seeing real life as unreal, treating the inner world as the real world and the outer world as just a dream is yet another occupational hazard for people with very strong imaginations and unsatisfactory lives.

Angel refuses to return to school; she won’t look for work either: she disdains the suggestion that she could get an office job. She will write books and become rich and famous!

Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel: her imagination

I first heard about Elizabeth Taylor’s novel Angel when it turned up in the results of a Google Search for “Marie Corelli”. 

I had never read any of Taylor’s books, but I got a copy from my library after reading in reviews that Angel was based in part on the lives of the Victorian romance writers Marie Corelli and Ouida. I had read biographies of both of these best-selling writers and was curious to see how much of their biographical material had been used in Angel.

Much of the book is very familiar; I recognised many elements from the biographies. Angel Deverell, the main character, is obviously a composite of Marie Corelli and Ouida. Some of the descriptions of her personality, behaviour and events in her life were taken directly from the biographies.

Angel Deverell is a classic textbook case. She is a type of person who appears in the human race from time to time. I see them as a kind of witch. They may get what they wish for, but the price may be very high and it may all turn to dust and ashes.

Reading about Marie Corelli’s, Ouida’s and now Angel’s life has confirmed some of my ideas about sinister unseen influences that might be at work in people’s lives. There is a lot of material of interest in the book; it will take more than one article to cover it.

Angel Deverell and the dangers of too much imagination

We first meet Angel when she is a schoolgirl of 15. Her colouring is striking, but she is not beautiful. She is not very good at her lessons either, although she can fool people who know much less than she does into thinking that she is a good student.

The only attribute Angel has that is above average is her imagination, and she uses it all the time. It plays a much greater part in her life than her senses do. To Angel, her experiences are a makeshift substitute for her imagination.

She concentrates very hard and visualises her ideal life, one of nobility, glamour and splendour, very clearly. She daydreams whenever she can, as she dislikes the people around her and the environment she lives in. She wants, and feels entitled to, something much better.