Michael Prescott
Part One: Ayn Rand's
"real man"
Recently I was rereading Scott
Ryan's fascinating, albeit highly technical, critique of Ayn Rand's
philosophy, Objectivism
and the Corruption of Rationality, and getting a lot more out of it the
second time, when I came across a fact culled from a posthumous
collection of Rand's journal entries.
In her journal circa 1928 Rand
quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo
attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her
response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's
psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals
of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)
At the time, she was planning
a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of
which was named Danny Renahan.According to Rand
scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan -
intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William
Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born
with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute
lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because
he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of
other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand
why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)
"A wonderful, free, light
consciousness" born of the utter absence of any understanding of "the
necessity, meaning, or importance of other people." Obviously, Ayn Rand
was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage
of Rand's life, her kind of man.
So the question is, who
exactly was he?
William Edward Hickman was one
of the most famous men in America in 1928. But he came by his fame in a way
that perhaps should have given pause to Ayn Rand before she decided that he was
a "real man" worthy of enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional
heroes.
You see, Hickman was a forger,
an armed robber, a child kidnapper, and a multiple murderer.
Other than that, he was
probably a swell guy.
In December of 1927, Hickman,
nineteen years old, showed up at a Los Angeles public school and managed to get
custody of a twelve-year-old girl, Marian (sometimes Marion) Parker. He was
able to convince Marian's teacher that the girl's father, a well-known banker,
had been seriously injured in a car accident and that the girl had to go to the
hospital immediately. The story was a lie. Hickman disappeared with Marian, and
over the next few days Mr. and Mrs. Parker received a series of ransom notes.
The notes were cruel and taunting and were sometimes signed "Death"
or "Fate." The sum of $1,500 was demanded for the child's safe
release. (Hickman needed this sum, he later claimed, because he wanted to go to
Bible college!) The father raised the payment in gold certificates and
delivered it to Hickman. As told by the article "Fate,
Death and the Fox" in crimelibrary.com,
"At the rendezvous, Mr.
Parker handed over the money to a young man who was waiting for him in a parked
car. When Mr. Parker paid the ransom, he could see his daughter, Marion,
sitting in the passenger seat next to the suspect. As soon as the money was
exchanged, the suspect drove off with the victim still in the car. At the end
of the street, Marion's corpse was dumped onto the pavement. She was dead. Her
legs had been chopped off and her eyes had been wired open to appear as if she
was still alive. Her internal organs had been cut out and pieces of her body
were later found strewn all over the Los Angeles area."
Quite a hero, eh? One might
question whether Hickman had "a wonderful, free, light
consciousness," but surely he did have "no organ for
understanding ... the necessity, meaning, or importance of other
people."
The mutilations Hickman
inflicted on little Marian were worse than reported in the excerpt above. He
cut the girl's body in half, and severed her hands (or arms, depending on the
source). He drained her torso of blood and stuffed it with bath towels. There
were persistent rumors that he molested the girl before killing her, though
this claim was officially denied. Overall, the crime is somewhat reminiscent of
the 1947 Black Dahlia case, one of the most gruesome homicides in L.A. history.
But Hickman's heroism doesn't
end there. He heroically amscrayed to the small town of Echo, Oregon, where he
heroically holed up, no doubt believing he had perpetrated the perfect crime.
Sadly for him, fingerprints he'd left on one of the ransom notes matched prints
on file from his previous conviction for forgery. With his face on Wanted
posters everywhere, Hickman was quickly tracked down and arrested. The article
continues:
"He was conveyed back to
Los Angeles where he promptly confessed to another murder he committed during a
drug store hold-up. Eventually, Hickman confessed to a dozen armed robberies.
'This is going to get interesting before it's over,' he told investigators.
'Marion and I were good friends,' he said, 'and we really had a good time when
we were together and I really liked her. I'm sorry that she was killed.'
Hickman never said why he had killed the girl and cut off her legs."
It seems to me that Ayn Rand's
uncritical admiration of a personality this twisted does not speak particularly
well for her ability to judge and evaluate the heroic qualities in people. One
might go so far as to say that anyone who sees William Edward Hickman as the
epitome of a "real man" has some serious issues to work on, and
perhaps should be less concerned with trying to convert the world to her point
of view than in trying to repair her own damaged psyche. One might also point
out that a person who "has no organ for understanding ... the
necessity, meaning, or importance of other people" is what we today would
call a sociopath.
Was Rand's ideal man a
sociopath? The suggestion seems shockingly unfair - until you read her very own
words.
No doubt defenders of Ayn
Rand, and there are still a few left, would reply that the journal entry in
question was written when she was only in her early twenties and still under
the spell of Nietzsche, that as her thinking developed she discarded such
Nietzschean elements and evolved a more rational outlook, and that the mature
Rand should not be judged by the mistakes of her youth. And this might be a
perfectly reasonable position to take. Unquestionably Rand's outlook did
change, and her point of view did become at least somewhat less hostile to what
the average, normal person would regard as healthy values.
But before we assume that her
admiration of Mr. Hickman was merely a quirk of her salad days, let's consider
a few other quotes from Ayn Rand cited in Scott Ryan's book.
In her early notes for The
Fountainhead: "One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's
way to get the best for oneself. Fine!" (Journals, p. 78.)
Of The Fountainhead's
hero, Howard Roark: He "has learned long ago, with his first
consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his
own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world." (Journals, p.
93.)
In the original version of her
first novel We the Living: "What are your masses [of humanity] but
mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?"
(This declaration is made by the heroine Kira, Rand's stand-in; it is quoted
in The
Ideas of Ayn Rand by Ronald Merrill, pp. 38 - 39; the passage was
altered when the book was reissued years after its original publication.)
On the value of human life:
Man "is man only so long as he functions in accordance with the nature of
a rational being. When he chooses to function otherwise, he is no longer man.
There is no proper name for the thing which he then becomes ... When a man chooses
to act in a sub-human manner, it is no longer proper for him to survive nor to
be happy." (Journals, pp. 253-254, 288.)
As proof that her Nietzschean
thinking persisted long after her admirers think she abandoned it, this journal
entry from 1945, two years subsequent to the publication of The Fountainhead:
"Perhaps we really are in the process of evolving from apes to Supermen --
and the rational faculty is the dominant characteristic of the better species,
the Superman." (Journals, p. 285.)
So perhaps her thinking did
not change quite so much, after all.
And what of William Edward
Hickman? What ever became of the man who served as the early prototype of the
Randian Superman?
Real life is not fiction, and
Hickman's personal credo, which so impressed Ayn Rand - "what is right for
me is good" - does not seem to have worked out very well for him. At first
he heroically tried to weasel out of the murder rap by implicating another man,
but the intended fall guy turned out to have an airtight alibi (he was in
prison at the time). Then he heroically invoked the insanity defense. This
effort likewise failed, and in 1928 he was sentenced to death by hanging, to be
carried out at San Quentin later that same year.
Hickman reportedly "died
yellow" - he was dragged, trembling and fainting, to his execution, his
courtroom bravado having given way at last.
Part Two: It just gets worse
After writing the above, I
found myself questioning whether it was really possible that Ayn Rand
admired William Edward Hickman, the child kidnapper and multiple murderer whose
credo Rand quotes with unblinking approval in her journal. Although my opinion
of Rand is very low, it has never been quite that low, and I was,
after all, relying on secondhand sources. Not having a copy of Journals of
Ayn Rand, I thought I was unable to check for myself. Then it occurred to me to
use Amazon.com's "Search inside" feature to read the relevant pages.
What I found was, in some
ways, actually worse than anything the brief excerpts from the
journals had suggested.
Clearly the editor of Journals
of Ayn Rand had some qualms about Rand's open admiration of Hickman. He
tries to put this admiration into perspective, writing:
"For reasons given in the
following notes, AR concluded that the intensity of the public's hatred was
primarily 'because of the man who committed the crime and not because of the
crime he committed.' The mob hated Hickman for his independence; she chose
him as a model for the same reason.
"Hickman served as a
model for [her fictional hero] Danny [Renahan] only in strictly limited
respects, which AR names in her notes. And he does commit a crime in the story,
but it is nothing like Hickman's. To guard against any misinterpretation, I
quote her own statement regarding the relationship between her hero and
Hickman:
"'[My hero is] very far
from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper
and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more
exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.'
"
The editor also provides the
briefest and most detail-free synopsis of Hickman's crime possible: "He
was accused of kidnapping and murdering a young girl. He was found guilty and
sentenced to death in February of 1928; he was hanged on October 20,
1928."
As far as I can tell, this is
the one and only reference to Hickman's victim to be found anywhere in the
book. Ayn Rand never mentions the victim at all in any of her journal entries.
The closest she comes is a sneering reference to another girl, "who wrote
a letter to Hickman [in jail], asking him 'to get religion so that little girls
everywhere would stop being afraid of him.'"
Notice that the editor does
not bother to tell us that the victim in question was twelve years old, that
Hickman tormented her parents with mocking ransom notes, that Hickman killed
the girl even though the parents paid the ransom money, or that Hickman cut the
girl in half and threw her upper body onto the street in front of her horrified
father while scattering her other body parts around the city of Los Angeles.
This is the Hickman whose
"outside" so intrigued the young Ayn Rand.
Now here are some of Rand's
notes on the fictional hero she was developing, with Hickman (or what he
"suggested") as a model:
"Other people have no
right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affected or
chosen -- it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has 'no organ' to
be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman.
He can never realize and feel'other people.' "
"He shows how impossible
it is for a genuinely beautiful soul to succeed at present, for in all [aspects
of] modern life, one has to be a hypocrite, to bend and tolerate. This boy
wanted to command and smash away things and people he didn't approve of."
Apparently what Hickman
suggested to Ayn Rand was "a genuinely beautiful soul." The soul of
Marian Parker, the murdered girl, evidently did not suggest any comparably
romantic notions to her.
As I mentioned in my previous
post, there is a term for a person who has "no organ" by which to
understand other human beings -- a person who "can never realize and feel 'other
people.'" That word is sociopath. I mean this quite literally and not
as a rhetorical flourish. A sociopath, by definition, is someone who lacks
empathy and cannot conceive of other people as fully real. It is precisely
because the sociopath objectifies and depersonalizes other human beings that he
is able to inflict pain and death without remorse.
It is also fair to say of any
sociopath that he "wanted to command and smash away things and people he
didn't approve of." How this relates to having "a beautiful
soul" is unclear to me -- and I earnestly hope it will continue to be.
In her notes, Rand complains
that poor Hickman has become the target of irrational and ugly mob psychology:
"The first thing that
impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society
against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always
something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the
'majority.'... It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and
crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal...
"This is not just the
case of a terrible crime. It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of
public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact
that a crime has been committed by one man, alone; that this man knew it was
against all laws of humanity and intended that way; that he does not want to
recognize it as a crime and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing
picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and
with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and
in soul."
Before we get to the meat of
this statement, let us pause to consider Rand's claim that average members of
the public are "beings with worse sins and crimes in their own
lives." Worse sins and crimes and kidnapping, murdering, and mutilating a
helpless little girl? If Rand honestly believed that the average American had
worse skeletons than that in his closet, then her opinion of
"the average man" is even lower than I had suspected.
We get an idea of the
"sins and crimes" of ordinary people when Rand discusses the jury in
the case: "Average, everyday, rather stupid looking citizens. Shabbily
dressed, dried, worn looking little men. Fat, overdressed, very average,
'dignified' housewives. How can they decide the fate of that boy? Or anyone's
fate?"
Their sin, evidently, is that
they are "average," a word that appears twice in three sentences.
They are "shabbily dressed" or, conversely, "overdressed"
-- in matters of fashion, Rand seems hard to please. They are "dried"
and "worn," or they are "fat." They are, in short, an
assault on the delicate sensibilities of the author. Anything "average"
appalls her. "Extremist beyond all extreme is what we need!" she
exclaims in another entry. Well, in his cruelty and psychopathic insanity,
Hickman was an extremist, for sure. Nothing "average" about him!
Returning to the longer quote
above, notice how briskly Rand dismisses the possibility that the public's
anger might have been motivated by the crime per se. Apparently the horrendous
slaying of a little girl is not enough, in Rand's mind, to justify public
outrage against the murderer. No, what the public really objects to is "a
daring challenge to society." I suppose this is one way of looking at
Hickman's actions. By the same logic, Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy posed
"a daring challenge to society." So did Adolf Hitler, only on a
larger scale.
Hickman, she writes, knew that
his crime "was against all laws of humanity" -- this is a point in
his favor, she seems to think. And "he does not want to recognize it as a
crime." Well, neither does any criminal who rationalizes his behavior by
saying that his victim "had it coming." Hickman "feels superior
to all." Yes, so do most sociopaths. Grandiosity and narcissistic
self-absorption are another characteristic of this personality type. Hickman
has "a consciousness all his own"; he is a "man who really
stands alone, in action and in soul." I cannot think of any comment about
this that would be suitable for public consumption.
Although the American people
showed no sympathy for Hickman, Ayn Rand certainly did:
"And when we look at the
other side of it -- there is a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy turned into
a purposeless monster. By whom? By what? Is it not by that very society that is
now yelling so virtuously in its role of innocent victim? He had a brilliant
mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight, uncompromising,
proud character. What had society to offer him? A wretched, insane family as
the ideal home, a Y.M.C.A. club as social honor, and a bank-page job as
ambition and career...
"If he had any desires
and ambitions -- what was the way before him? A long, slow, soul-eating,
heart-wrecking toil and struggle; the degrading, ignoble road of silent pain
and loud compromises....
"A strong man can
eventually trample society under his feet. That boy was not strong enough. But
is that his crime? Is it his crime that he was too impatient, fiery and proud
to go that slow way? That he was not able to serve, when he felt worthy to
rule; to obey, when he wanted to command?...
"He was given [nothing
with which] to fill his life. What was he offered to fill his soul? The petty,
narrow, inconsistent, hypocritical ideology of present-day humanity. All the
criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues,
and consequences. Is it any wonder that he didn't accept it?"
How exactly she knew that
Hickman was "brilliant, unusual, exceptional," or that he "had a
brilliant mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight,
uncompromising, proud character" is far from clear. A more realistic
portrait of Hickman would show him as a calculating sadist.
For all those who assume that
Ayn Rand, as a figure on the political right, would be "tough on
crime," please note that she here invokes the hoariest cliches of the
"victim of society" mentality. Poor Hickman just couldn't help kidnapping
and murdering a little girl -- after all, he had a lousy home life and an
unfulfilling job. And it would be asking too much of such a superior soul to
put forth the long, sustained effort necessary to rise to a position of power
and influence by means of his own hard work.
Rand's statement here reminds
me very much of an attitude often found in career criminals -- that honest work
is for suckers.
"A strong man can
eventually trample society under his feet." This is about as bald-faced a
confession of Rand's utter dependence on Nietzsche as we are ever likely to
see. "That boy was not strong enough. But is that his crime?" No, Ayn
Rand, that was not his crime. His crime, in case you have forgotten, is that he
kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl and held her for ransom and murdered her and
cut her to pieces and threw her body parts in the street and laughed about it.
That was his crime. True, he did not quite "trample society under his
feet" -- but it was not for want of trying.
Oh, but "he was not able to
serve, when he felt worthy to rule; to obey, when he wanted to command."
How sad for him. There is a point in most people's lives -- usually around the
age of fifteen or sixteen -- when they reject authority and want to rule and
command. Rand apparently feels that this adolescent hubris represents the best
in human nature. A less addled personality would recognize that it represents a
passing phase in one's personal development, a phase that a mature human being
has long outgrown.
But of course we know the real villain
in the picture. Not Hickman, but Christianity! More specifically, "All the
criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues,
and consequences. Is it any wonder that he didn't accept it?" So it is
Christianity that is characterized as "criminal," just as it is
average Americans who are excoriated for their "sins and crimes."
In case there is any doubt as
to Rand's position vis-a-vis Christianity, a few pages later we find her
fulminating against the depravity of:
"... the pastors who try
to convert convicted murderers to their religion... The fact that right after
his sentence Hickman was given a Bible by the jailer. I don't know of anything
more loathsome, hypocritical, low, and diabolical than giving Bibles to men
sentenced to death. It is one of those things that's comical in its stupidity
and horrid because of this lugubrious, gruesome comedy."
I can think of at least one
thing that is "more loathsome ... low, and diabolical than giving Bibles
to men sentenced to death." And that is: ripping up little girls for fun
and profit.
Incidentally, given Hickman's
claim that he ransomed his victim in order to pay for Bible college, the
jailer's decision to hand the condemned man a copy of the Good Book seems like
poetic justice to me.
Defending her hero, Rand asks
rhetorically:
"What could society
answer, if that boy were to say: 'Yes. I am a monstrous criminal, but what are
you?' "
Well, society could answer:
We are the ones who caught you, tried you, convicted you, and are going to put
you to death. Or more seriously: We are the ones charged with upholding all
those "laws of humanity" that you chose to violate – and now, dear
Willie, you must pay the price.
At times, Rand -- who, we must
remember, was still quite young when she wrote these notes -- appears to be
rather infatuated with the famous and charismatic boy killer. She offers a long
paragraph listing all the things she likes about Hickman, somewhat in the
manner of a lovestruck teenager recording her favorite details about the lead
singer in a boy band. Rand's inventory includes:
"The fact that he looks
like 'a bad boy with a very winning grin,' that he makes you like him the whole
time you're in his presence..."
You can practically hear the
young aspiring author's heart fluttering. I have always been puzzled by the
psychology of women who write love letters to serial killers in prison. Somehow
I suspect Ayn Rand would have understood them better than I do.
Still writing of Hickman, she
confesses to her "involuntary, irresistible sympathy for him, which I
cannot help feeling just because of [his antisocial nature] and in spite of
everything else." Regarding his credo (the full statement of which is,
"I am like the state: what is good for me is right"), Rand writes,
"Even if he wasn't big enough to live by that attitude, he deserves credit
for saying it so brilliantly."
Remember all the flak taken by
Norman Mailer for championing
a jailhouse writer and getting the guy paroled, only to have him commit
another crime? Here we have Rand enthusing about the "credit"
Hickman "deserves" for expressing his twisted philosophy of life
"so brilliantly." Get that man on a work release program!
At one point, a sliver of
near-rationality breaks through the fog of Rand's delusions: "I am afraid
that I idealize Hickman and that he might not be this at all. In fact, he probably
isn't." Her moment of lucidity is short-lived. "But it does not make
any difference. If he isn't, he could be, and that's enough." Yes, facts
are stubborn things, so it's best to ignore them and live in a land of
make-believe. Let's not allow truculent reality to interfere with our dizzying
and intoxicating fantasy life.
Punctuating the point, Rand
writes, "There is a lot that is purposely, senselessly horrible about him.
But that does not interest me..." No indeed. Why should it? It's only
reality.
By the appraisal of any normal
mind, there can be little doubt that William Edward Hickman was a vicious
psychopath of the worst order. That Ayn Rand saw something heroic, brilliant,
and romantic in this despicable creature is perhaps the single worst indictment
of her that I have come across. It is enough to make me question not only her
judgment, but her sanity.
At this point in my life, I
did not think it was possible to significantly lower my estimate of Ayn Rand,
or to regard her as even more of a psychological and moral mess than I had
already taken her to be.
I stand corrected.
