Books in Brief: It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand

It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand, by Jerome Tuccille (Stein and Day, 192 pp., $6.95).

It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand doesn’t end anywhere near there, asistobe expected in a book dedicated to “de-viationists all over the world.” Jerome Tuccille fills 192 pages with a picaresque autobiography of hectic journeys through Randism, Goldwaterism, Conservative Clubbism, Galambosianism, YAF, radical libertarianism and sundry others, to finally discover truth in a Left-Right revolutionary coalition. Sometimes it is funny and frequently it is obscene. A few of the personality sketches, as of Rand, Rothbard and Hess, and the account of the Radical Libertarian Alliance convention of 1969, are worth reading for the diversion they offer one uninitiated into such worlds. The last chapter, a seemingly serious attempt at philosophizing, hangs like a severed limb. Throughout, there is the very discernible undercurrent of a small voice crying in the verbiage: “Please see me! I’m so clever, won’t you look at me?” But there are only fleeting shadows to see. It may be nice to know that there are other people who shun the New York Times— “You’ll never build a sane movement once you’re discovered by the New York Times.” But a little more perceptiveness than Tuccille’s is needed to build a sane movement. And a little more definition of authorial focus, too: so much facetiousness blended with so much hostility provides a mental atmosphere fit only for deviationism.

CS

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C. P. Sarsfield

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It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand, by Jerome Tuccille (Stein and Day, 192 pp., $6.95).

It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand doesn’t end anywhere near there, asistobe expected in a book dedicated to “de-viationists all over the world.” Jerome Tuccille fills 192 pages with a picaresque autobiography of hectic journeys through Randism, Goldwaterism, Conservative Clubbism, Galambosianism, YAF, radical libertarianism and sundry others, to finally discover truth in a Left-Right revolutionary coalition. Sometimes it is funny and frequently it is obscene. A few of the personality sketches, as of Rand, Rothbard and Hess, and the account of the Radical Libertarian Alliance convention of 1969, are worth reading for the diversion they offer one uninitiated into such worlds. The last chapter, a seemingly serious attempt at philosophizing, hangs like a severed limb. Throughout, there is the very discernible undercurrent of a small voice crying in the verbiage: “Please see me! I’m so clever, won’t you look at me?” But there are only fleeting shadows to see. It may be nice to know that there are other people who shun the New York Times— “You’ll never build a sane movement once you’re discovered by the New York Times.” But a little more perceptiveness than Tuccille’s is needed to build a sane movement. And a little more definition of authorial focus, too: so much facetiousness blended with so much hostility provides a mental atmosphere fit only for deviationism.