The High Priest of Self-Centeredness

There are two new biographies of Ayn Rand on the market. She of the icy glare, the modified Hitler hairdo, the large dollar-sign brooch. Her philosophy behaved more like a religion or a cult, with fierce dogmas and sudden excommunications. But her devotees are legion. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan was one of the earliest, sitting at her feet during her living room sermonettes in the early days in New York. And her books have sold millions of copies, mostly, it seems, to disgruntled and arrested adolescents who think nobody understands them.

Rand was traumatized by the Russian Revolution. Her family lost everything when the Bolsheviks took over. Impoverishment at the hands of Russian governments has shaped some of the greatest and most peculiar literature we have, from Conrad to Nabokov (his sister was Ayn Rand's best friend). None, perhaps, as odd as Rand's. Nabokov's peculiarities are well cataloged in A Book of Ages. Had these Rand biographies been published earlier I would have included more about her. She preached holy individualism, and fixated on muscular, dominant males in her novels, yet she kept her husband in a state of servility. He was fully informed about her twice weekly sexual intercourse with her lover and deputy. She made Frank wear a bell on his shoes so she could hear his movements around the house. During the 1970s her Wednesday evenings were devoted to watching Charlie's Angels. Odd doesn't begin to describe her.

Pepys, Unexpurgated

On August 18, 1667, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary “… being weary, turned into St Dunstan's church, where I hear an able sermon of the minister of the place. And stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand and the body; but she would not, but got further and further from me, and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again...” Pepys was 34. This and other merry entries about the naval bureaucrat's sexual life would remain unread by readers of literature until the unexpurgated diary appeared in the 1970s.

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in America on this day in 1958, three years after its publication in France. The author was 59. The novel is about the relationship between a besotted older man and a young girl. It quickly went to the top of the bestseller list. The book’s success paid for the Nabokovs' move to Switzerland, where the author lived out his life on the top floor of a luxury hotel. Nabokov appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Clinton Agonistes

On August 17, 1998, Bill Clinton became the first sitting President of the United States to be forced to testify in a criminal case of which he was the target. He was alleged to have lied about an affair while under oath. The interrogation by prosecutors went on for four hours in the Map Room in the White House, and the entire thing was videotaped and broadcast to the nation. Many of the questions were of a probing, extremely personal nature, which no one watching on television could imagine being expected to answer themselves. Clinton answered the questions anyway. His national approval ratings, already above 70 percent, went even higher. He was 51. He and Hillary had been married for 23 years and are still married.