Abstract

This essay compares audio recordings of Ayn Rand's question and answer sessions with Robert Mayhew's renditions as published in the Estate-approved volume Ayn Rand Answers. Mayhew, it turns out, rewrote nearly every answer included in the book. He abridged long answers, rearranged parts of answers, left transcription errors uncorrected, and was frequently insensitive to Rand's style of speaking. Mayhew even deleted portions of a few answers deemed embarrassing to Leonard Peikoff and the Estate of Ayn Rand (e.g., references to cigarette smoking or to Nathaniel Branden) and kept other answers (e. g., about homosexuality or amphetamine use) out of the volume entirely