Remembering Frank O’Connor

This is Diminishing Returns by Frank O'Connor, Ayn Rand's husband. A copy of it hangs in my home writing space. It is a joyous painting and it brings to mind many thoughts and memories.

First, it reminds me of the man I had the good fortune to meet and briefly converse with on two occasions. My impression of him was of a self-assured gentleman of the old school, almost aristocratic in manner, who could have stepped out of a Noel Coward play and dealt with any circumstance in his life with humor, grace and fully rational, first-hand judgment. He was quiet as Gary Cooper was quiet. And I saw, I like to think, what Ayn Rand saw in him – a man of quiet strength touched by what Leonard Peikoff has called 'laughter let loose in the universe." We had a lot of those men in Ohio where I was born and where my grandfather ran a farm and worked the factories, and Frank O'Connor came from that mold.

Both of the occasions were in the early '60s, when I was in New York attending Juilliard as a piano performance major. The first was at Columbia University after Ayn Rand had given her talk "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business" to an initially hostile crowd that gave her a standing ovation at the end. Afterward the Brandens and Miss Rand sat in the large anteroom outside the hall and answered questions while Mr. O'Connor stood at the back of the room conversing with friends. My best friend from high school, an actor, and I wandered around listening to the answers to questions in a state of hero-worshipping awe. Suddenly, one of us looked down and saw a small, square, white box with a gold dollar sign stamped on the cover. Opening the cover we found shards of tobacco. Could it be? Surely this meant there really were Dollar Sign Cigarettes! And we could buy them! And smoke them! And just be righteously cool. We walked around the room, as cool as we could manage, and found a group of people standing quietly, talking. They were obviously not students and why we thought to ask them, Aristotle only knows. But we did. We displayed the box, asked if we were right as to the nature of its contents, and asked where we could get them. Frank O'Connor, we were only later to learn, answered, a friendly, amused smile on his face, that we could get them at the tobacconist whose name and address in the Village were on the back of the box. He added that they came in flavors, like milk shakes. "Just tell them what flavor you want and they'll whip you up a tasty batch" he said. The following Monday we did just that and came home with the most God-awful tasting batch of English Ovals I could imagine. Only later when I tried Gauloises, did I experience anything worse. But I still have the box.

The second encounter was after my friend sent Ayn Rand a gift of a painting he had done. A somewhat abstract representation of a train headlight heading toward the viewer, it was returned. My friend, wondering why, and thinking that perhaps Miss Rand had been offended or didn't care for the painting, asked Mr. O'Connor if this was the case. "Oh no," he said. "We return everything. You'd be amazed at the number of gifts we receive. Paintings, photographs, even fish. And she's allergic to fish. We decided early on that she would only accept gifts from friends." As to the abstract nature of the painting, he said, "As long as you know what you're doing and can explain it, anything goes."

This painting is a joy-filled reminder that the only rule is thought and that exaltation is possible only to those who live life on the level. First, its subject matter is Christmas, Ayn Rand's favorite holiday. The Christmas tree ornaments are being tossed in the air with gay abandon by a wooden artist's model who is a drummer resting on a high lonely pinnacle, kicking up its heels in a vast wasteland but with an unlimited horizon of water suitable for calm voyages. Some of the balls are caught up in the clouds, others are under control, and still others have crashed to the ground. The manikin's arm is extended to maintain balance and to catch the greenish blue ball just above it, which from our viewpoint appears unlikely. The stages of the painting process are depicted as self-portraits reflected in three balls, starting with the red ball on the left, continuing with the greenish blue ball, and ending with the yellow ball under the manikin's foot, which shows the door open to the world outside. The painter has left the building. The painting is dated 1964. This is, indeed, laughter let loose in the universe. It is "not having to take any of it seriously." It is "not even getting a pork chop in return."

Finally, there is the inspiration that comes, for me, from someone who found his career late in life and simply was not afraid to be seen.

Yes, no one sticks around that doesn't live life on the level. There are no rules but there are principles. Frank O'Connor was Ayn Rand's kind of guy.