Isabel Paterson | |
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| Born | Isabel Mary Bowler (1886-01-22)January 22, 1886 Manitoulin Island,Ontario, Canada |
| Died | January 10, 1961(1961-01-10) (aged 74) Montclair,New Jersey, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist, journalist, philosopher, literary critic |
| Nationality | Canadian/American |
| Period | 20th century |
| Subject | journalism, philosophy, literary criticism |
Isabel Paterson (January 22, 1886 – January 10, 1961) was aCanadian-American libertarian writer and literary critic. HistorianJim Powell has called Paterson one of the three founding mothers ofAmerican libertarianism, along withRose Wilder Lane andAyn Rand, who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson. Paterson's best-known work,The God of the Machine (1943), a treatise onpolitical philosophy,economics, andhistory, reached conclusions and espoused beliefs that manylibertarians credit as a foundation of their philosophy. Her biographerStephen D. Cox (2004) believes Paterson was the "earliest progenitor of libertarianism as we know it today." In a letter of 1943, Rand wrote that "The God of the Machine is a document that could literally save the world ...The God of the Machine does forcapitalism whatDas Kapital does for theReds and what theBible did forChristianity."[1]
BornIsabel Mary Bowler in ruralManitoulin Island,Ontario, she moved with her family to the west when she was very young. She grew up on a cattle ranch inAlberta. Paterson's family was quite poor and she had eight siblings. A voracious reader who was largely self-educated, she had brief and informal public schooling during these years: about three years in a country school, from the ages of 11 to 14. In her late teen years, Bowler left the ranch for the city ofCalgary, where she took a clerical job with theCanadian Pacific Railway. As a teenager, she worked as a waitress, stenographer, and bookkeeper, working at one point as an assistant to futureCanadian Prime MinisterR. B. Bennett.
This hardscrabble youth probably led Paterson to attach great importance to productive "self-starters". Although she was articulate, well-read, and erudite, Paterson had extremely limited formal education, an experience she shared withRose Wilder Lane, who was also Paterson's friend and correspondent for many years.[2]: 216–18, 241–42
In 1910, at the age of 24, Bowler entered into a short-lived marriage with Canadian Kenneth B. Paterson. The marriage was not happy, and they parted in 1918. It was during these years, in a foray south of the border, that Paterson landed a job with a newspaper, theInland Herald inSpokane, Washington. Initially she worked in the business department of the paper, but later transferred to the editorial department. There her journalistic career began. Her next position was with a newspaper inVancouver,British Columbia, where for two years she wrote drama reviews.
In 1914, Paterson started submitting her first two novels,The Magpie's Nest andThe Shadow Riders, to publishers, without much success. It was not until 1916 that her second novelThe Shadow Riders was accepted and published by John Lane Company, which also publishedThe Magpie's Nest the following year in 1917.[2]: 46
After World War I, she moved toNew York City, where she worked for the sculptorGutzon Borglum. He was creating statues for theCathedral of St. John the Divine and would later carve the memorial atMount Rushmore. Paterson also wrote for theWorld and theAmerican in New York.
In 1921, Paterson became an assistant toBurton Rascoe, the new literary editor of theNew York Tribune, later theNew York Herald Tribune. For 25 years, from 1924 to 1949, she wrote a column (signed "I.M.P.") for theHerald Tribune's "Books" section. Paterson became one of the most influential literary critics of her time. She covered a time of great expansion in the United States literary world, with new work by the rising generation ofErnest Hemingway,F. Scott Fitzgerald and many others, African Americans of theHarlem Renaissance, as well as the first American generation of the great waves of European immigrants. Her friends during this period included the famous humoristWill Cuppy.[2]: 92–95 In 1928 she became an American citizen, at the age of 42.
She was notorious for demonstrating her sharp wit and goring of sacred cows in her column, where she also first articulated many of the political ideas that reached their final form inThe God of the Machine. Her thinking, especially onfree trade, was also foreshadowed in herhistorical novels of the 1920s and 1930s. Paterson opposed most of the economic program known as theNew Deal, which American presidentFranklin D. Roosevelt put into effect during theGreat Depression. She advocated less government involvement in both social andfiscal issues.
Along withRose Wilder Lane andZora Neale Hurston, Paterson was critical of Roosevelt's foreign policy and wrote columns throughout the 1930s supporting liberty and avoiding foreign entanglements.[3]
By the late 1930s, Paterson led a group of younger writers, many of them otherHerald Tribune employees, who shared her views. One was futureTime magazine correspondent and editor Sam Welles (Samuel Gardner Welles).[2]: 339–40
Another was the youngAyn Rand. From their many discussions, Paterson is credited with adding to Rand's knowledge of American history and government, and Rand with contributing ideas toThe God of the Machine.[4] Paterson believed Rand'sethics to be a unique contribution, writing to Rand in the 1940s, "You still don't seem to know yourself that your idea isnew. It is notNietzsche orMax Stirner... Their supposedEgo was composed of whirling words – your concept of the Ego is an entity, a person, a living creature functioning in concrete reality."[5]
Paterson and Rand promoted each other's books and conducted an extensive correspondence over the years, in which they often touched on religion and philosophy. Anatheist, Rand was critical of thedeist Paterson's attempts to linkcapitalism with religion. Rand believed the two to be incompatible, and the two argued at length. Their correspondence ended after they quarreled in 1948. During a visit to Rand at her home in California, Paterson's remarks about writerMorrie Ryskind and abrasive behavior toward businessmanWilliam C. Mullendore and other guests of Rand, resulted in Rand's disillusionment with "Pat."[6]
Similarly, Paterson had broken with another friend and political ally,Rose Wilder Lane, in 1946.[2]: 313
As a sign of the political tenor of the times,The God of the Machine was published in the same year asRand'snovelThe Fountainhead andRose Wilder Lane'sThe Discovery of Freedom. WriterAlbert Jay Nock wrote that Lane's and Paterson's nonfiction books were "the only intelligible books on the philosophy ofindividualism that have been written in America this century." The two women had "shown the male world of this period how to think fundamentally... They don't fumble and fiddle around – every shot goes straight to the centre." JournalistJohn Chamberlain credits Paterson, Lane and Rand with his final "conversion" fromsocialism to what he called "an older American philosophy" oflibertarian andconservative ideas.[7]
Paterson further influenced the post-WWII rise of lettered Americanconservatism through her correspondence with the youngRussell Kirk in the 1940s, and with the youngWilliam F. Buckley in the 1950s. Buckley and Kirk went on to found theNational Review, to which Paterson contributed for a brief time. However, she sometimes sharply differed from Buckley, for example by disagreeing with the magazine's review of Rand's novel,Atlas Shrugged.[2]: 351
In her retirement, Paterson declined to enroll inSocial Security and kept her Social Security card in an envelope with words "'Social Security' Swindle" written on it.[2]: 325
Paterson died on January 10, 1961, and was interred in the Welles family plot atSaint Mary's Episcopal Churchyard inBurlington, New Jersey.[2]: 362–363
