"But I don't think of you."


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On the Left Libertarian II list, I have been engaged in a debate about Roark's famous retort to Toohey: "But I don't think of you."

I have always assumed that Roark intended this as an insult. But I have been corrected by two listmembers, who claim that it merely expresses Roark's indifference to Toohey and was not intended as an insult at all.

This discussion has dragged on for a while. I'm not comfortable reposting the comments of others, but these two posts by me, though wrenched from their contexts, should give a sufficient idea of what this is about.

If someone used that line with you, would you not assume it was intended as

an insult?

Roark was saying essentially this: "You are assuming that I care what you

think. But I don't. I don't think of you at all. Your opinions are of no

interest to me, one way or the other."

Are we to suppose that Toohey never crossed Roark's mind -- never, under any

circumstances? Of course not. If that were the case, Roark would know

absolutely nothing about Toohey, which is absurd.

Roark's line conveys a contemptuous indifference in regard to Toohey. This

is why the line is so beloved among Randians.

Ghs

Of course Roark didn't care what how Toohey would respond to his line. When

I insult someone I usually don't care how they respond, either.

The point is that Toohey embodied the values that Roark (via Rand) detested.

To suggest that Roark did not have a positive contempt for Toohey's values,

but was somehow indifferent to them instead, is absurd.

To be indifferent to someone is one thing, but to express one's indifference

in the specific form in which Roark did is quite another thing. Roark did

not say "Leave me alone, Toohey" or "I'm not interested in talking to you"

or anything like this. Rather, Roark used words that relegated Toohey to the

level of a bug, in effect.

Roark would need to be an aspie to fit your characterization of him.

Ghs

Not being comfortable discussing Rand's novels, I thought I would appeal to OL, the court of last resort in these in-house debates. :cool:

Ghs

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Here is another pertinent passage from one of my LL2 posts:

Toohey set out to destroy Roark and everything he stood for. Are we to

assume that Roark didn't know about this or, if he did know, had no opinion

about it one way or the other, since he "never" thought about Toohey? Much

of Roark's courtroom speech is a passionate attack on the mediocrity that

Toohey embodied. Roark had clearly thought about Toohey and his values a

great deal.

I don't mean to say that Roark went out of his way to insult Toohey. But a

statement of fact can also be an insult, depending on how it is worded.

Suppose an ugly woman asks if I think she is attractive, and I reply, in a

matter-of-fact way: "No , you are an exceedingly ugly woman." Now, suppose

a bystander asks why I insulted her in this manner, and I reply: "I didn't

insult her; I simply stated a fact."

I suppose there are people who are this unaware of the nuances of language,

but I never counted Roark among them. But not being an aficionado of novels,

I could be wrong.

Ghs

So am I wrong, or what?

Ghs

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Roark probably understood that Toohey would be offended by the statement, but that doesn't make him less indifferent.

- Toohey asked Roark and received the most simple response.

- Roark, a man befitting indifference, didn't reply with, "Leave me alone, Toohey" or "I'm not interested in talking to you."

- Roark didn't make an effort to show his indifference. (He didn't go out of his way.)

To put it another way, that he understands that Toohey would be offended doesn't make him an insulter.

Edit: I also believe that the line was Rand appealing to her readers' contempt of Toohey. It appealed to me a great deal.

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Roark wasn't attempting to insult Toohey. The whole point was his fundamental indifference to him. Rand, on the other hand, did a hell of a lot of thinking about Toohey, her best villain. There's where the insult comes from--from Ayn Rand. She spent the whole novel kicking him all over the place.

I just realized something quite queer: I'd rather go to a party with Toohey there with all his supplicants than Roark and--who at the Enright House? I'd have a lot of fun with those bums.

--Brant

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Roark probably understood that Toohey would be offended by the statement, but that doesn't make him less indifferent.

- Toohey asked Roark and received the most simple response.

- Roark, a man befitting indifference, didn't reply with, "Leave me alone, Toohey" or "I'm not interested in talking to you."

- Roark didn't make an effort to show his indifference. (He didn't go out of his way.)

To put it another way, that he understands that Toohey would be offended doesn't make him an insulter.

Edit: I also believe that the line was Rand appealing to her readers' contempt of Toohey. It appealed to me a great deal.

That the line expresses Roark's indifference to Toohey is obvious. My point was that this is a contemptuous indifference, in contrast, say, to the neutral indifference we might have about what we want for lunch or which flavor of ice-cream we like.

I agree that Rand was appealing to her readers contempt of Toohey. And I think she conveyed this by expressing Roark's contempt for Toohey in an ingenious, if low-keyed, way,

Ghs

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Roark wasn't attempting to insult Toohey. The whole point was his fundamental indifference to him. Rand, on the other hand, did a hell of a lot of thinking about Toohey, her best villain. There's where the insult comes from--from Ayn Rand. She spent the whole novel kicking him all over the place.

I just realized something quite queer: I'd rather go to a party with Toohey there with all his supplicants than Roark and--who at the Enright House? I'd have a lot of fun with those bums.

--Brant

Toohey is the emodiment of values that Rand despised. She certainly was not indifferent to those values, and you say as much. What I don't understand is why she would make one of her ideal heroes, Howard Roark, indifferent (in a neutral sense) to those values. To claim this is to claim, in effect, that Roark had no opinion about Toohey's values one way or the other. The line addresses Toohey's values, after all, not his personality or looks.

Ghs

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That the line expresses Roark's indifference to Toohey is obvious. My point was that this is a contemptuous indifference, in contrast, say, to the neutral indifference we might have about what we want for lunch or which flavor of ice-cream we like.

I agree that Rand was appealing to her readers contempt of Toohey. And I think she conveyed this by expressing Roark's contempt for Toohey in an ingenious, if low-keyed, way,

Ghs

Roark didn't give Toohey a cold shoulder; he's not Dominique. Can anyone be contemptuously indifferent? I don't think a man can be both apathetic of another and hold him in contempt.

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That the line expresses Roark's indifference to Toohey is obvious. My point was that this is a contemptuous indifference, in contrast, say, to the neutral indifference we might have about what we want for lunch or which flavor of ice-cream we like.

I agree that Rand was appealing to her readers contempt of Toohey. And I think she conveyed this by expressing Roark's contempt for Toohey in an ingenious, if low-keyed, way,

Ghs

Roark didn't give Toohey a cold shoulder; he's not Dominique. Can anyone be contemptuously indifferent? I don't think a man can be both apathetic of another and hold him in contempt.

Have to agree. Roark simply had nothing going for Toohey one way or the other, however unreal that would actually be. There is a great deal of unreality in Rand's two great surreal novels. We might say that that unreality illustrated the real reality but the reader has to use his brain. We have come to the point of this intellectual evolution that Rand needs deconstruction to be reconstructed and that it is from our intellectual energy that now feeds off hers as we stand on the shoulders of giants, not just her shoulders. Rand was the revolution and we are the evolution.

--Brant

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Roark wasn't attempting to insult Toohey. The whole point was his fundamental indifference to him. Rand, on the other hand, did a hell of a lot of thinking about Toohey, her best villain. There's where the insult comes from--from Ayn Rand. She spent the whole novel kicking him all over the place.

I just realized something quite queer: I'd rather go to a party with Toohey there with all his supplicants than Roark and--who at the Enright House? I'd have a lot of fun with those bums.

--Brant

Toohey is the emodiment of values that Rand despised. She certainly was not indifferent to those values, and you say as much. What I don't understand is why she would make one of her ideal heroes, Howard Roark, indifferent (in a neutral sense) to those values. To claim this is to claim, in effect, that Roark had no opinion about Toohey's values one way or the other. The line addresses Toohey's values, after all, not his personality or looks.

Ghs

It has to do, I think from what I've read and observed over the years, about what Rand wanted for herself, an indifference to the Tooheys so she gave it to her hero. Didn't Rand once say, I think to Barbara Branden, how much she wanted to be in a cloud floating above it all?

--Brant

there is also the tie-in to her most basic and pervasive philosophical-intellectual-cultural theme: the impotence of evil, Toohey being so impotent as to be all but invisible to Roark--not completely: read that passage again, Roark did know something about Toohey; think about this impotence of evil stuff: If it's impotent you don't have to fight it, really, just don't sanction it, go on strike (I still cannot figure out the one heroic thing John Galt did in Atlas Shrugged: he stopped working for the exploiters? Wow! Them's some powerful dudes! They made him quit!)--he's up in the clouds, with Dagny who finally joined him chucking her own heroism as did all those others who went on strike--or, the heroism of non-heroism, the basic contradiction of her great novel, heroes as quitters, so Russian, so un-American, so understandable since she was caught between two cultures, the one she was born in and the one she adopted--Atlas Shrugged is basically failed total assimilation which kinda is reflected in her views on self defense given over to the government and not embraced vigorously as an individual right--I mean they pass a law in Washington and Colorado caves?--wait until you see how the states and individuals are going to slice and dice Obamacare!

fight for your freedom

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Roark wasn't attempting to insult Toohey. The whole point was his fundamental indifference to him. Rand, on the other hand, did a hell of a lot of thinking about Toohey, her best villain. There's where the insult comes from--from Ayn Rand. She spent the whole novel kicking him all over the place.

I just realized something quite queer: I'd rather go to a party with Toohey there with all his supplicants than Roark and--who at the Enright House? I'd have a lot of fun with those bums.

--Brant

Toohey is the emodiment of values that Rand despised. She certainly was not indifferent to those values, and you say as much. What I don't understand is why she would make one of her ideal heroes, Howard Roark, indifferent (in a neutral sense) to those values. To claim this is to claim, in effect, that Roark had no opinion about Toohey's values one way or the other. The line addresses Toohey's values, after all, not his personality or looks.

Ghs

It has to do, I think from what I've read and observed over the years, about what Rand wanted for herself, an indifference to the Tooheys so she gave it to her hero. Didn't Rand once say, I think to Barbara Branden, how much she wanted to be in a cloud floating above it all?

--Brant

there is also the tie-in to her most basic and pervasive philosophical-intellectual-cultural theme: the impotence of evil, Toohey being so impotent as to be all but invisible to Roark--not completely: read that passage again, Roark did know something about Toohey; think about this impotence of evil stuff: If it's impotent you don't have to fight it, really, just don't sanction it, go on strike (I still cannot figure out the one heroic thing John Galt did in Atlas Shrugged: he stopped working for the exploiters? Wow! Them's some powerful dudes! They made him quit!)--he's up in the clouds, fucking Dagny who finally joined him chucking her own heroism as did all those others who went on strike--or, the heroism of non-heroism, the basic contradiction of her great novel, heroes as quitters, so Russian, so un-American, so understandable since she was caught between two cultures, the one she was born in and the one she adopted--Atlas Shrugged is basically failed total assimilation which kinda is reflected in her views on self defense given over to the government and not embraced vigorously as an individual right--I mean they pass a law in Washington and Colorado caves?--wait until you see how the states and individuals are going to slice and dice Obamacare!

fight for your freedom

You make some good points, but the question remains: If Roark was so above it all and so indifferent to Toohey's values, then why did Roark attack those values so vehemently in his courtroom speech? That speech scarely exhibited indifference. Or will you say that the speech was Rand speaking, and not Roark?

Ghs

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It was Rand, of course. The whole novel was. Your mistake is imagining Roark as a real person and criticizing the contradiction between the real and the artificial. Roark, the heroic individualist, is actually under Rand's thumb if you want to mix up the two categories. BTW, the Randian hero is essentially heroic unto himself. That's the desired default. Dagny and Hank were truly major heroic figures--until they went on strike. End of novel. Into her personal life, Rand kept being the novelist and mixing up the categories.

--Brant

eat Rand, food for thought

no such thing as a perfect novel, especially a perfect great novel

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It was Rand, of course. The whole novel was. Your mistake is imagining Roark as a real person and criticizing the contradiction between the real and the artificial. Roark, the heroic individualist, is actually under Rand's thumb if you want to mix up the two categories. BTW, the Randian hero is essentially heroic unto himself. That's the desired default. Dagny and Hank were truly major heroic figures--until they went on strike. End of novel. Into her personal life, Rand kept being the novelist and mixing up the categories.

--Brant

On the contrary, I am claiming that Roark's opinions and values are the same as Rand's This is why I think that Roark's line expressed the same contempt that Rand had for Toohey.

Others, not I, have severed Roark from Rand. Others, not I, have said that although Rand had contempt for Toohey, she did not intend the line in question -- one of the most important lines in The Fountainhead -- to express Roark's contempt. And this even though we cannot imagine Rand herself using the same line in a similar situation without contempt.

Ghs

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It was Rand, of course. The whole novel was. Your mistake is imagining Roark as a real person and criticizing the contradiction between the real and the artificial. Roark, the heroic individualist, is actually under Rand's thumb if you want to mix up the two categories. BTW, the Randian hero is essentially heroic unto himself. That's the desired default. Dagny and Hank were truly major heroic figures--until they went on strike. End of novel. Into her personal life, Rand kept being the novelist and mixing up the categories.

--Brant

On the contrary, I am claiming that Roark's opinions and values are the same as Rand's This is why I think that Roark's line expressed the same contempt that Rand had for Toohey.

Others, not I, have severed Roark from Rand. Others, not I, have said that although Rand had contempt for Toohey, she did not intend the line in question -- one of the most important lines in The Fountainhead -- to express Roark's contempt. And this even though we cannot imagine Rand herself using the same line in a similar situation without contempt.

Ghs

Okay. We know where the line came from, Frank O'Connor, and he used it to express contempt, obviously. Thus, you got it, Roark did the same as Frank who was the basic model for the Randian hero. I like Roark better, much better, as O'Connor, but he wasn't really O'Connor, he was Roark unto himself and his contempt, while there, was trivial for Toohey was metaphysically too, in this Randian world. However, characteristic of Rand in her fiction was being better than herself and Roark was a better person in her lights than she was for that basic state of being that was Roark's and her other heroes was her life-long quest.

--Brant

both ways work, but just what platform are you standing on?

it's not the answer, it's the thinking

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Toohey - the quintessential anti-egoist - is looking for 'visibility' from the one man he fears and respects. Roark's reply reflects Toohey's own standards: "If to be without self is everything you uphold, buddy, then I will treat you as you claim you wish to be - a non-entity. That's your justice, what you asked for, now I don't think of you."

One take on it.

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Roark says, "I don't think of you", not "I have never thought of you." I contend that Roark has thought about Toohey in the past, found Toohey's opinions contemptible and no longer worth considering.

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Quite. Roark- bashers assume him to be too egotistical to think of ANYONE (when

there are several other people he does think of) - so why only Toohey?

Because he did and had thought of Toohey at one stage, obviously.

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Quite. Roark- bashers assume him to be too egotistical to think of ANYONE (when

there are several other people he does think of) - so why only Toohey?

Because he did and had thought of Toohey at one stage, obviously.

I agree. Merlin got it just right.

--Brant

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Historical aside:

Frank Ll Wright was one of Rand's sources for Roark. Lewis Q. Mumford was one of her sources for Toohey. They were, in fact, longtime friends, and their letters are available as a book.

Mumford was the Librarian of Congress who wrote Rand in the 1960s to ask for her manuscripts. He presumably never knew what his part in her work had been.

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I agree with George that Roark's line in not to be taken literally. It's a statement of contempt, and not actual indifference.

The subject of Roark's "not thinking" of Toohey came up in a discussion on OO earlier this year, and here's what I wrote then:

"It's clear that Roark is aware of the destructive influences around him and is affected by them. He knows, for example, that 'no committee, public or private' will hire him, and he takes action to subvert their right to not hire him. He knows, and feels, that they present a danger to him, and are in fact powerful enough to be preventing him from doing what he wants to do. His actions betray the fact that he does think of the destructive power that others have over him and his career -- he doesn't ignore them, but resorts to the dishonesty and fraud of passing off his work as someone else's, and he does so in order to work on a project to which he states his strong moral objections. So, someone who acts against his own stated ethics so as to subvert the destructive forces that he faces cannot honestly be said to 'not think' of those forces.

"It is a great line, though, and a great tactic, to tell a destroyer that his efforts are having no effect, even though it's a lie."

J

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I agree with George that Roark's line in not to be taken literally. It's a statement of contempt, and not actual indifference.

The subject of Roark's "not thinking" of Toohey came up in a discussion on OO earlier this year, and here's what I wrote then:

"It's clear that Roark is aware of the destructive influences around him and is affected by them. He knows, for example, that 'no committee, public or private' will hire him, and he takes action to subvert their right to not hire him. He knows, and feels, that they present a danger to him, and are in fact powerful enough to be preventing him from doing what he wants to do. His actions betray the fact that he does think of the destructive power that others have over him and his career -- he doesn't ignore them, but resorts to the dishonesty and fraud of passing off his work as someone else's, and he does so in order to work on a project to which he states his strong moral objections. So, someone who acts against his own stated ethics so as to subvert the destructive forces that he faces cannot honestly be said to 'not think' of those forces.

"It is a great line, though, and a great tactic, to tell a destroyer that his efforts are having no effect, even though it's a lie."

J

We might say that Roark was something of a sociopath when it came to his work. Rand wasn't going to let philosophy get in the way of a great story. She was more into doing that with her magnum opus. In some ways her last novel was akin to painting by the numbers. There she wasn't going to let her characters get in the way of the plot.

--Brant

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Brant:

Sociopath? Your definition is....?

hosting-sociopath-facebook.jpg

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Roark's "But I don't think of you" is the equivalent of Rocky's "You aint so bad."

J

Our high brow discussion has now gone medium to low brow, white collar to blue collar. Brains to brawn.

--Brant

more mis-representations available at a price--I use Paypal

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OK.

Not the common definition which invariably involves continuous lying to gain power or leverage which I would find Roark incapable of.

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