Things About Roark I Wouldn't Suggest Copying

[Danneskjold]

Not being aware of your surroundings- you will trip over them.

Not being aware of your body- you will hit limbs on things.

Rape- hopefully self-explanatory

Add some more, there's got to be plenty that can be used (supposing you tweak them a little)

[BAMF]

Getting dropped from college. I wouldn't like the fact that I don't have a degree in architecture, because without that and a certification, I would not be able to be an architect.

Edited April 18, 2007 by Kori

[Reidy]

Not necessarily a problem. I read somewhere (Barbara Branden's biography?) that licensing laws, then and now, allow a tradeoff between formal schooling and work experience. Rand researched this and determined that Roark was eligible for licensure by the time he went into private practice.

[PalePower]

Swimming naked.

Fish can bite!

~Elizabeth

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Choice in women?

Michael

[Judith]

Having sex for the very first time with the love of your life and then forgetting all about her the next day.

Unbelievable.

Judith

[PalePower]

Blowing up things. (Sometimes.)

~Elizabeth

[Kat]

That day-glo hair has got to go.

Kat

[cjsmall]

Not necessarily a problem. I read somewhere (Barbara Branden's biography?) that licensing laws, then and now, allow a tradeoff between formal schooling and work experience. Rand researched this and determined that Roark was eligible for licensure by the time he went into private practice.

That used to be true up through the 1970s, but it is no longer the case. All the states banded together to create the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and began administering one uniform set of rules and one registration exam. In order to take the exam, you now need a degree (5-year B Arch or 6-year M Arch) from an accredited architectural school and then have to work professionally in an office under an architect for many years, heavily documenting a broad range of experience. This effectively forces every office that wants to hire young draftsmen to take on the burden of continuing their formal education using the rules set down by the NCARB. It is an expensive and time-consuming process. In addition, a registered architect needs to pay each state he is registered in an annual licensing fee. With the adoption of NCARB, we now get the opportunity to pay this group an annual fee as well.

People used to go to work for Frank Lloyd Wright as apprentices at Taliesin and could accrue experience. After 12 years of work they could take the registration exam and become licensed. When this path was eliminated, it forced Taliesin to apply for and become an official registered architectural school - otherwise they would never have been able to continue to attract new students.

Regards,

--

Jeff

[Victor Pross]

Working in an office (as Roark did for a time) which is really just a brightly lit cell inhabited five days a week by assiduous souls who forfeit their lives to make a living! This does not bode well for an egoist! :turned:

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Going to court without a lawyer.

Michael

[Robert Jones]

Expecting governmental public housing bureaucrats to stand by their word.

[Robert Jones]

Letting himself be played by Gary Cooper instead of Charlton Heston or Gregory Peck.

[Chris Grieb]

Elizabeth; I think for some of us swimming naked would scare the fish.

[Chuck]

Closely apprenticing with Henry Cameron without Al-Anon.

Not thinking of the Ellsworth Tooheys.

Chuck

[Philip Coates]

Giving less thought to the rest of the human race than to a toenail clipping.

[Brant Gaede]

Giving less thought to the rest of the human race than to a toenail clipping.

Simply not true. I made a longer post complaining about your remark, but deleted it when I realized this is some kind of humor thread.

--Brant

Edited April 21, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[PalePower]

Giving less thought to the rest of the human race than to a toenail clipping.

Simply not true. I made a longer post complaining about your remark, but deleted it when I realized this is some kind of humor thread.

--Brant

I second that.

Roark cared more for people and the human race than most people in the world do. Rand just didn't show this quality of his as much as she could have, probably because it wasn't really essential to the story in her opinion.

~Elizabeth

[Victor Pross]

Personaly speaking, I like (and love) CERTAIN people, but its humanity that I can't really stand.

Edited April 21, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Judith]

Personaly speaking, I like (and love) CERTAIN people, but its humanity that I can't really stand.

(*LAUGH!*) I know exactly what you mean.

Was it Rand, or was it someone else who complained about people who whine about their love for "humanity" and don't give a damn about a single individual?

Judith

[Chris Grieb]

Judith; There's a line something like that in Love Letters. When I see again at Summer Seminar I'll recognize it.

[Robert Jones]

Giving less thought to the rest of the human race than to a toenail clipping.

Simply not true. I made a longer post complaining about your remark, but deleted it when I realized this is some kind of humor thread.

--Brant

I second that.

Roark cared more for people and the human race than most people in the world do. Rand just didn't show this quality of his as much as she could have, probably because it wasn't really essential to the story in her opinion.

~Elizabeth

I agree: When Roark found shared values in someone, he was loyal to a fault. The story of Roark and Henry Cameron is a brilliant example of this. There is a passage that was cut from the novel that appears in "The Early Ayn Rand" titled Roark and Cameron, and goes more into depth on Roark's relationship with the old man when Cameron's health was failing. I can see why she cut that, but as a story in itself, it is among her most moving and touching works.

Howard Roark was also very charitable, I think, with Gail Wynand. Roark gave Wynand more than his share of the benefit of the doubt, and even while Wynand was wrestling with his own conscience and ultimately betrayed Roark, there was nothing but sadness and forgiveness on Roark's part. The final meeting between the two is simply a tour de force of emotions. To me, the novel's thematic climax is summed up in Wynand's last words to Roark:

"Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours... and could have been mine."

So much has rarely been said with so few words. It's beyond eloquence in how Rand condensed all the clash of wills and premises, the heartbreak of betrayal and the compassion of Roark to a man who cannot forgive himself (and so much more) in that one line.

Edited April 21, 2007 by Robert Jones

[Philip Coates]

Robert, this was originally a humor thread, and I do see and accept your points. But the element of truth is that Roark seemed to have thought (as did Rand) that the number of people in the world who deserve the kind of respect that Roark gave Cameron and Wynand was something like a fraction of one percent of the human race.

And -that- is a mistake.

One to which my joke alludes.

[Brant Gaede]

Robert, this was originally a humor thread, and I do see and accept your points. But the element of truth is that Roark seemed to have thought (as did Rand) that the number of people in the world who deserve the kind of respect that Roark gave Cameron and Wynand was something like a fraction of one percent of the human race.

And -that- is a mistake.

One to which my joke alludes.

It's less than that, of course. For me, too. But that doesn't mean that I also don't have respect and admiration for many, many others for various reasons. I just love human ability, for instance. After all, Wynand was all but in love with Roark. If they weren't heterosexual they would have wound up in bed.

The problem is Rand's idea of "man worship." Galt as a god. Since she once thought Nathaniel Branden was Galt with "a few flaws" you can imagine how insane it can be to try to live inside the world of "Atlas Shrugged." One goes around acutely tuned to the appearance of any flaw in others or one's self. You'll be aware of your "flaws" of course, esthetic and moral, and become very adept at living behind a mask. Worse, you can become the mask.

--Brant

Edited April 23, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Robert Jones]

Robert, this was originally a humor thread, and I do see and accept your points. But the element of truth is that Roark seemed to have thought (as did Rand) that the number of people in the world who deserve the kind of respect that Roark gave Cameron and Wynand was something like a fraction of one percent of the human race.

And -that- is a mistake.

One to which my joke alludes.

It's less than that, of course. For me, too. But that doesn't mean that I also don't have respect and admiration for many, many others for various reasons. I just love human ability, for instance. After all, Wynand was all but in love with Roark. If they weren't heterosexual they would have wound up in bed.

The problem is Rand's idea of "man worship." Galt as a god. Since she once thought Nathaniel Branden was Galt with "a few flaws" you can imagine how insane it can be to try to live inside the world of "Atlas Shrugged." One goes around acutely tuned to the appearance of any flaw in others or one's self. You'll be aware of your "flaws" of course, esthetic and moral, and become very adept at living behind a mask. Worse, you can become the mask.

--Brant

Philip: That might be true about Roark and the fraction of one percent, but Roark was never a jerk to them, in all fairness. I think that this was Rand's literary device -- more than anything else -- of showing the when Roark had friends, few as they were, they were real; as opposed to Peter Keating, who wants to be liked and loved by everyone.

HOWEVER, if one takes this literally, and not allegorically, then I can see that this tends to be a problem. You may note that the people who have tended to leave the orthodox Objectivist movement are those who can discern the literal from the symbolic, those who are nimble thinkers, those to whom the spirit of Objectivism is more important than the letter. The more I read the Bible, the more I realise what a stupendous literary work it is -- and a horrible blueprint for living!

Brant: I live in the world of "Atlas Shrugged" everyday. It's quite easy, really. You have to set your sights lower than John Galt, however. Me, I'm that hobo with the pressed collar bumming a ride in the vestibule outside Dagny's Pullman compartment.

Edited April 24, 2007 by Robert Jones