Franny says he's talking like a "section man" - a graduate student who takes over class when a professor is out, and invariably criticizes and ruins the author the class is studying, then boasts about his thesis. After a silence, he says that his professor wants Lane to publish the paper.
He says he wants to read it to her, and connects his theory of Flaubert as a "goddam word-squeezer" to modern psychoanalysis. Lane, dominating the conversation, speaks about his recent "A" paper that criticized the lack of "testicularity" (or "masculinity," he explains to Franny) of French writer Gustave Flaubert. Franny notices his satisfaction with this, but she feels guilty for having observed it. Lane is pleased to be seen with a girl who is not only exceedingly pretty, but doesn't fall too deeply into a collegiate stereotype. In Sickler's, a preferred restaurant of the college intellectuals, Franny and Lane drink martinis. Lane tells her the plan to get lunch, and Franny says she's missed him, though she quickly realizes that this is a lie.
He apologizes for not being able to get her a room in the best guest house, but she expresses contentment with what he got, though inwardly she is frustrated by his "ineptness," as when he once allowed another man to take their taxi. She puts it away and they walk out, with Franny making most of the small talk. After she clarifies which letter, he answers yes, and asks her about the pea-green clothbound book she is carrying. She hugs and kisses him, and asks if he received her letter. Lane spots Franny, noticing especially her coat. With cigarettes in hand, the boys watch the arriving train. She concludes by admitting she feels "unintelligent" when she writes to him, and asks if they can have a nice weekend without his analyzing everything and her.Ī classmate, Roy Sorenson, interrupts Lane and asks if he understood their reading assignment of the German poet Rilke. In a postscript, she says her father's "growth" is benign, and that Lane need not worry about what happened over a recent Friday night - she doesn't think her parents even heard them come in. She writes that she is reading and loving the Greek poet Sappho, and makes several more declarations of love to him. In it, she describes loving his letter and her anticipation of the weekend. He rereads a letter from his girlfriend, Franny. The big football game against Yale is this weekend.
Lane Coutell waits with several other upper-crust college boys for their dates to arrive by train on a cold Saturday morning.
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