Chapter 2 Summary

Fred Turner, another American academic in London, who has crossed the ocean to research John Gay's long poem, Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, takes the Underground for the first time. Like the poem's hero, Fred is a walker (and a runner), but a dinner invitation in Hampstead demands he take public transportation. Fred studies the garish advertisements, but fellow passengers note his classically sculptured Edwardian features and physique. Fred, now twenty-eight, has been used to attention from childhood. Were he an actor, Fred's looks would be an asset, but as an English teacher they are a liability. Unfairly prejudged as unserious by colleagues, he is the object of crushes by one-third of his students. Fred distances himself from his students, fearing serious professional trouble if he were to break the code of ethics, but he dislikes being considered...