Summary

Zuckerman sits in his hotel room prior to picking up Mr. Freytag. Zuckerman thinks his life and the past few days. He drinks vodka and takes Percodan to manage his physical pain, and he thinks about his father. Zuckerman thinks about the confusion that his father must have experienced in the face of the frank depictions of sex in Zuckerman’s fiction. While being driven to the Freytags’ residence by Ricky, Zuckerman thinks about his dead mother. The narration notes, “Zuckerman finally realized that is mother had been his only love” (239). Zuckerman then talks to Ricky, still using the persona of pornographer Milton Appel. As Appel, Zuckerman advocates for the virtue of the pornography industry, saying that he never forces anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. He also says that the models who work for him gain a good...