Philip Dean

Philip Dean is an American whom the narrator first meets at a party in Paris with the Wheatlands. In the narrator's eye, Dean is an incredibly impressive character, almost a Nietzschean uebermensch. He lives free of all of society's norms and instead does what he likes when he likes. This attitude is summarized in his inconsistent academic career. He was smart enough to get into Yale and, indeed, the courses were even incredibly easy for him; in some cases, he could even take the courses final without ever having attended a single lecture. Its easiness made it boring for him and he took leave several times before finally dropping out for good. He moved to Paris where his rich father lived and enjoyed an itinerant, capricious lifestyle, moving from place to place without any direction or goal in mind. Part of his appeal to the narrator is...