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Illustrated portrait of Lanier Diver

A character in Tender Is the Night

Lanier Diver

The Divers' son — an unpredictable boy with an inhuman curiosity, who wants to know how many Pomeranians it would take to lick a lion.

What they want

An answer that holds. He keeps asking until an adult gives him one that does not fall apart, and he does not accept being told the question is silly.

The book

Cover of Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tender Is the NightF. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934

The Riviera at its most enchanted, and the marriage underneath it — nine years after Gatsby, the deeper, sadder masterpiece.

View the book

At a glance

In the book
Dick and Nicole's son; Topsy's elder brother
Raised
In France, with a governess
Closest to
His father
Known for
Unanswerable questions, and being right about the bathwater
Where he appears
The Villa Diana, the fair, the Minghetti household, and Dick's last day on the Riviera

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Lanier is the elder of the two Diver children, brought up in France and speaking with the odd chanting accent of American children raised there. The book introduces him and his sister getting up from an outdoor supper on the terrace of the Villa Diana, their parents' house above the sea, and has them sing 'Au clair de la lune' for the guests, standing side by side without self-consciousness, faces aglow in the late sunshine.

His defining feature is the questioning. The narration calls him an unpredictable boy with an inhuman curiosity and offers a sample of the interrogations with which he harasses his father: well, how many Pomeranians would it take to lick a lion? He is the child more closely attached to Dick, who trains him in manners and observation, and who takes the view that either you learn politeness at home or the world teaches it to you with a whip. When the family car goes off the road it is Lanier who is sent up the hill with a sentence of French to deliver at the inn.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • The PomeraniansHis hypotheticals are quoted rather than described, and they are relentless. The book presents them from Dick's side, as harassment.
  • The French accentHe sings and speaks with the chanting intonation of an American child brought up in France, which is one of the small signals of how far from home these children are being raised.
  • Sent for helpTold to take Topsy's hand tight and climb to the inn and say 'La voiture Divare est cassée', he goes and does it. He is trusted with real errands.
  • Literal in an evasive houseWhen the adults want a diplomatic version, he wants to know whether the thing was true. His stubbornness keeps exposing how often the story around him gets adjusted.
  • The bathwaterStaying with the Contessa di Minghetti, an old family friend, it is Lanier who reports that he was bathed in water a sick child had used, and the report is correct. He is the one who says it, and an adult quarrel follows that he had no part in starting.
  • The barometerHe does not analyse his parents. His mood simply registers them: grave and watchful when they are fracturing, unguarded when the family laughs together.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Dick spends his last full day on the Riviera with both children, deliberately, so that he will be able to remember them clearly.

Nicole keeps up a correspondence with Dick about business matters and about the children after she remarries. The book never says how the boy who was trained to demand explanations understands this one, and the omission is doing work: the adults reorganise their lives on the page, and what it costs the children stays off it.

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