Off the phone,
Colin walks past
Hassan’s room and hears
Lindsey and Hassan talking about him. Lindsey wants to know, “How does he
do it?” and Hassan says that Colin remembers everything because he finds everything fascinating. Colin is flattered by how Hassan and Lindsey seem to be impressed by his brain, but he also feels the explanation is reductive because for him, his intelligence is more about making connections among seemingly unrelated things. He listens more and hears Hassan explaining that Colin works incredibly hard at any task he begins. The tasks he enumerates make Colin reflect that he has never done anything but rearrange letters, memorize already-known facts, fall in love with “the same nine letters over and over again,” and retype all of
The Catcher in the Rye. He feels more than ever that the
Theorem is his only hope for originality.