[4] After attending Christian Brothers High School in Memphis,[4] he studied at Yale University from 1958 to 1962, when he graduated with a B.A.
[3][5] In 2010, he moved to Texas[5] and lived in Plano,[4] until his death from complications of lung cancer in Dallas on December 5, 2013.
[4] Saine's main interest was in Goethezeit, the period between 1770 and 1830 in German literature, and he was a well-known scholar of Goethe and the culture of 18th-century Germany.
[11] At Irvine, his research interests included authors such as Christian Wolff, Johann Gottfried Seume and Adolph von Knigge.
He investigated the German Enlightenment and its reaction to the French Revolution in his books The Problem of Being Modern and Black Bread-White Bread.