if a thing like this is worth doing at all, it's worth doing right

Our derivations were getting nasty -- but why? I was puzzled, frustrated. Was there no communication in this class? Had we deteriorated to the level of dumb beasts?

Because my education was true. I was certain of that. And it was extremely important, I felt, for the meaning of our examples to be made absolutely clear. We had actually seen sitting there in the Showdown -- for many hours -- drinking Shiner Bock by the pitcher with water chasers. And when the call came, we were ready.

The dwarf approached our table cautiously, as I recall, and when he handed me pink cellphone I said nothing, merely listened. And then I hung up, turning my face to my classmates. "That was headquarters," I said. "They want me to go to Linguistics at once, and make contact with a German semanticist named Schwarz. He'll have all the details. All I have to do is register for the class and he'll raise quantifiers."

My classmates said nothing for a moment, then they suddenly came alive in their chairs. "God hell!" they exclaimed. "I think I see the pattern. This one sounds like real trouble! They tucked their t-shirts into their boot cut jeans and called for another drink. "You're going to need plenty of linguistic advice before this thing is over," they said. "And my first advice to you is that you should check out a very fast book with no cover and get the hell out of Austin for at least 48 hours." They shook their heads sadly. "That blows my weekend, because naturally we have to go with you -- and we'll have to arm ourselves."

"Why not?" I said. "If a thing like this is worth doing at all, it's worth doing right. We'll need some decent equipment and plenty of cash on the line -- if only for books and a a super-sensitive tape recorder, for the sake of a permanent record."

"What kind of study is this?" they asked.

"The Fall 2005," I said. "It's the next off-the-track semester for linguists and philosophers in the history of institutionalized education -- a fanatic journey in honor of some stuck-up MIT persona named Chomsky, who owns the syntactic Minimalism in the heart of downtown Linguistics . . . at least that's what the literature says; my man in Boston just read it to me."

"Well," they said. "as your classmates we advise you to buy a Minimalist textbook. How else can you cover a thing like this righteously?"

"No way," I said. "Where can we get hold of a Lexicalist Functional Grammar text?"

"What's that?"

"A fantastic theory," I said. "The new model is something like two thousand cubic inches, developing two hundred brake-horsepower at hour hundred revolutions per minute on a lexical frame with two styrofoam brackets and a total curb weight of exactly two hundred pounds."

"That sounds about right for this gig," they said.

"It is," I assured them. "The fucker's not much for exceptions, but it's pure hell on grammaticality. It'll outrun the GB until takeoff."

"Takeoff?" they said. "Can we handle that much torque?"

"Absolutely," I said. "I'll call Boston for some cash."

are you dogmatic?

Maybe I'd better have a chat with this student, I thought. Perhaps if I explain things, s/he'll rest easy.

Of course. I leaned around in the seat and gave herim a big smile . . . admiring the shape of hiser skull.

"By the way," I said. "There's one thing you should probably understand."

S/he stared at me, not blinking. Was s/he gritting hiser teeth?

"Can you hear me?" I yelled.

S/he nodded.

"That's good," I said. "Because I want you to know that we're on our way to Linguistics to find the Universal Grammar." I smiled. "That's why we registered for this class. It was the only way to do it. Can you grasp that?"

S/he nodded again, but hiser eyes were nervous.

"I want you to have all the background," I said. "Because this is a very ominous assignment -- with overtones of extreme academic danger . . . Hell, I forgot all about these books; you want one?"

S/he shook hiser head.

"How about some Eliot?" I said.

"What?"

"Never mind. Let's get right to the heart of this thing. You see, about twenty-four hours ago we were sitting on in the back of the Texas Showdown Saloon -- in the patio section of course -- and we were just sitting there under a hackberry tree when this uninformed dwarf came up to me with a pink cellphone and said, 'This must be the call you've been waiting for all this time, sir.'"

I laughed and ripped open a book cover that foamed all over the classroom while I kept talking. "And you know? He was right! I'd been expecting that call, but I didn't know who it would come from. Do you follow me?"

The student's face was a mask of pure fear and bewilderment.

I blundered on: "I want you to understand that these students are my classmates! Class-mates! They're not just some dingbats I found on the Drag! Shit, look at them! They don't look like you or me, right? That's because they're linguists. I think they're probably Minimalists. But it doesn't matter, does it? Are you dogmatic?"

"Oh, hell no!" s/he blurted.

"I didn't think so," I said. "Because in spite of their framework, these people are extremely valuable to me." I glanced over at my classmates, but their minds where somewhere else.

I whacked the back of the deriver's seat with my fist. "This is important, goddamnit! This is a true story!" The course swerved sickeningly, then straightened out. "Keep your hands off my fucking Adger!" my classmates screamed. The student in the back looked like s/he was ready to drop right out of the class and take hiser chances in Philosophy.

...or I'll sick Adger on you...

My classmates saw the first-year long before I did. "Let's give this one a lift," they said and before I could pass any argument they stopped and this poor Texas kid was running up to the car with a big grin on hiser face, saying, "Hot damn! I never taken a syntax class before!"

"Is that right?" I said. "Well, I guess you're about ready, eh?"

The kid nodded eagerly and we roared off.

"We're your friends," said my classmates. "We're not like the others."

O Christ, I thought, they've gone around the bend. "No more of that talk," I said sharply. "Or I'll sick Adger on you." They grinned, seeming to understand. Luckily the noise in the class was so awful -- between the drilling and the banging and the iPod -- that the student in the back row couldn't hear a word we were saying. Or could s/he?

How long can we merge? I wondered. How long before one of us starts raising and joining at this student? What will s/he think then? This same lonely department was once the home of Krifka and Bhatt. Will s/he make that grim connection when my classmates start screaming about Agrs and huge movement coming down on the class? If so -- well, we'll just have to cut off his head position and lower himer somewhere. Because it goes without saying that we can't turn himer loose. S/he'll report us at once to some dogmatic Chomskyan law enforcement agency, and they'd run us down like dogs.

Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced over at my classmates, but they seemed oblivious -- watching the board, driving our GB Shark along at a hundred and ten or so. There was no sound from the back row.

one trace over the line

"Man, this is the way to travel," said my classmates. They leaned over to turn the volume up on the radio, humming along with the rhythm section and kind of moaning the words, "One trace over the line, Sweet Jonas, . . . One trace over the line . . ."

One trace! You poor fools! Wait till you see those goddamn Agrs! I could barely hear the radio . . . slumped over on the far side of the seat, grappling with an iPod turned all the way up on "Sympathy for the Devil." That was the only MP3 we had, so we played in constantly, over and over, as a kind of demented counterpoint to the radio. And also to maintain our rhythm on the road. A constant speed is good for GB milage -- and for some reason that seemed important at the time. Indeed. On a trip like this one must be careful about GB consumption. Avoid those quick bursts of pseudo-formalism that drag blood to the back of the brain.

...the tendency is to push it as far as you can

The admissions committee had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous books. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile library. We had two Leaves of Grass, seventy-five pages of The Communist Manifesto, five sheets of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a salt shaker half full of O'Connor, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored Updikes, DeBoises, Sagans, Lao Tsus . . . and also a quart of Lovecraft, a quart of Dylan, a case of Borges, a pint of raw Eliot and two dozen American folk songs.

All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high-speed driving all over Travis County -- from Manor to Westlake, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious book collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only thing that worried me was the Eliot. There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an Eliot binge.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky 
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

And I knew we'd get into that lofty stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had sampled almost everything else, and now -- yes, it was time for a long stanza of Eliot. And then do the next hundred miles in a horrible, slobbering sort of spastic stupor. The only way to keep alert on Eliot is to do up a lot of American folk songs -- not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus at ninety miles an hour through Barss and Lasnik.

...to facilitate the learning process

Then it was quiet again. My classmates had taken their backpacks off and were pouring coffee on their chests, to facilitate the learning process. "What the hell are you talking about?" they muttered, staring up at the board with their eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish eyeglasses. "Never mind," I said. "It's your turn to derive." I hit the books and aimed the G.B. Shark toward the shoulder of the classroom. No point mentioning those Agrs, I thought. The poor bastards will see them soon enough.

It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred pages to go. They would be tough pages. Very soon, I knew, we would all be completely twisted. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out. Graduate Registration for the fabulous Fall 2005 was already underway, and we had to get there by the 29th to claim our sound-proof suite. A fashionable academic journal in Austin had taken care of our admission, along with this huge red Minimalist convertible we'd just rented off a lot on the Drag...and I was, after all, a professional student; so I had an obligation to cover the class, for good or ill.

maybe you should derive

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a linguist." -- paraphrase of Dr. John(s)son

We were somewhere around Barss and Lasnik on the edge of syntax when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should derive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the board was full of what looked like huge trees, all merging and joining and diving around the theory, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Linguistics. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn Agrs?"