A Legacy Project

I showed up at their office doors.  To get a B.A. I needed a course in English language, in linguistics, something not-writing and not-literature. It was a degree requirement. I was game. But I was also wary. You could sign up for a course and be entertained and edified for fifteen weeks. Or you could sign up for fifteen weeks of living hell, be bored out of your skull, and consider changing your major. I’d had it both ways, so before registering for a course, I would go knock on the office door of a prof and say, “Hi, can you tell me a little about your Eng 335 course? ”

“Excuse me,” I said. The first door was open a crack. Sitting at the desk was a 60-ish male with wavy gray hair. He taught the linguistics course. He rotated in my direction in his chair, learned back, and looked at me over his bi-focals.

“Yes?” he said. I read his expression. It said, Ugh, it’s one of you. 

I wanted to say, WRONG DOOR! My mind was already made up. Fifteen minutes would have been too long, let alone fifteen weeks. But I’d knocked, so I asked. And he spoke and removed all doubt. I passed. 

Next knock, the prof was younger, 30-ish. He looked fresh, like he slept well. He wore a pressed shirt and colorful tie and seemed happy to see me. He gave me the lowdown–course description, the book, the papers we’d write. “It’s not linguistics,” he said, “if that’s what you were looking for.” Then he said, “Is anybody?” and smiled at his joke. He said he understood why the course was required, but he didn’t agree with it. “Committees,” he said. 

It was either him or the gray ghost. 

The course was “Types of English” or “Profiles of English.” Maybe it was Problems with English. No one wanted to be there, and no one talked. We read two or three essays a week, about which he tried to engage us in discussion. When someone would offer an observation or an answer to a question, he would shake his head and say, “Well, no, that’s not quite right.” He smiled and dismissed what you said in a friendly way. He told us one day he published in science fiction, sci-fi crit, he called it. That was his real love. His mission was to carve out a place for it in the department, to make sci fi mainstream. On more than one occasion he talked about what a fun person he was. “I’m a riot at cocktail parties,” he said. I’ll just bet he was.

I got through it. At the end of the term he invited us to consider his seminar the following term, Topics in Science Fiction. He said it would be great fun. Yeah, I thought, a riot.