A manuscript has come into my possession. It purports to be a truthful account of the life and times of an English department. It's long, and its author wishes to remain anonymous--so I've resisted publishing any of it on Critical Mass for some time. But as the blogosphere and even the mainstream media ponder the meaning of the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association--the great group grope of the profession of English--I've decided to devote some space over the next several days to publishing just those parts of the larger whole that touch on the MLA. The setting is the 2001 MLA in New Orleans. The panels are real; the principal people don't appear to be--they cannot be googled--but at the same time, I suspect I am not the only person who will find them more than a little familiar. See what you think. Though I'm excerpting from a longer document, I think the selections should stand on their own.

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Erwin R. Sackville was looking forward to the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association more than usual this year. It was to convene in New Orleans, the city that seemed, to his discerning eyes, to capture perfectly the surreal spirit of his profession.

Held every year during the slack, sated week between Christmas and New Years,' the MLA had about it the feeling of a carnival come too late, a distressed intellectual Mardi Gras where there was little to celebrate but the already grossly imbalanced order of things. There, thousands assembled for the massive act of mutual congratulation that was the MLA, leaving spouses, children, and parents behind in order to dance attendance on the profession that was their god. The MLA was a gloriously crowded, disordered affair, a positively Rabelaisian comedy of unabashed posturing and equally unabashed yearning where the fat feasted on their status and the thin starved publicly, scrambling hungrily for scraps of recognition.

As is the custom with carnivals, people came to the MLA in costume. They dressed as hip intellectuals, sporting silk blazers and Italian shoes, handpainted ties and swinging silver earrings; eschewing fur and clothing made in Asian sweatshops; making statements with leather, rubber, piercings, and, in the case of certain women, the mannish armor of the boxy business suit. Promenading lobbies in packs, they made loud polysyllabic smalltalk while their eyes roved, watching out for stars, watching people watch them. They came to see and be seen, to lay and be laid, to stand glamorously in foyers with their nametags prominently pinned to their breasts, offering their stature to the appreciation of all.

Some were famous for their audacious dress: Erwin R. Sackville cherished fond memories of the canary yellow jacket and suede wedgies worn by Andrew Ross at the 1991 convention and the electric blue polyester leisure suit modelled by Michael Berube in '97. They stood out against the faceless swarms of the predictably attired, preening and cocksure. It gave him no end of pleasure to see the strict sartorial codes of men's dress overturned by his colorful colleagues, to see them strutting about like deep peacocks while stylish admirers of all sexual orientations flocked to them and drab older men in threadbare corduroy looked on obscurely from their posts along the walls, their ill-fitting pants revealing a panoply of mismatched socks.

The sumptuary spread of the MLA was a supreme pleasure for Erwin R. Sackville, who spent no small amount of time or money planning his own self-presentation. Each year he prepared with care. A month before the convention, he travelled to New York, paid a visit to Prada, and then spent the next four weeks working closely with his tailor to ensure his hems and lines were as perfect as the man could make them. A week before the convention, he had his brows waxed and his nails buffed and shaped to an opalesque luster. The night before, he wrapped himself in a garnet silk smoking jacket, poured himself a snifter of brandy, and read Ovid until the sinuous Latin danced before his eyes.

to be continued