Free The Anglophile by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

sorry story on the dissertation: five years ago, I naively put all my dissertation eggs into the Volapük basket. As I finished up my full-scholarship English literature masters at NYU, I intended to continue there with a Ph.D. dissertation on Sir Thomas Malory’s background as a knight, and the influence his profession held over his great work, The Death of Arthur.
    That all changed when I met a fellow coffee drinker in a Dodgers cap at the East Village Starbucks. He had an amazing face, with expressive sunken eyes and white lashes. If he didn’t have a strong Brooklyn accent, I’d describe him as an Orkney Pict, those ancient Brits who inspired the Scottish legends of Fairy Folk.
    He had spotted me reading a book about the literature of Middle English, and leaned over to ask me a question.
    â€œYou ever heard of a language called Volapük?” he said in a higher pitched voice than I expected.
    I hadn’t.
    He told me he was an amateur linguist, and then he told me all about this universal language I’d never heard of that, at the height of popularity, had three million businessmen fluent in it for international trade. My elf was certain that there was an elderly farmer in upstate New York who’d learned the language from his father.Like Doctor Doolittle, the farmer was rumored to talk in Volapük to his animals, but in his case merely to keep what he remembered of this language alive. His children apparently weren’t interested, so the animals would have to do. As our Starbucks swizzle sticks swizzled, the caffeinated tale continued: “This was not a language he learned from a textbook. It was passed on to him the same way second generation Americans learned Italian or Yiddish. Every day the Volapük farmer supposedly took a cane and walked around naming his animals in Volapük, and parts of the landscape.”
    Every time he said Volapük, a little gob of saliva fell on his crotch. But he was quite convincing.
    After he left abruptly, I sat and thought.
    Earlier that week, after depleting most of my savings with one month’s worth of bill-paying, I had read a New York Magazine article on young academics that tilled their dissertation subject and wrote lighter user-friendly nonfiction books that got extraordinary advances, and sometimes even film deals.
    While I sipped my second double latte a crazy life strategy gelled in my head: I’d drop my King Arthur dissertation plans and find this secluded Volapük farmer. Even though my advisor, Dr. Cox, was a well-known sweetie, he was also a professor in linguistics; he’d never go for it, would he? How would I go about finding the farmer? Cox would ask me right away.
    But if I could…
    I allowed myself another flight of imagination: I’d get my doctorate, a childhood dream, yet I’d make hay of my degree with a mainstream memoir about my searchthat would sell to a big publishing house. I’d never have to ask my brother Gene for a wad of money to keep me afloat. (Not that I ever had. Before true poverty I’ve always managed to get a mind-numblingly boring temp secretarial job.)
    The more I thought about my plan, the more in love with it I was. I’d have some rare adventures to boot.
    Later that week, I gingerly brought up my encounter with the Starbucks linguist to Dr. Cox. Instead of laughing at me, or barking sense into me, he nodded enthusiastically: “A treasure hunt. You obviously have passion for this subject, and those with passion finish what they start.” He felt my new Ph.D. idea could still fall under his official guidance precisely because he was one of the few faculty members whose expertise straddled literature and linguistics. “I’ll get this through,” he said unreservedly.
    Only after departmental approval did I realize I’d forgotten to ask the man where the farmer lived upstate. How would I ever find him? I’ve never seen the Starbucks guy there