Urine day at E.T.A.
Hal Incandenza’s most valiant efforts barely get Pemulis through Mrs. I’s triad of required Grammars [n.54] and Soma R.-L.-O. Chawaf’s heady Literature of Discipline, because Pemulis, who claims he sees every third word upside-down, actually just has a born tech-science wienie’s congenital impatience with the referential murkiness and inelegance of verbal systems.
Context
Mid-dossier on Pemulis, urine-testing day. Avril's prescriptivism is institutional here — a triad of required Grammars on the E.T.A. curriculum (n.54 has the titles, below) — and Pemulis is the book's licensed counter-voice: a hard-science mind for whom the whole verbal system is murky and inelegant, needing Hal the prodigy just to scrape through Mrs. I's courses.