"You bean-brain."
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When you can't think of some piece of knowledge which you know you know, it's called a "brain fart." "Bean-brain" is just the polite, Victorian era version of the same thing. Because, like every toddler knows, beans make you fart.
How Pynchon knew that "bean-brain" was the Victorian era "brain fart" is all the proof I need that Pynchon is a time traveler and he writes all of his novels in the era where they're set. That's much easier for me to believe than imagining somebody actually does loads of research for their novel.
No Victorian era lady would ever utter the word "fart." They probably pretended not to even know what a fart was although I bet they just filled the room with flatulence the moment they loosened up the corset. I bet undoing the tie on a corset just unleashed a torrent of loud farts as they were finally able to rush to freedom. Or maybe women simply died whenever they got gas because their stomachs couldn't expand. At least then they didn't have to be embarrassed when their body finally let one loose, I suppose.
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