After a lengthy search including obvious favorites like the Silver Dollar and Everleigh House, Lew found the Archduke at last in the Boll Weevil Lounge, a Negro bar down on South State in the Thirties, the heart of the vaudeville and black entertainment district in those days, hollering his way into an evening which promised at least a troublesome moment or two.
* * * * * * * * * *
Being that this is a Pynchon novel and I'm extremely lazy, I'm not going to research 1893 establishments only to discover that the Silver Dollar and Everleigh House were a famous saloon and a famous brothel, both frequented by Mark Twain and Anna Elizabeth Dickinson. I'm especially not going to try to research the Boll Weevil Lounge only to have to scroll through dozens of Internet search results that simply refer back to Against the Day. One thing I've learned after 49 years of existing is that existing itself is hard enough. Why bother making it harder?
We've already learned the Archduke is a racist sociopath. And now he's ditched his bodyguards and wound up in a Black bar on the south side of Chicago? That's trouble brewing!
This is the kind of astute explication of literature that I learned to do in college. And you can bet this was A+ material being that half of the other students were dumber than me. That's not called being smart. It's called being average! And I fucking excelled at it!
No comments:
Post a Comment