April 14, 2007

The Whore of Mensa

Arnold's two posts about academic arousal over Chomsky reminded me of this passage from Woody Allen's short story "The Whore of Mensa" (from Without Feathers, p. 35):

"Suppose I wanted to--have a party?" I said.
"Like, what kind of a party?"
"Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls?"
"Oh, wow."
"If you'd rather forget it..."
"You'd have to speak with Flossie," she said. "It'd cost you."

A transcript of the story is here, but there are some typos (or OCR-induced errors) -- e.g. "It'd cost you" comes out as "It's cost you".

Part of this exchange was quoted in Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, p. 119 (you can search for it here).

[ Comments? ]

Posted by Eric Bakovic at April 14, 2007 04:45 PM