mddm: 27 Lewisite/anti-Lewisite

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

Operating under the belief that there are no throwaway
pisses, lines, words, etc. in this remarkable novel, so many
years in the making, but taking note that Time is limited in
any given read through, and, that one must draw the line-
i.e., save something, call it "what you will," for the next
go around- then the man in the alley, "Lewis," should be looked
into a little further. It's not Shakespeare, after all, that is
in the alley haunting 'the heap.' (Although do I detect a reference to
Literature with a capital L which is being pissed over- as in
heap of useless books, the way of all presumptious art, which
claims some higher moral purpose, while selling you a "knock
off"?) 

Lewis might also be a small opening into the topick of complementarity,
which seems everywhere in this book. Besides the obvious 
possibility of reference to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's tweedle
dee and dum (and a refrain of The Ear Museum), there are some
other less benign possibilities, as in the title of this post
referring to a particular noxious form of poisonous gas, invented
by an American, and its antidote, invented by the British. Which
would be in keeping with the apothecary/chemist motif, albeit
in a darker context.

The antidote to lewisite is also known as BAL, or chemically- dimercaprol. 

More on complementarity later, but just to mention that it
seems noteworthy that the amount of time each of our heroes
spends with Lewis is exactly complemented by the other's
time spent with Franklin. While Dixon spends more with Lewis
and less with Franklin, Mason's time is inverted w/r/t Dixon's.

Sigue