ATDDTA (6): Funny food, 182-186

[Paul Nightingale]

Lew's seduction is taken further with his commitment--an appropriately
political term--to Cyclomite, which he knows began "the minute [he] had
brought up with Nate Privett his doubts about the Kieselguhr Kid" (184). The
opening of the new section ("there might as well be hired roughnecks with
wire-cutters ..." etc, 182) confirms the earlier, somewhat abrupt, dismissal
of Nate ("Good luck, Nate", 181). Once again Lew finds himself in strange
surroundings: his dinner with the funny food leads to a response ("everybody
in the room now all frantically trying to get out the door at the same
time", 183) that recalls his earlier incarnation as the Upstate-Downstate
Beast (37). In the same way, his first glimpse of N&N ("it didn't seem like
Colorado anymore", 185) recalls his experience of Chicago (38). And note
that his 'trip' in the dining room (ref "mobility" in both its meanings)
gives him the kind of birds-eye view offered aboard the Inconvenience,
microcosmic steak transformed into the macrocosmic "realms of
crystallography", 183).

Furthermore, the chapter to this point has featured Lew's quest for some
kind of knowledge that would establish his own identity. Hence: "the New
Lew's first sight of the world reconstituted was his own astonished,
hair-clogged nostrils ..." etc (185), the image "blurred by breathing,
apparently his own".

Armed with self-knowledge, Lew can finally identify the nature of the war
that had him baffled at the end of 15.3 (179). Now he knows he has "crossed
over what had just been revealed with such clarity as the terrible American
divide, between hunter and prey" (186). Hence, the key question: how does
this "cross[ing] over compare to that experienced initially in Chicago? On
that occasion he found himself, having met Drave, going "to register at the
... Esthonia Hotel" (39).