ATDTDA (2/799): Lew Basnight

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I think that Lew is now working off of something older than 
Christianity, he's "Off the Wheel", he is now exempt and has 
transgressed into the realm of Magick. Karma applies, like
Newtonian physics (at least at the local level), but he's 
entering a realm where:

     "Of course not, it's in code, isn't it, said Bevis. 
"Fiendish code, I might add. Right off I noticed it uses both Old and New 
Style alphabets---quite pleased with myself until twigging that each letter 
in this alphabet also has it's own numerical value, what was known among 
ancient Jewish students of the Torah as 'gematria.' So, as if there wasn't 
quite enough threat to the old mental balance already, the message must 
now be taken also as a series of digits, wherewith readers may discover 
in the text at hand certain hidden messages by adding together the 
number-values of the letters in a group, substituting other groups of the 
same value, so generatting another, covert message. Furthermore this 
particular gematria doesn't stop at simple addition."
     "Oh, dear. What else?"
     "Raising to powers, calculating logarithms, converting strings of 
characters to terms of a series and finding the limits they converge to, 
and---I say Latewood, if you could see the look on your face. . .  ."
     "Feel free, please. As there's little enough hysterical giggling out 
here, why we must snatch it wheree'er find it, mustn't we."
     "Not to mention field-coefficients, eigen values, metric tensors----"

AtD pg 799

Not just Kabbalistic magick systems here, oh no buddah, we've got
Kabbalistic magick systems mucking around with the new, hot-rodded
math of AtD, the stuff that Apocalypse Machines are made of.

The degree of infestation of "Old Thyme Magick" throughout AtD is 
remarkable. I knew he was going to point in the general direction of 
"The Golden Dawn" anyway---kinda the filp side of "Against the Day", 
dont'cha think, huh? And all these elements of the occult revival of 
the 19th century---A,E, Waite, Blavatsky, T.W.I.T and by extension the 
Golden Dawn crew---are present in AtD. Just like the Robber Baron 
References, The Anarchist References, the Magickal references are 
part of the baggage of the "Counterforce" and the birth of the 
"Great Game", the overaching conspiracy of money and power in 
the locus of the Fiscal "Illuminati" that always seems to pop up in Pynchon's books. . . . 

    You wouldn't think the guy's slipping in some sort of family history, would'ya?


Mark Kohut:

So what might it mean in Pynchon's "vision"...Question to think and talk about as we read, I would say. yes?

David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
I'm sure that was a part of the intention.

Spoiler below:

But this theme gets repeated a number of times in the book:
punishment, imprisonment, etc. for some unnamed past transgression.

David Morris

On 2/8/07, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Does anyone else think of the religious concept of Original Sin when they hear of Lew's 'unknown sin"?