ATDTDA (2): Lew Basnight // fireworks?

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

Mark Kohut wrote:
>Subject: Re: ATDTDA (2): Lew Basnight

>Working premise: Pynchon isn't perfect but 
>1) He knows what he is at least attempting with every character, every >scene, every word, no? 

Sure seems like it!

>So, Lew Basnight is not a superfluous character.

>2) What is his major function in ATD?....So far...

thought-provoking question. 
liaison between the Chums and the detectives, with all that implies (he as well as they are enlisted at story's
beginning, on the quasi-military/police side of the law and order equation, which seems like the only reasonable place
to be (booms in the background which detective boss knowingly attributes to unions which = anarchism which = the ruin of all we hold dear)
Frickin' double-space...all of a sudden can't turn it off...

3) And as we read?
At the end I was wowed by the way his karma opposed that of Deuce; so, Iceland spar double for Deuce...
His abandonment of the detective job with his growing awareness of the actual facts in the labor-vs-mgmt quarrel
(after all, he is singled out as "observant") parallels the gradual relaxation of the quasi-military aspect of the Chums 
and their growing autonomy
Also, gosh darn, he connects dynamite to pyschedelic experience
---------------------------------- 
--- at the proper time, I want to ask what should be occurring to me when I ponder the dark flight of fireworks
before they explode. Drawin' a blank... -- 
"trajectory already fixed?" "unobserved progress is what puts you in position to be observed?" don't seem to be what he's lookin' for...








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