ATDTDA - grace

[kelber at mindspring.com]

SPOILER ALERT -- last page



TRP uses (and defines) the word "grace," on p.42.  It's also the final word of the novel.  Not sure if there are other references in between.

P. 42:
"One mild and ordinary work-morning in Chicago, Lew happened to find himself on a public conveyance, head and eyes inclined nowhere in particular, when he entered, all too briefly, a condition he had no memory of having sought, which he later came to think of as grace."  Next paragraph:  "He understood that things were exactly what they were.  It seemed more than he could bear."

Right after this, he's hired by White City Investigations, after impressing Nate with his ability to observe things (just as they are?).

A couple of reviewers seemed to take the mention of grace at the end of the book in its religious sense.  The Inconvenience has become sort of a public conveyance, the world in microcosm, and it flies toward grace.  But if grace is understanding that things are exactly what they are, it seems that TRP has something other than the religious connotation in mind.  Things that are exactly what they are don't have any particular grace of god bestowed on them.  They belong more to the preterite than the elect.

On a totally different plane, maybe TRP had this in mind:


"The goal of the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) space mission is to obtain accurate global and high-resolution determination of both the static and the time-variable components of the Earth's gravity field."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Recovery_and_Climate_Experiment

Laura