ATDTDA (2): 36-41

[Paul Nightingale]

Ch5 continues the transitional phase away from the Chums of Chance,
(re)introducing Lew Basnight, who immediately announces he has never heard
of the Chums (36). Lindsay asks: "What could you've been reading as a
youth?" What, indeed, given that, as a youth, Lew couldn't have been reading
the adventures of these Chums. Or could he?

The new chapter begins by juxtaposing the fictional to the non-fictional,
and Lew's back-story, as noted, is Kafkaesque. In particular, the passage
(38-39) in which Lew struggles to identify the Chicago he currently inhabits
is expressionistic. The writing, it seems, in order to speak of that which
cannot be spoken, has to employ the fictional. Without wandering too far
from the schedule, one might note that Lew will, in the rest of the novel,
inhabit different fictional worlds.

Lew's past, and the "sin he was supposed once to have committed" have been
fictionalised: 37 begins with Randolph's comment that "the longer a fellow's
name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from
non-fiction", and then proceeds to Lew's representation, in the press. The
"close business associate" Wensleydale insists he has destroyed his name, by
which he means reputation (37-38); and then Troth--like Merle, Lew has a
broken marriage in his past--refers to the unspeakable nature of the crime
(38). Various experts try to explain, contradicting each other (37, and then
Drave on 39). 

Hence, the description of Chicago (38) has been filtered through Lew's
consciousness: "As he began again to walk, the first thing he noticed," etc.
And then: "Not for the first time he experienced a kind of waking swoon,
which not so much propelled as allowed him entry into an urban setting, like
the world he had left but differing in particulars which were not slow to
reveal themselves."

If Lew's back-story recalls that of Merle, his experiences here also recall
Scarsdale Vibe's description of "the world ... 'as we know it'" (34). At the
Esthonia Hotel Lew is worried that he cannot pay is way; it doesn't seem to
matter. When he says he cannot tip Hershel, he is introduced to the
"[r]everse tip" (40). The reference to religion breaks the link between sin
and penance as a form of payment (41).