ATDTDA (2): 42-44

[Paul Nightingale]

Following the section break, we see Lew's take on an "ordinary
work-morning": he "[happens] to find himself on a public conveyance", he
"[finds] himself surrounded by a luminosity new to him," etc. And then:
"[h]e must have descended to the sidewalk," etc (42). One can infer that Lew
is performing employment here by riding the streetcar (?), mixing with
others on their way to work. He inserts himself into the daily routine of
the city, on the streetcar, in the cigar store (at "that early hour in cigar
stores all over town"). By the end of the chapter he is gainfully employed,
something else that, somehow, has happened to him: "Next thing he knew, he
was on the payroll" (43).

He has come to accept that Troth won't be coming back (as Drave had insisted
earlier, 41). We're not told how he knows of her relocation: "rumoured now
to be living on lake Shore Drive" doesn't suggest she has told him herself,
but the preceding section gave no indication that he maintains ties with his
past.

That "[h]e understood that things were exactly what they were" is a key
sentence, part of the two-line paragraph that, in its brevity, draws
attention to itself. Throughout this chapter I've been thinking of the
modernist shift from figurative art to abstraction: the expressionism of the
preceding section, the quasi-cubist fragmentation of the "ordinary
work-morning" paragraph. Hence, "exactly what they were" should be
juxtaposed to the question he asks on 38: "Was it still Chicago?" If indeed
"things [are] exactly what they [are]", such a question becomes redundant.
By the end of the chapter, the city name appears in quotes, a construct, by
which time Lew "had learned to step to the side of the day" (44).

Nate speaks of "anarchistic scum", reminding us that, when Lew meets the
Chums, Chick is grateful they can avoid "the Anarchist question" (37).
Anarchism remains elsewhere, to be talked about: it is only the appearance
of Nate that allows the text to mention "explosions ... [that] sent
leisurely rips through the fabric of the day" (43).