ATDTDA (10): Souless incandescence, 281-282

[Paul Nightingale]

At the end of the previous chapter Frank separates from Wren (280). She is
off, it seems, to the South Pacific, into the 'past' to investigate
(American) modernity, signified here by "the famous electric street-lighting
of Telluride, first city in the US to be so lit" (281). The lighting is
unnatural, "the wrong color for a fire, and daylight was out of the
question, though the end of the world remained a possibility". One might say
such artificial illumination challenges, or even undermines the cyclical
time that operates in the natural world. Progress, meanwhile, has led to the
expansion of "a town that seemed to've been shipped in all at the same time
and squeezed onto the valley floor".

Cf. the introduction of Nochecita (200).

It is the lighting (a "soulless incandescence") that allows him to visualise
the hostility he feels, "omens of violence, all directed at him" (282).

As well as the references to the Inferno identified by Keith I would add the
painterly, expressionistic, nature of the perceptions here, elements of the
parodic and pastiche side by side.