AtD (37) pp. 1040 ff Misc. Background and On Broadway

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Lew Baslight has an obvious point of reference that no one has 
amplified on here [I touched on the subject sometime back.] 
The Firesign Theater has many elements in their surreal audio 
epics that overlap with Pynchon's world. Lew Baslight 
conceptually owes a bit to "Nick Danger, Third Eye," 
particularly the parodistic aspects, the willingness to find 
nothing [or everything] sacred.

But even more to the point, the mis-en-scene of Against the Day 
might have been ripped right out of "W.C. Fields Forever" from 
"Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him." "Now that 
you're so down-home tribal & all I want to take you up to the 
second bardo and orient you." Cross references to heretical 
spiritual systems at the "Lazy Ohm Collective Love Farm and 
Dues Ranch"---theosophy, tarot, illumination from the "mystic 
east" ["here, let me lay a stick of sandalwood incense on you, 
cut it off my own sandals"---proceeds to make sounds of joint 
being lit and inhaled]  are just as densely distributed and silly as 
in Against the Day. "After Eight Years, Paint Brown," in addition 
to being a cool Bob Dylan citation resonates with Gravity's 
Rainbow, both in its paranoia and its sillyness.

If Against the Day is to a certain extant a backward look I'd
point to "Four or Five Crazy Guys" getting a little tip of the hat
from OBA, particularly in the character of Lew.