AtD (37) pp.1040 ff. Thoughts on Lew Basnight, detective.

[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>  > TRPs sympathetic protagonists are NOT ego-driven, but receptive to things as they are?
>

eenhyeh...my ostinato is Merle is a keystone or axle of the book
(for one thing, he's a tasty extrapolation of the protagonist in Stone
Junction which
drew the raviest of blurbs; and a single father like Zoyd...)

training on Merle as a landmark while crossing the great water, Lew
is not far off to one side, with a lanthorn, illuminating important themes:
spiritually - guilt/grace, detection (application of rationality) and
the limits of its usefulness,
hiistorically - the evolution of the private dick from thug to thinker (Dashiell
Hammett IRL experienced a similar rejection of union-busting to that of Lew)

if guilt is imposed on Lew from outside in Chicago - Troth, the spouse
and seemingly
everybody he meets - then by the time he's working in LA, he's ready to himself
feel his life as a long crime...
it may not be the only meaning, but some shrift ought to be given to
Original Sin (my other ostinato: Pynchon is a Christian novelist)