AtD: Lew's experience of grace

[rich]

I think Cyprian's transformation is at least less opaque and
understandable; Lew to me is a cipher. not sure what his story is
about tho I do find him intriguing



On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think Lew's experience is the deepest, most overarching thematic meaning of
> the novel...Pynchon
> making the personal, societal, historical in the most enveloping
> way..............Lew's Grace is
> .............P's 'religious redefinition' in my argumentative
> opinion....................
>
> ...I posted the 'grace' connections
> on the ATD wiki...................................
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wed, December 1, 2010 7:40:00 AM
> Subject: AtD: Lew's experience of grace
>
> We know the novel ends with the word "grace", thereby giving it, the word, a
> special meaning.
> All theological discussions aside for the moment, let me ask how "grace" is
> defined inside the
> novel itself. I do so, because very early on, as I now realize during my regular
> re-read, an
> important character, Lew Basnight, has his personal experience of "grace" which
> is, if I
> didn't miss anything, the first concept of the term the novel has to offer us.
>
> "One mild and ordinary work-morning in Chicago, Lew happened to find himself on
> a public
> conveyance, head and eyes inclined nowhere in particular ["soft eyes", as they
> call it in The
> Wire.kfl], when he entered, all too briefly, a condition he had no memory of
> having sought
> [As A.C. has it: "Don't lust after results!".kfl], which he later came to think
> of as grace. (...)
> Lew found himself surrounded by a luminosity new to him, not even observed in
> dreams,
> nor easily attributed to the smoke-inflected sun beginning to light Chicago."
> (p. 42)
>
> How representative is Lew's experience for AtD's overall concept of "grace"?
>
> Kai
>
>
>
>