AtD: Lew's experience of grace

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Perhaps Lew's character would become less "opaque", if we could make out 
the difference
between the book's general slogan "Against the Day" and Lew's specific 
skill "to step to the
side of the day" (p. 44)?

On 01.12.2010 17:01, rich wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>      
>
>