AtD: Lew's experience of grace

[David Morris]

I think you've summed this up nicely.

Now for the other-than-moral aspect(s) of this grace-state in AtD:
"Lew found himself surrounded by a luminosity new to him."  We know
that one aspect of the term "against the day" has to do with
photography, a view/image of a subject flooded by a source of light
from behind.  Indeed much of the symbology of AtD revolves around
aspects of light/illumination.  And light in Lew's new
grace-experience is a kind he'd never seen before.  I think it's clear
Pynchon expects readers to focus on his uses of light as having more
than visual meaning.

David Morris

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> Something that Pynchon emphasizes in AtD is that for Grace to blossom one
> must not expect rewards for one's good acts. It appears to be a compromise
> setting between RC's confession/pennance/payment and Luther's "Free Gift"
> modulated by TRP's concepts of "Karma" and Natural Law/Taoism. There's a bit
> of a Koan in "It doesn't work unless you're not really expecting it to
> work." It's reminiscent of Doc Sportello's "What , I should only trust good
> people? man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust
> somebody evil once in a while. I mean, I wouldn't give odds either way."
> On Dec 1, 2010, at 9:03 AM, David Morris wrote:
>
>> The Christian (Martin Luther) concept of grace would be essentially a
>> "free gift," something not earned and not owed, indeed ultimately
>> something that was given "in spite of" what one deserved.  This
>> concept was so at odds with Roman Catholicism's earned grace (by way
>> of confession/pennance/payment) that it is not at all surprising that
>> he and his followers were so despsed/persecuted by the RC Church.
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Robin Landseadel
>> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Dec 1, 2010, at 4:40 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>>>
>>>> "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],
>>>
>>> I'd say "very," as there is a definite sense that "Doing the Right thing"
>>> is correlative to "Grace" in this novel.
>
>