AtD Q: any thoughts on Lew Basnight's time at the Hotel Esthonia? Anyone?

[rich]

much of what you mention, Joseph can be also be said about Mason & Dixon,
no? particularly that "break into fiction" angle. the Ghastly Fop chronicles
does parallel the Chums books that are read by characters in those novels
but those characters are also 'real' within the frame of the novels and pbly
more so with the Chums, as real as those who read about them

still think Lou Basnight is some sly reference to the legendary Hollywood
producer, TV-friendly Lew Wasserman who died in 2002.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/obituaries/04WASS.html



On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 4:07 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> I am listening to ATD on my ipod while I finish  a large church window. I
> am well into the Lew Basnight history . He is currently talking with
> Renfrew. I feel that His split with his wife Troth, who seems, in her very
> name to personify marriage, is really a break into fiction. For Lew as for
> most of us , that fictional rearrangement can be illuminating, therapeutic,
> and dangerous. ATD has a layered gradation from the real historical( mining
> wars,WW1,Chicago world's fair, Michelson Morley, Tesla) through the credible
> fictional( Traverses, Yashmeen, Vibes, Cyprian)   to the mythic/fantastic(
> Chums, Vormance story, time travel, Shambala) . I think Lew Basnight
> occupies a nether world between the credible fictional and the
> fantastic/mythic. But he leans toward the fantastic, slightly more at home
> in the world of the Chums, cyclomite revelations, the twits , the time
> traveling photography of Merle than in the world of Pinkertons or
> revolutionary unionists.  The Esthonia is also a step toward the  Big Rock
> Candy side of socialism though with a Kafkaesque tinge. You know, the funny
> side of Kafka.
>
> The fact that Pynchon also connects Lew's overall movement as a movement
> toward grace  is puzzling and intriguing to me. Is he mocking the idea of a
> world at right angles ? the gates of Shambala? Mineral sentience?  Alein
> invaders?  I rather think not. I think he is more inclined to mock those who
> think the the world fully explicable along some vector called "reality".
>
>
>
> On Feb 23, 2010, at 11:25 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>  pp. 37 ff....to p.41?
>>
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>
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