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

[Mark Kohut]

Joseph,

You have a more overarching perspective here than my mole-like new close reading....

You may be ENTIRELY right...I cannot give your thoughts justice at the moment. I will reflect.

I do want to suggest, IF you are correct about where Lew falls in the fantastic/mythic vs. real, do you not think he moves more toward the credible fiction or what I would also call the 'more real' when he comes back near the end. Or, tell us when you get there again. 

I too will be listening to it again. 

Mark

--- On Tue, 2/23/10, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> Subject: Re: AtD Q: any thoughts on Lew Basnight's time at the Hotel Esthonia? Anyone?
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 4:07 PM
> 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?
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
>