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

[Mark Kohut]

Very inneresting you two....

Lew's wife was going to plead with him to come back but "reflection to the pulse of the rails" had done its work....

Pulse of the rails is not usually conducive to good thoughts/happenings in TRPs world, as it isn't here, ----so she leaves him? 

And then Lew enters a very strange world within chicago....yes, very fantastic, seemingly very 'fantasy fictional' not too real.....

And...????

--- On Tue, 2/23/10, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: AtD Q: any thoughts on Lew Basnight's time at the Hotel Esthonia?  Anyone?
> To: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>, "Joseph Tracy" <brook7 at sover.net>
> Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 6:40 PM
> I like that split with Troth (truth)
> as a move into fiction -
> comparing this to someone's comment about Chick's joining
> the Chums, I
> can see both as people in peril finding refuge in fantastic
> fiction.
> Lew and Chick are 'real' people who do a Madame Bovary, but
> without
> the objective perspective of a Flaubert to key us into
> their
> epistemological error (confusing reality and fiction). In
> fact, in
> AtD's context that might not be an error at all. Does Lew
> emerge from
> these lost decades at the end of the book, after a period
> in which
> reality and fiction became personally or historically
> indistinguishable? Or is it more like M&D, where we're
> looking at the
> increasing segregation of fantasy and experience by
> science, history,
> etc? Dunno.
> 
> I do think you could chart a spectrum between "realism" and
> "fantasy"
> in AtD and place various characters along that sliding
> scale, though:
> Dally and Lew tending toward the fictional more often than
> the
> Traverses, say. Might be a bit too linear a project for us
> though.
> 
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > 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?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>