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

[Mark Kohut]

Ao, maybe Lew 'enters' or is signaled to enter--if that is not too linear a concept--the "fiction' when he reflects on his 'haze"...when he is being told about his other wives, WTF?, experiences???

Lew's foggy haze reminds me of DOCs and, yes, curious time/space things happen around them then.......???

--- 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?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>