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

[Joseph Tracy]

Yes I was going to say something about the final passage with Lew in  
LA.  He does get more grimly real and becomes the lens through which  
we see Deuce's final comeuppance.  Maybe the friction  between his  
hardboiled persona and his fantastical encounters is Pynchon's way of  
getting sparks of fire into what could be too ethereal. Is this  
interaction where Pynchon finds grace?

Basnight is a brilliant character occupying a unique space in ATD.   
Overall I find Doc Sportello to be more grounded, less spooky,  
probably because of the accessibility of his world.
On Feb 23, 2010, at 6:26 PM, Mark Kohut 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?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>