More of a Reading of Lew Basnight, pt. 2

[Michael Bailey]

 rich wrote:
> Lew's sexual sin?  that rather weird meeting with Lake at the end of the
> novel--is it rape? I found it inexplicable
>

Thanks, rich, I just reread that part.

Funny, I had a different memory that didn't involve the rough sex.
I'm still inclined, because of the dreamlike nature of the scene,
to see Lew's taking of her as a reverie, but that's hard to support.

Just as I'm inclined to think that Deuce's expectation of the "real"
authorities coming to supersede the young investigators who have
caught him is his own psychotic break rather than the true expectation
of a "connected" villain that he will be released - sort of like Aarfy in
Catch-22 - although, come to think of it, "good old Aarfy"'s hopes are realized.
I'm just saying I think that it's obvious Deuce is so far gone
that he might not know the difference anymore, but (just like Webb's
giving up on official law enforcement and going in for vigilantism
isn't meant to sanction this viewpoint, imho, but to depict it...)
Deuce's viewpoint isn't necessarily meant to reflect what's "really
going on" (or is it???)

Dystopians among us, I'm sure, will take these episodes at face value -
Lew's non-consensual sex with Lake, Deuce's impunity for serial killing -
as Pynchon's statements about the corruption of our society, but I tend
to want to soften that.

First, Lake is so deeply depressed, in a fugue state, that one doubts
that she cares much - although her protestations are enough to stop
the Lew-that-I-had-thought-he-was...
secondly, I think our last glimpse of her is in a dream that is like
the kind of dream that a movie heroine wakes from to find herself
with child...
which (besides being tied in to the crypto-Catholicism I sometimes
sniff - this being the sort of, well, ideal situation where the Church
could champion rape-generated babies: Lake has
always wanted a baby, ie, a-and this is the ONLY way (if we assume
that Deuce's the source of the wanting seed and that Lake is too
proper to ever cheat on him - don't kill me, I'm just sayin'...))
ties into the rise of the movie industry ... and sort of how the movies
supplant books as the source of popular mythology ... so in the
MOVIE of AtD, the rape scene would be softened down to a seduction,
and lo, she would conceive and bear a child!

which also ties into the Chums getting that commission to go to
Hollywood - in fact maybe they (the Chums) are the earnest young people who
are questioning Deuce -
just as movies are allowed to question authority, but in cold reality,
the "motorcycles without mufflers" that will arrive bearing the "real" cops
who will spring Deuce...

so I guess I prefer the dream...point being that the dream is what
sustains us, like that Chums book Reef reads in jail...

anyway, thanks for opening that discussion up - now I've got to
unfasten or I'll spend the next 36 hours reading sections of AtD
and I have "meatspace" activities that take precedence...

Happy Sunday everyone!

-- 
-- "the problem with the deployment of frictionless surfaces is
that they're not getting traction."