More of a Reading of Lew Basnight, pt. 2

[Mark Kohut]

Can you give me sections, pages, again?

--- On Sun, 2/28/10, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: More of a Reading of Lew Basnight, pt. 2
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, February 28, 2010, 3:26 PM
>  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."
>