Back to AtD. Another use of 'grace"

[alice wellintown]

Are Reef's acts here graceful? No. Yet, when he is saved, the scene is
full or filled with grace: unmerited divine assistance given humans
for their regeneration or sanctification So here, as so often in
Pynchon, we have graceless acts given grace. Reef's recreational
skeet, as he calls it, does not show us a man who has grace under fire
or a man who can fire gracefully. The quip from Yashmeen, "what he
does best, of course", as if to Ljubica, is surely an authorial
comment directed to the reader and, while it adds humor it also
instructs: what Reef does best he does without grace. So he wins
favor, earns a ride  with Greeks, only to be set upon by three
Albanians. Not one or two but three. The comedy works best with three.
So each takes a shot at Reef and his mother, not literally, but
comically and figuratively. Reef hasn't won much sympathy of late and
it's tough to cheer him on here, and, while we may or may not want to
see him get fucked, he looks fucked...but for the comic relief that
Pynchon has been injecting, at times none too gracefully, and through
the filter of our man, Reef. The boyz don't draw their weapons and
fuck him, but grasp at straws to draw straws, lots (not the word
Pynchon uses here, but surely the word, "lot" is called for or cried
for and the fourth man arrives and, this all takes time, 90 seconds if
you insist, and Grace saves the wretch. Amazing!

> Literal or figurative, he used the word 'Grace" and it meant a bit of time
> or enough time to not get harmed  or not harmed.
>
> That matters for grace.