AtD, grace-filled Lew

[Mark Kohut]

Or to extend/contextualize by analogy, Virgil's most famous phrase is "Lacrimae rerum", 'the tears of things" used
when someone is viewing a representation of the Trojan War deaths...translated by Fagles as "the world is a world
of tears, and the burden of our mortality cuts to the heart"....


From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2012 7:21 AM
Subject: AtD, grace-filled Lew


Lew just sort of wandered into the detectvie business---much like Doc Sportello---by way of a sin he was supposed to have committed. 
Is his possible amnesia about his past bad action(s) a fictional represenatiaon of his lack of self-knowledge [thanks to J. Tracy who may have meant this or something similar] ? Clueless about himself, he
becomes a detective following clues?      More on this................

First appearance of the concept of grace. Lew realizes, almost unbearably, that things were exactly what they seemed. Specifically embodied in 
some fine lyrical prose about Chicagoans simply commuting to work on the dangerous EL......maybe also this is used to show the inevitablity
of industrial history in hard-working Chicago?......

That is, his epiphany contains the sadness--almost unbearable---of seeing that everyone risks danger every day just to make a living? 
Not just the poignance of all appearances (transitory and unique)? 
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