AtD gold: the defense

[Michael Bailey]

Bled Welder wrote:

>
>  About as close to a moral center as I personally get may be this as a
> good example, see if I'm close: I could google 'novel moral center', but
> I'm not going to. In a corrupt world, Lew shines as example, non-corrupt,
> uncorrupted, incorruptible? Cipher, oy...
>
>
>
a) I have that same impulse sometimes, to avoid looking things up and
divine them from context and clairvoyance - not googling "moral center"
avoids bringing in a lot of outside authorities for something that one
might feel one's snap judgement on is fairly correct...

b) although one wonders if that isn't so much refraining from a bad thing
("much study is a weariness of the flesh") as a choice to ford the stream
at the narrow point where it is rather than seek out the bridge or ferry...

c) but in the case of Lew, my argument is that his virtue consists of just
that sort of abstaining from seeking the more-well-traveled path, not
joining the mob, not subscribing to the popular wisdom

d) I think the unique (and debatable) point (if any) that I made previously
was to link his non-pursuance of the Kieselguhr case ("...Lew had brought
up his doubts about the Kieselguhr Kid - in effect quitting the
case...."(184 Penguin paper)) -- with a similar non-vigorous pursuit of the
Cohen's interests in London -- and suggest that maybe constituted his
outstanding virtue, a certain independence of mind and a willingness not so
much to *act on it* (in terms of doing something dramatic and original) as
to *allow his clear perceptions to deter him from fulfilling dubious
missions*

 e) ...thereby creating a counterpart on earth to the heavenly grace
bestowed on him in Chicago -- that is to say, "a luminosity new to him"
such that while riding a public conveyance surrounded by his fellow
citizens, this grace - and certainly not any dramatic ego-driven action -
contrariwise, he becomes aware that he's "descended to the sidewalk" ie
without consciously thinking about it, he's gotten off that bus or elevated
train --- he has stopped validating his trajectory (see the part about the
cattle vectoring toward the slaughterhouse and losing degrees of freedom as
they go, p 10) because he became aware of something else and therefore
without conscious volition, or even velleity, he gets off that ride...

--- which is sort of like the way he gradually becomes aware that the
partisans of labor aren't necessarily the villains White City painted them
as, and Kieselguhr might be a coverup for a multitude of sins, some
committed by Webb, some by copycats, and even some (perhaps many?)
committed, or commissioned, stealthily, by the plutocrats -- so that he
doesn't really do any sort of intrusive action other than think out loud
--- but he finds himself no longer employed by White City!


f) so perhaps this is his virtue -- that by means of a strategy similar to
that by which he survived the blast in Colorado, that is to say going *in*
toward the blast, (and "gliding above the scene without a care in the world
- whatever "the world" meant right at the moment - trying to keep it just
like that, non-mental and serene, for as long as possible) he avoids the
shock waves and lives to walk away...

"walk on" -- Zen admonition, right?

so, yeah, Lew has his virtues, even the little bits that stuck in my mind
prove that.

But he's coming from a deficit with me: he's been the Upstate-Downstate
beast and I will need more proof if I'm to accept him as a moral center.

g) other moral centers I can think of -- Piggy in Lord of the Flies, the
Mother Superior in Vineland, Tom Bombadil in Lord of the Rings,  Orr in
Catch-22 ("why don't you fly with me, Yossarian?")...

h) Lew does have aesthetic appreciation - "Ever come out of work in this
town when the light's still in the sky and the lamps are just being lit
along the big avenues and down by the Lake, and the girls are all out of
the offices and shops and heading home, and the steak houses are cranking
up for the evening trade, and the plate-glass windows are shining, with the
rigs all lined up by the hotels, and --"
"No," Nate staring impatiently, "not too often, I work too late for that."
Lew blew a smoke ring, and a few more concentrically. "Well now shit,
there, Nate." (52)
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