the Merle center

[Mark Kohut]

Lots here, thinking on all of it but picking up first the Lew is a cypher remark. 
 
Yes, Lew is....he is presented to us as driven out of his old life, evev getting a new identity (if that one person's
remark about betraying his identity is to be taken at face-value)...he has no backstory in this novel.......why?
 
If his Unknown Sin is a metaphor for Original Sin, then his new life is to find his way in the real world, the world,
according to the Original Sin myth, of Aging and Death [those words in caps turn up in the later discussion of 
time travel immortality]. He is now out of the psychic garden of Eden, if that makes any sense and his quest is to
understand that---or just accept it? And that is thematic? (I say Yes )
 
To speak to Bled Welder (and others), the moral center of a novel sorta means the character, if there is one, who
sees reliably [nods to Alice W.] in a 'what's real?' world. Lew is characterized as very observant. He seems to report
honestly, even about his confusions and ignorance. As a detective, he hunts for facts and truth. (Pugnax accepts him aboard
The Inconvenience, no little thing if you remember an upcoming bit during the Chums' crisis of Authority when we learn that Pugnax
would know of any turncoats in their midst). 
 
Lew interacts with the major other plotlines: the Chums, Anarchists, (some of) the English  events, and with the Traverses.---hence his
centrality.  He asks "moral' questions, such as about 'the innocent bourgeoisie". I take his questioning of some anarchists' beliefs
as Columbo--like; he knows the simple human rights and wrongs so they condemn themselves with their answers. 
He gets some of P's thematic'answers'...with the toilet reading at the end, for example, and with much more.  
 
Is he called a pilgrim further along and I can't remember or is that what an early reader/writer has said? (about him or about
us, the readers?) Anyway, he is like a secular pilgrim trying to understand (some of) the world this novel purports to illumine.  
 

From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 10:32 PM
Subject: the Merle center


as I have tried by the time-honored method (in which one protesteth too mucheth) to make the case (by indirection) for Lew as moral center (or centre)


and now append a caveat - I did nothing to prove Lew wasn't very helpful to the Cohen

but moving on to a gentle compare / contrast

Lew - conscious of sin
fulfills a program of redemption with Drave et al
does work for White City 
redeems himself by leaving it
finds a non-destructive use for dynamite (it gets him high!)
survives a bomb
learns the intricacies of the Tarot and pursues bombthrowers in London
sensitive to the beauties of eventide in Chicago

now for...
Merle - passionate about photography
marries a pregnant widow
accepts her betrayal with some grace
raises Dally a little too libertarianly some might say
falls in with the Candlebrow crowd 
works on inventions and suchlike
makes friends with ball lightning
finds ginseng

sensitive to Dalley ("As Merle watched her sleep, an unmanly warmth about the eyeballs would surprise him.  Her hearth-colored hair in a careless child's snarl.  She was somewhere off wandering those dangerous dark fields, maybe even finding there some version of himself, of Erlys, that he'd never get to hear about, among the sorrowful truths, being lost, being found, flying, journeying to places too detailed to be anything but real, meeting the enemy, dying, being born over and over....He wanted to find a way in, to look out for her at least, keep her from the worst if he could....)

and capable of seguing from appreciation of a sunset all the way into a "Barkis-is-willing" moment - p 506-7 
"You could smell crude oil in the air.  The first wheelfolk of summer, in bright sweaters and caps and striped socks, went whirring gaily in battalion strength along the great viaduct on tandem bicycles, which seemed to be a city craze that year.  Bicycle bells going nonstop, the massed choruses of them, in all sorts of ragged harmonies, loud as church bells on Sunday though maybe with a finer texture.  Roughnecks went in and out of saloon doors and sometimes windows.  Elms cast deep shade over yards and streets, forests of elms back when there were still elms in Cleveland, making visible the flow of the breezes, iron railings surrounding the villas of the well-off, roadside ditches full of white clover, a sunset that began early and stayed late, growing to a splendor that had her and Merle gazing at it in disbelief, and then at each other....
""It ain't a Euclid Avenue mansion, you may've noticed that already, but it's warm and solid built, there's a leaf-spring suspension of my own design that you'd think you were riding on a cloud."
""Sure, well being an angel I'm used to that."  But the brightest part of that luridly exploding childhood sky was now right behind her face, and some of her hair was loose, and she could detect in his gaze enough of what he must be seeing, and they both fell silent."
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