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 Lew's ears began to itch.

* * * * * * * * * *

Is this the feeling Lew gets when he's about to sidestep reality?!

"Itching ears" has a Biblical meaning but I don't think that's what Pynchon is going for here. To have itching ears, according to The Bible, is to seek out a religious teacher or religious dogma that supports the lifestyle you've already chosen. So a religious teacher who will scratch the itch of your desires, one who will condone the way you're already living.
    Lew's ears seem to itch because he's getting increasingly nervous about what this clearly insane man is suggesting.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 46: Line 25 (818)

 He beamed at Lew, as if mischievouly withholding the final line of a joke.

* * * * * * * * * *

That's not my typo. That's how it's spelled in the text so get off my case.

I don't know what the final line of his joke could be. "In Austria, there is plenty of game. So much game in the forest that men are hired to beat the bushes with sticks, scaring the game toward the men holding rifles. When the game reaches the men holding the rifles, they slaughter the game indiscriminately. Ha ha ha!"

Was that the joke?

Oh, I get it. The joke is that Archduke Ferdinand is describing regular hunting but with a sly wink and a nod about how he wants the "game" to be "Hungarian immigrants."

I still say he should just drop this whole conspiracy to hunt the world's most dangerous animal schtick and just become a Chicago policeman.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 46: Line 24 (817)

 "In Austria," the Archduke was explaining, "we have forests full of game, and hundreds of beaters who drive the animals toward the hunters such as myself who are waiting to shoot them."

* * * * * * * * * *

Having lived in a capitalist system my entire life, I can see why the Archduke thinks hunting people will be something easily accomplished in America. This statement about the way he hunts in Austria may as well be an analogy about capitalism, the beaters being the capitalists and industrialists driving the labor force toward the poverty, incarceration, or death by police. America is full of labor so why not treat them as expendable? Especially since it would be a loss of significant profit to treat them any differently. And if they disagree with the way they're being treated, well, they can be driven out because the forest is full of replacement workers desperate enough, due to low wages and ill treatment of workers, to accept the job in your place. And if you're driven from the labor force because you're an "agitator," you're of no use to anybody and may as well be shot by the cops as an anarchist.

Or maybe this is just an example of how lazy the rich are and how, when they hunt, they just want to stand there and wait for the game to come to them. That's a good capitalist analogy too! I suppose the Archduke wants Lew to know that he doesn't want to run around Chicago shooting Hungarians; he wants Lew to run around driving Hungarians into Ferdinand's rifle's sights.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 46: Lines 22-23 (815-816)

 "Y— maybe. I'd have to go look up the figures," Lew trying not to get into eye contact with this customer.

* * * * * * * * * *

Definitely more Hungarians in the meatpacking district than bison in the wild. But I guess that's not Lew's point! He's just trying to extricate himself from the horrid turn this conversation has taken. How do you dissuade royalty from seeking to hunt other human beings?! Probably like this. You pull away, slightly ignore, express awkward discomfort, and create imaginary roadblocks, like looking up figures, to make the entire request seem implausible.

Of course Lew could have also suggested the Archduke join up with the Chicago Police or the Pinkertons if he really wanted to go about killing poor immigrants with impunity and no public backlash.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 46: Lines 20-21 (813-814)

 "Ah. But, at present, working here in your famous slaughterhouse district . . . are many . . . Hungarians, not true?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Ah. Here we go. The question about the bison was just to lube Lew up (Lew Basnight. Lube Ass Night) for the real meat of the discussion. Human meat. Obviously, if he wanted to hunt bison . . . if that were the thing he were "really looking for in Chicago," he wouldn't have come to Chicago. But Chicago does have a large immigrant class of immigrants from a place where the Archduke would probably like to kill a few of them. He was probably annoyed that the Hungarians retained as much power as they did in the Austro-Hungarian union but he couldn't just kill them over in Europe. But here in America, where they've fled to? Oh ho! Vengeance!

Or maybe Franz didn't have any problem with Hungarians. You'd have to read historical texts to know if that were true or not and I only read Xanth novels. Maybe the Archduke simply thought, "Americans are pretty racist to ethnic minorities. I've seen how they treat the immigrant laborers. It would be daft if they didn't want me to hunt down a few!"

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 46: Line 19 (812)

 "Not around Chicago anymore, Your Highness, I'm sorry to say," Lew replied.

* * * * * * * * * *

Nor anywhere else, really. Maybe a few in Western Nebraska? I don't know! What am I? A wildlife historian? Oh, you don't know what I am. I assure you I am not one. The only Bison I ever knew was named Casper and he lived at Casa de Fruta when I was a kid. He was quite friendly and loved being pet on the nose. Or he hated it and was just waiting for a good opportunity to chew a kid's hand off. You could take a small train from the gift shop/RV parking area through a little tree-shaded park to the place where he lived behind a gate. He'd often come up to check out visitors. He was both soft and bristly.

Evidence of me on the Casa de Fruta train. Apparently it was quite an exciting ride.

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 "What I am really looking for in Chicago," the Archduke finally got around to confessing, "is something new and interesting to kill. At home we kill boars, bears, stags, the usual—while here in America, so I am told, are enormous herds of bison, ja?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Seems odd that the Archduke is looking in a city for something "new and interesting" to kill. He's obviously just looking for sex, mostly, and something to kill, leastly. Unless, of course, "heard of bison" is a euphemism for "man" in the way "learn about foreign peoples" is a euphemism for "fuck them." In America, anything can be bought or sold (up to and including people until just a few decades previous) which means somebody, somewhere, in this great land is selling the opportunity to hunt the most dangerous animal (which is man and not bison). If he really wanted some exotic game to kill (that wasn't obviously people), Ferdinand would have gone to Africa or India. Go kill a tiger or an elephant the way tacky rich Americans do when their hearts (and their penises) are incredibly small and/or dead.

According to the Internet, less than 100 bison were left by the late 1880s. That's probably why Archduke Ferdinand has a boner for killing one (also his boner is because he's horny but this is a different kind of boner).

What do you think happened to the guy who killed the last Passenger Pigeon? Do you think he felt remorse? Excitement? Apathy? I like to think he was excited at first but then as the years went by and nobody else bagged a Passenger Pigeon, he began to realize what he had done and he extincted himself with the same shotgun.

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 Lew slid like a snake from one architectural falsehood to the next, his working suits by the end of each day smudged white from rubbing against so much "staff," a mixture of plaster and hemp fibers, ubiquitous at the White City that season, meant to counterfeit some deathless white stone.

* * * * * * * * * *

Lew becomes reminiscent of some creature out of Greek mythology, some giant serpent-like creature, perhaps Medusa or large Naga, hunting its prey through marble arches. But the illusion is destroyed by the cheapness of his surroundings, obvious false fronts of buildings built with cheap material that transfers its color and fibers to anybody brushing past.

"counterfeit some deathless white stone"
Possibly an allusion to mankind's denial of their own mortality. All ambition of civilization is to ignore its own mortality, to pretend that the end of everything is the ultimate ending. Civilization in its entirety is a grand counterfeit of eternity, a play at pretending to build something that can outlast time.

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 Uniformed handlers, fooling elaborately with their whiskers, gazed anywhere but at the demented princeling.

* * * * * * * * * *

"fooling elaborately with their whiskers"
Archduke Ferdinand's Trabants are embarrassed by their employer's behavior, I suppose. Or they're hipsters hanging out in a dive bar in Portland trying not to look like they're pretending to not want to be noticed.

"demented princeling"
I wonder if I looked up the etymology of "demented" I would find it literally means "crazy from blue balls."

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 The Archduke had put in an appearance at the Austrian Pavilion, sat through Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show with a certain amount of impatience, and lingered at the Colorado Silver Camp exhibit, where, imagining that camps must necessarily include camp-followers, he proceeded to lead his entourage on a lively search after ladies of flagrant repute that would have taxed the abilities of even a seasoned spotter, let alone a greenhorn like Lew—running up and down and eventually out into the Midway, accosting amateur actors who had never been west of Joliet with untranslatable ravings in Viennese dialect and gesticulations which could easily be—well, were—taken the wrong way.

* * * * * * * * * *

I speculated that "learning about foreign people" was just innuendo for "fucking as many different ethnicities as possible." This line provides the evidence to back up my speculation.

"put in an appearance at the Austrian Pavilion"
This suggests that he dropped by only long enough to proclaim he was there. Ferdinand wasn't interested in doing a presser for Austria to the people of Chicago.

"sat through Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show with a certain amount of impatience"
Who could sit impatiently through a show purported to be this exciting?! That was a rhetorical question because the answer is "a really horny guy from out of country eager to put his dick in some Americans."

"lingered at the Colorado Silver Camp exhibit, where, imagining that camps must necessarily include camp-followers"
He lingered here because it was the first place Ferdinand suspected he could find some poontang. "Camp-followers" can mean many different things but the meaning that most matters here is "women providing sexual services." Ferdinand, being foreign, doesn't quite get the idea of the exhibits at this World's Fair. Or he simply assumes the Fair would be portraying the various exhibits as accurately as possible and where miners on the frontier go, so do women who can make money via sexual transactions. And even if they're just actors, actors like to get laid too! And what young American actress could pass up the opportunity to fuck a European Archduke? That's a rhetorical question too because the answer is probably "loads of them" but the more important point is that at least one of them is going to be some kind of star fucker.

"accosting amateur actors who had never been west of Joliet"
See? Actors! But these are probably the male actors pretending to be silver miners whom Ferdinand and his men will not stop bothering with questions in a foreign language while putting their index finger of their right hand through the circle made by their index finger and thumb of their left hand.

"gesticulations which could easily be—well, were—taken the wrong way"
The "finger in the hole" gesture probably garnered a lot of responses of "Oh, you want the fried doughnut cart just past the reindeer show up on the left!" That was a joke! The actual response was probably, "What do I look like? A fancy English author overflowing with bon mots?! Get your pick away from my dirt mine!"

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 45: Line 13 (806)

 How Chicago fit the bill was about to become clearer.

* * * * * * * * * *

Why would the Archduke choose Chicago as a place to learn about foreign people, other than people foreign to the Archduke live there, I guess? I could speculate or just stick to this sentence whose sole purpose is telling the reader, "This sentence is only here to prepare you for the revelation of this future fact! Get ready! It'll be here soon!" So, you know, this sentence is sort of worthless on its own. It's a little bit jokey, pointing out that the Archduke is looking to learn about the world's people and this sentence is all, "Yeah, but in Chicago? Ha ha! Good luck, dumb-dumb!"

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 45: Line 12 (805)

 F.F., as he was termed in his dossier, was out on a world tour whose officially stated purpose was to "learn about foreign peoples."

* * * * * * * * * *

"learn about foreign peoples."
I once wanted to "learn" about foreign peoples but then I was called gross for "fetishizing" race. I'm sorry that I had an unhealthy obsession with Sailor Moon during college! F.F. isn't gross though because he's not describing an unhealthy attraction for certain people based on their race; he just wants to go around the world and try a little bit of everyone.

Some of you might also be thinking, "You weren't just gross for fetishizing race! You were also gross for sexualizing young girls!" But in my defense, the Sailor Scouts were cartoon characters. Also in my defense, I was being facetious. Yet still more in my defense, I did have an unhealthy obsession with Sailor Moon but it wasn't because I was sexaulizing anything; it was all about the nostalgia of being young and discovering love for the first time and the ease of making lifelong friends. There also may have been a hint of desiring to be a young, attractive girl. Like maybe 10% of my infatuation with the show was nostalgic rewriting of my past in which I was a girl fantasy roleplay.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 45: Lines 10-11 (803-804)

 "Somebody get Rewrite!" Lew pretended to cry, affably enough.

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm counting this as two lines even though, given the peculiarity of language and punctuation, it is arguably one sentence. I feel like Lew has yelled, "Somebody get Rewrite!" (apparently Quirkel's nickname) and then pretended to cry about Nate's choice of partner for him, although in an obviously good-natured way.

Since we're in some kind of magical realist Chicago where Lew Basnight can "step to the side" of space and time, it's not outrageous to believe that somebody with the nickname "Rewrite" has some special abilities of his own. Or maybe Lew just made up this nickname, riffing on Nate's mention of somebody hiding in an alley attempting to rewrite history. Perhaps Lew is saying Quirkel is so bad at the job that this "rewriting of history" is all but assured by putting him on the case!

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 "I can spare Quirkel."

* * * * * * * * * *

I don't know who Quirkel is but he's probably not going to be much help if Nate can "spare" him. Also his name is reminiscent of "quirky" so he's probably going to be a loose cannon, which also fits the laws of Buddy Cop Movies.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 45: Line 8 (801)

 "I get any backup on this, Nate?"

* * * * * * * * * *

This is a fair question. Only a maniac like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Dolph Lundgren would think, "I am capable of defending this man from hundreds of potential assassins." And they only think that because the script usually says something like, "John Matrix is the kind of man who never runs out of ammunition and never gets hit by a bullet while murdering hundreds of opponents simultaneously."

It's also possible that Arnold does think he could pull a John Matrix in real life. But I doubt it because if you've got that kind of confidence, you don't fuck your maid. You fuck everybody else's maids.

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 "Sure do, they call em 'Trabants' over there, but have a lawyer explain civil liability to you, Lew, I'm just an old gumshoe guy, all's I know is there's a couple a thousand hunkies down to the Yards come over here with hate in their hearts for this bird and his family, maybe with good reason, too. If it was just the wholesome educational exhibits on the Fairgrounds and all why I wouldn't be too concerned, but the book on young Francis Ferdinand is, is he prefers our own New Levee and high-life neighborhoods like that. So every alleyway down here, every shadow big enough to hide a shive artist with a grudge, is a warm invitation to rewrite history."

* * * * * * * * * *

"'Trabants'"
The word means "companion." That's a pretty euphemistic term for a bodyguard. "These eighteen large men are my companions." I wonder if Tolkien was using the term "companion" in this sort of way in The Lord of the Rings? Frodo didn't have eight companions; he had eight bodyguards.

"civil liability"
Why would Lew have to concern himself with civil liability if Ferdinand gets hurt? My guess is that Ferdinand must have hired White City Investigations as extra protection. Your Trabants, being in foreign territory, might not know what kinds of dangers to watch out for. So it's always best to hire a local guide as a bodyguard. I should have remembered this advice, having heard the song "You Can Call Me Al" at least ten thousand times.

"couple a thousand hunkies down to the Yards"
This is the first time I've heard the slur "hunkies." It's a disparaging term referring to a person from East-central Europe, especially, like those hunkies down at the Yards, laborers. I guess East-central Europeans really fucking hated Archduke Ferdinand. They aren't going to kill him on this trip though, probably because Ferdinand's got a good driver this trip and not a stupid driver who makes a stupid wrong turn down the stupid wrong alley to wind up face-to-face with a stupid assassin who previously stupidly missed his chance to kill the stupid Archduke.

"maybe with good reason, too"
In high school, you learn that World War I began because Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated but they really lay off all the ethnic cleansing that was behind it. Maybe that was just my high school. To be absolutely fair, maybe it was just my attention span.

"he prefers our own New Levee and high-life neighborhoods"
The Archduke wants to explore places other than the World's Fair. Places where—gasp!—anarchists might be lurking!

"So every alleyway down here, every shadow big enough to hide a shive artist with a grudge, is a warm invitation to rewrite history"
This is pretty good foreshadowing of Archduke's eventual demise! I wonder if Gavrilo Princip thought, when he saw the Archduke's car trying to make a three point turn in a tight alley, thought, "A-ha! An invitation to rewrite history!", set down his coffee, and casually strolled into the history books.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 45: Line 4 (797)

 "Fellows like that don't have bodyguards of their own?"

* * * * * * * * * *

I guess Lew thinks like me. Why shouldn't this assignment be about protection? It would be sort of slimy and underhanded and totally within the boundaries of capitalism to spy on the guy in an attempt to make a little cash off of any information gleaned.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 45: Line 3 (796)

 "Austrian Archduke is in town, we need somebody to keep an eye on him."

* * * * * * * * * *

Since Lew is known for being invisible, does this mean Nate wants Lew to spy on a foreign leader? My first thought was the Archduke needed protection while in the city but that was probably prompted by my knowledge of what happens to the Archduke twenty years later. But what kind of protection can one lousy detective promise? I'm sure Nate is interested in selling any secrets his company can manage to rustle up.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 45: Line 2 (795)

 "Not me," Lew edging away.

* * * * * * * * * *

Lew knows a bad assignment when he sees a thick folder with a royal emblem on it.

"Lew edging away"
I'm going to assume this means Lew tried to move away from Nate and not that Lew was very slowly jerking off. Although the one thing Lew is known for is his sinful reputation, so maybe?

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 45: Line 1 (794)

 Nate showed up at Lew's desk one day with a thick folder that had some kind of royal crest on it, featuring a two-headed eagle.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Internet informs me that the double-headed eagle crest was being used by the Austro-Hungarian empire at the time of the Chicago World's Fair. My memory from having read this chapter previously was that Franz Ferdinand is coming to visit the Chicago World's Fair and needs better protection than he's going to get in two decades in Sarajevo.

It's an ancient symbol found in various places in the ancient world. I suspect the ancients, knowing that they didn't have full knowledge of their entire world, could easily believe in two-headed creatures. Some Greek jerk out tending to his sheep probably saw two eagles sitting in a tree but from his perspective, it looked like a two-headed bird and he shrugged and thought, "I guess those exist." Then he kicked the grass and turned back to look at his sheep where two of them were off in the distance at the top of a hill. But from his perspective, it just looked like a sheep with two asses and no head. So he shrugged and thought, "I guess those exist."

Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 44: Lines 210-211 (792-793)

 Not exactly invisibility. Excursion.

* * * * * * * * * *

So he doesn't go invisible. He takes a short trip. One definition of "excursion" is "a deviation from a regular pattern, path, or level of operation." In other words, Lew is leaving his furrow which, as we learned, was the etymology of the word "delirium." He is delirious and it is his delirium that allows him to become "invisible."

I'd also like to point out that sometimes an excursion can become a long-term or permanent change of location. I experienced it myself when I left my hometown to go cross country in my VW bus, winding up leaving California to live in Lincoln, Nebraska, for two years. Meaning, of course, that Lew could have arrived in this Chicago by accidentally performing an excursion that became permanent.

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 Wherever it was he stepped to had its own vast, incomprehensible history, its perils and ecstasies, its potential for unannounced romance and early funerals, but when he was there, it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts.

* * * * * * * * * *

Lew is describing another timeline. Probably, by the suggestions of things that could be happening there, a different one each time. Perhaps he even steps into other novels, exiting this one for a slight amount of time while still being able to observe what was happening. So he keeps a connection to Against the Day (or, at least, the Chicago of Against the Day). One can see how he arrived in Against the Day by this method as well. He stepped to the side of wherever he was, entered Against the Day, and then lost the connection with his original world. Perhaps in that moment, he lost both his original past and the past he should have known that was built for him here in this novel. Or, as I've speculated, he simply came over from another Chicago, lost the tether in the same way, and became stuck here.

"it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts"
It's as if he still exists as a known character in the book but, for a few moments or so, he is outside the boundaries of the novel, and thus unfindable by other characters in the book. But still observing. Hmm, I guess I said all this in the previous paragraph! I'm pretty sure I've explained myself fully already!

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 He had learned to step to the side of the day.

* * * * * * * * * *

Look, I was just kidding about him stepping into some other dimension. In my heart, I knew that was a possibility because this is a Pynchon novel. But my head, which absolutely rules my heart, kicked my heart in the teeth and yelled, "No! That is dumb, heart! Go to Hell!"

So Lew does have a magic power and it absolutely has enough similarity to him crossing over from another timeline to this one to be seen as evidence to the theory of Lew's past life being that of a different Lew from this dimension, and Lew a strange traveler from another having replaced him. He had simply stepped too far to the side of the day one time and wound up here, perhaps filling the vacuum of the sinful version of himself who purposefully stepped too far to the side of the day to leave his sinful past behind him.

"learned to step to the side of the day"
This is perfect phrasing for keeping this seemingly magical ability in the realm of science. First, Lew had learned the technique. And while, sure, you can learn magic, one's first reaction to the verb "to learn" is educational and scientific. Secondly, "stepping to the side of the day" sounds technical. He is performing a feat that can be summed up in simple words, although it could definitely use some clarifying. And we are invoking "day" which syncs up with the title and the theme of light. It also suggests "invisibility," as if he's avoiding light somehow, and thus becoming unseeable by those around him.

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 Lew enjoyed wandering around, trying on different rigs, like every day was Hallowe'en, but he understood after a while that he didn't have to.

* * * * * * * * * *

Poor Lew! He loved to play dress up but ultimately found there was no need. Because he could hide among the sighted as surely as if he weren't there. Could he make the light around him shift? Could he side-step into another dimension, perhaps the one from which he came, the one in which he hadn't sinned so profusely that it ruined his life? Or was he just such a plain looking jerk that nobody gave him a second thought?

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 At White City Investigations, invisibility was a sacred condition, whole darn floors of office buildings being given over to its art and science—resources for disguise that outdid any theatrical dressing room west of the Hudson, rows of commodes and mirrors extending into the distant shadows, acres of costumes, forests of hatracks bearing an entire Museum of Hat History, countless cabinets stuffed full of wigs, false beards, putty, powder, kohl and rouge, dyes for skin and hair, adjustable gaslight at each mirror that could be taken from a lawn party at a millionaire's cottage in Newport to a badlands saloon at midnight with just a tweak to a valve or two.

* * * * * * * * * *

Okay, okay! I get it, Pynchon! I understand what you meant by "a keen sympathy for the invisible" now! This follow-up sentence explaining the "invisibility" line just goes on and on, as if Pynchon knew I personally was going to be confused by what he meant by "a keen sympathy for the invisible" and would have to wade deep into the minutia of clarification.
    "A keen sympathy for the invisible" just means Lew Basnight could really blend in to a crowd. He could eavesdrop anywhere unnoticed. He was a master of disguise and demeanor.

Pynchon loves long paragraphs like this that list lots and lots of things for the reader to visualize. Usually he throws in a bunch of things that the reader probably needs to look up. But not this time! It's all pretty standard costumes, props, and make-up.

I don't know if Pynchon is referencing any specific "millionaire's cottage" in Newport that a detective agency might have cause to investigate (in general, of course, the reference is just because it's where the richest tycoons had vacation homes and the rich are always good for a scandal or two) but I'm pretty sure the "badlands saloon" is Nuttal & Mann's Saloon in Deadwood where Wild Bill Hickok was murdered. Or maybe, again, just a general reference to a place that was likely to host an unguessable number of scandalous incidents.

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 His office and field skills weren't the worst in the shop, but he knew that what distinguished him was a keen sympathy for the invisible.

* * * * * * * * * *

Lew was a mediocre detective who had an ability to see that which others could not. More importantly, with the use of the word "sympathy," he probably had some empathetic bond with the people of Chicago whom the rich and powerful would rather not notice. This is absolutely speculation on my part and probably a healthy dose of projection. But I feel like we're learning Lew was not what Nate Privett actually wanted in an employee. Sympathizing with the less fortunate will cost Nate money since, it seems, Nate's main business is harassing them for the rich and powerful.

Why am I not treating this sentence as literally as possible?! It's a Pynchon novel! He might actually mean that Lew can see invisible things! He already seems to be a dimension-hopping traveler of space and time! Why couldn't he also see invisible things? Remember, this book (or chapter, at least?) seems to have something to do with light! And light has everything to do with making things visible. So perhaps we're going to encounter some invisible beings later, maybe the ones whom Penelope Black and the Bindlestiffs of the Blue encountered over Mount Etna!

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 By the time he got that pleasantry all decoded, Lew found he was more than able to shrug it off.

* * * * * * * * * *

So Lew had to decode that shit too? That's good to hear. Hopefully he came to the same conclusion I did or else I'm off to a really bad start in trying to figure out this book. I suppose as long as I'm consistent in my artistic interpretation of the novel, it's valid! It might not be correct! But my critique still probably has something valid to say about the work.
    At least some of my critique does. Ninety percent of my critique is just plain stupidity and stories about some occasion when I was tripping on mushrooms.

"more than able to shrug it off"
This phrase leads me to believe that I was more or less correct that the statement was office place propaganda to inculcate in Lew a sense that Chicago was becoming increasing lawless and dangerous to the average person. And by the time Lew figured that's what they were trying to do, he was pretty much immune to it. That probably means he'd seen enough on his own, during investigations, to know it was bullshit. Which continues to match my Facebook analogy from the previous entry. If only our conservative friends and family could get outside their propaganda bubble, and actually venture forth into these communities that represent to them lawless anarchy, they'd experience for themselves how untruthful all of those Facebook posts truly are.

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 Next thing he knew, he was on the payroll, noticing how every time he entered a room somebody was sure to remark, ostensibly to somebody else, "Gravy, a man could get killed out there!"

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm guessing "Gravy" was an exclamation around the time and not the name of every ostensible somebody else in the room. Aside from that Nobel Laureate brain sized realization, I'm at a loss for what this means. Does Lew mean every time he walked into a room at White City Investigations, somebody said that? Or does he mean everywhere he went now, people recognized him as an investigator and, for some odd reason, made this exclamation?

Is it possible the people around him are trying to paint Chicago as more dangerous than it is, the way Fox News propagandizes Portland and Chicago and Baltimore and—welcome to the club, I guess?—Minneapolis? So now that he's a part of White City Investigations, Nate Privett wants to make sure Lew absolutely believes what they're doing is making the city safe? "A man can get killed out there with all those anarchist slash labor unionists running around bombing everything!" is the sentiment Lew's supposed to hear, just like all of our terrible relatives constantly hearing those messages on Facebook.

That actually feels right. Lew is now experiencing what our friends and family in right-wing bubbles experience on Facebook constantly. People on every message board constantly saying, "Gravy, a man could get killed out there!"

"Gravy"
Gravy is the name of my cat:

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 Lew nodded and took him up on it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sure, why not? The man pointed out this job wasn't as morally objectionable as a job with the Pinkertons. Unless what Nate was really saying was that a job with White City Investigations was just as morally objectionable but just didn't pay as much. Remembering how Nate ate his pancakes in a capitalistic fervor, I'm going go with the latter interpretation.

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 "You think working for the Eye's a life of moral squalor, you ought to have a look at our shop."

* * * * * * * * * *

I don't know if Nate meant for this line to be ambiguous or not. I first read it as, "You think you'd be lowering yourself working for the Pinkertons, well, just imagine how much you'll have to lower yourself working for White City Investigations!" I'm sure he means it as "We're more morally upstanding than those jerks so maybe come work for us." But I'm sure Pynchon meant it as, "This guy is telling the truth accidentally. Working for White City Investigations really isn't going to be any different than working for the Pinkertons."

Also, "working for the Eye" has some real Illuminati vibes going on. So that's not as good as a boner joke but a good enough They/Them paranoia reference (unless the Eye is a one-eyed trouser snake joke which I suspect it isn't but if it is, well, then, kudos? I guess?).

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 "Well, give me a few minutes with that one."

* * * * * * * * * *

This actually isn't a bad response by Lew. Mostly because when somebody wants to debate you on something you just expressed freely in conversation, it's usually because they have some "intellectual trap" ready to spring on you. A lot of "debate" mostly relies on some person hating what other people think and learning to parrot arguments that are difficult for a person who has reached their conclusion through empathy and compassion and not abstruse legal precedents or distorted historical facts. Bombarding somebody with standard pundit arguments well-learned from propaganda and misinformation isn't meant to engage in fair debate; it's meant to get the person with actual feelings and belief in justice off their footing, hounding them with unanswerable questions because the facts the questions are based on are either lies or purposeful misunderstandings of the topic. Even saying "give me a few minutes" probably makes the other side feel justified that the person, like themselves, is simply parroting some political figure's beliefs.

I learned a long time ago that the only way to win a debate with a jerk that wants to debate is to not debate at all. Thanks, WOPR! Although WOPR didn't teach me the skill of mocking them mercilessly. I learned that on my own.

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 "Oh? What?"

* * * * * * * * * *

This is the most insincere follow-up to "There's more to life than wages." "Oh? Really? Please explain some of them so that I can reply, 'And guess what you need to do that? Money and/or security which money provides so just money, I guess!'"

It's like every Twitter conversation with some Devil Advocate loving Libertarian.

"I believe this thing!" somebody who cares about something declares.
    "Oh? Please debate me, right now, on this topic I don't give a shit about because I, being a free thinker, have certainly thought more about the subject than you have, a person who I have only seen declare this belief this one time, a belief you've surely come to by not thinking at all."

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 "Don't know. Too much of the modern economics for me, for there's surely more to life than just wages."

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh shit, Nate! Look out! Lew might be one of them artist types and you know how socialist and communistic they can be! Something more to life than wages?! Holy Revelations, Reverend Batman!

Imagine choosing a job based on other criteria than wages? Like whether or not by taking the job you're causing more harm than good? And then imagine taking a job that causes harm in the world, not explicitly done by you because you were, I don't know, filing or something, and being judged by the rest of the world afterward and thinking, "But I was just filing papers for the guy who exterminated six million Jewish people!" Imagine not having a backbone or the sense of justice to refuse to take a job that pays well if the place of business is harmful to the world in some way? Sure, I can see filing for Hitler for a bit, thinking maybe a change is needed, and possibly letting your optimism cloud the reality before you. But to stay in that job the entire time, probably just thinking, "Well, my family and I are safe and we're doing pretty good by Adolf!"

Just imagine that! Now imagine the final sentence of that last sentence but replace "Adolf" with "Donald."

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 "Can't believe you haven't been approached about Pinkerton work, pay over there's almost too good for a man not to sign up."

* * * * * * * * * *

Whew. Nate was only smirking slyly because he nabbed Lew and his incredible perception skills before the Pinkertons could. He's simply proud of himself, I guess. I really thought he was going to go on one of those "I'm not racist but . . ." rants.

One time, a bunch of college students from Chicago joined up with other new recruits from all over the place when the Pinkertons needed people to protect a factory in Pittsburgh during the Homestead strike. What Nate says here was definitely true at the time: pay was so good people who didn't have any experience or knowledge of what the Pinkertons did signed up. What they found themselves engaged in was an actual battle where seven people lost their lives. The Pinkertons, being composed of mainly raw recruits and college students, surrendered. Because here's the thing: money can buy you soldiers for the short term but people fighting for rights and ideals will stand for as long as they need to.

The only reason Lew hasn't been approached, and Nate should fucking well know this, is that nobody has the power to simply realize somebody has great observation skills! Except Nate, I guess. Which means Nate should totally well know it even more!

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 Nate's mouth went sly for a second.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh no. A mouth going sly doesn't sound like the kind of way you describe somebody who isn't about to say something racist.

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 "You appear qualified, I should say."

* * * * * * * * * *

"I need a guy like you who doesn't have any preconceived notions of justice, concerned with only himself, and who can spot an immigrant in a crowd so we can shake him down!"

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 "No experience with any of that."

* * * * * * * * * *

Lew is one of those people who avoid having to care by always saying, "I'm not political." When politics means caring about only certain types of people, you'd better fucking get political real soon. I'd rather not say I'm political either! I'd love to say, "No experience with any of that," when somebody talks about cops killing Black Americans! I just want to play The Temple of Elemental Evil computer role-playing game for the eighth time and not worry about systemic racism and authoritarian movements to entrench the ideas of old white wealthy men! I have enough to worry about! But guess what? I do care about that shit! I care about making the world a better place. And guess what that means? It means change. So if you care about changing the world for the better, you are against conservative and traditional values that want to keep the world the same, with all its advantages for some and disadvantages for others. So fuck saying, "No experience with any of that." That's libertarian speak for "The individual is responsible for themselves and I'm just going to ignore how, in my ideal world, that would mean we're all fighting for survival against anything corporations choose to do for profit, or how systemic racism rooted in the founding of this country still has its tendrils in equality today. If I'm okay and successful and I never got shot by cops, everybody can do it too!"

Now I'm all worked up just because Lew was all, "I keep my head down!"

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 "See, it's not safecrackers, embezzlers, murderers, spouses on the run, none of the dime-novel stuff, put all that out of your head. Here in Chi, this year of our Lord, it's all about the labor unions, or as we like to call them, anarchistic scum," said Nate Privett.

* * * * * * * * * *

Here's Nate expressly showing his true colors rather than exposing them through off-hand comments and stacks of pancakes. But a close reader knew this was coming!

What Nate is saying is that regular detective work doesn't pay much. What really pays is infiltrating labor unions for the corporate money-pants elite and causing trouble so that the public sees labor unions as anarchist troublemakers instead of workers fighting for a fair and equitable work environment. Some guy trying to catch his wife cheating is hardly going to be able to pay for all the long hours of surveillance. But some corporate fat cat has plenty of money to throw at you for the simple act of othering labor unions so that the general masses see them as a threat to life and property.

Nothing's fucking changed!

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 He poured syrup on a towering stack of pancakes out of which butter melted and ran.

* * * * * * * * * *

Leisurely and luxuriously, Nate Privett is about to tell Lew Basnight all bout the evils of unions and immigrant labor. Is what I suspect! He seemed like a dick when Randolph met with him and he seems like a dick now.

Remember Nate's first description in this chapter: "A plump and dapper individual . . . buying domestic cheroots." Cheroots are cheap cigars, cheaper even, I presume, if they're made domestically. So he looks nice, he's well fed, and he buys cheap cigars. When he eats, it's a towering stack of pancakes full of butter and syrup. I'm getting a really unflattering image of a low-to-middle income believer in capitalism, earning his money while walking on the heads of those worse off than him, like Legolas fighting orcs while standing on the heads of dwarves in barrels.

I just re-watched (and read!) The Hobbit so I'll probably be using a lot of Hobbit metaphors and analogies during the next few weeks.

The bottom line is that Nate seems like a grotesque and gluttonous human being with shitty priorities. Maybe all of that evidence isn't completely, um, evident but I think I know a shit human being when I see one. Also remember he sent Lew aboard the Inconvenience to spy on "anarchists" which is definitely the detective agency codeword for "unionists." He may as well be a Pinkerton.

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 "Ironworkers' Union," he nodded. "After enough of 'em, a man begins to develop an ear."

* * * * * * * * * *

The Iron Workers Union wasn't founded until 1896. So Nate Privett doesn't have as good an ear as he thinks he does. Or maybe it's even better and he can hear future bombings? Being that Chicago was a burgeoning battleground for unions and workers' rights, and because it was the first place to truly begin building iron and steel buildings (due to a new ordnance prohibiting wooden buildings in downtown Chicago after the Great Fire in 1871), a movement among ironworkers had begun and maybe they were calling themselves the "Ironworkers' Union" before the actual Iron Workers Union that was formed in 1896 and exists today.
    The essence of Nate's statement is that workers from different unions and associations, all being used and bled dry by employers, were using bombs in their fight for 8 hour days, health & safety, and living wages. And because they all made their own bombs, and bombings were so frequent, Nate now had an ear for it.
    Mostly it just sounds to me like Nate is playing up the chaos because he's one of those jerks definitely on the side of the employers and big business. I mean, it's not like he's going to make any money off of immigrant workers barely being paid enough to take care of their families.

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 In the near and far distance, explosions, not always to be identified in the next day's newspapers, now and then sent leisurely rips through the fabric of the day, to which Nate Privett pretended to be listening.

* * * * * * * * * *

This has been a pretty slow section that hasn't really needed much commentary or explication. That's the problem with a project like this, especially being done by somebody who hasn't previously read Against the Day at least once. But that's okay because you never know when one of these moments will mean something more later in the book (which is why having previously read it would be helpful). And by concentrating on each line separately, hopefully they'll more fully embed themselves within my mind. Although on the down side, this project will take nine years so how likely am I going to remember one of these early lines seven years down the line?!

"explosions, not always to be identified in the next day's newspapers"
In other words, some explosions are politically acceptable to cover and some might just upset the general masses. If the police blew up an abandoned property where immigrants were squatting, it probably wouldn't get a mention. If anarchists blew up some machinery during a strike, you better believe it will be covered.
    Also some of the explosions are probably mundane everyday explosions by the railroad company or the meat packing industry or construction workers. I don't claim to know what industries regularly blow things up but those sound like three that would totally make blowing things up part of their business model.

"which Nate Privett pretended to be listening"
How does one pretend to listen to explosions happening around you? Aren't you simply automatically hearing them? Or does Pynchon mean Nate is making an excessive show of listening to the explosions? Like nodding and cocking his head to the side when one goes off, perhaps putting one finger in the air as if to say, "There! There! Now that was a good one!"
    Nate's pretending to listen might make more sense when he gets a chance to explain in the next sentence!

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 His companion introduced himself as Nate Privett, personnel director at White City Investigations, a detective agency.

* * * * * * * * * *

I guess I've just been assuming, up until this point, that this guy was Nate Privett. I probably shouldn't do that. I should probably read this as literally as I read The Bible, using only the evidence supported directly by the text! Jumping to conclusions and needing to control people's behavior is what made the story of Onan into some kind of anti-masturbation allegory instead of a commentary on breaking contracts and disobeying your parents.

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 Everybody here knew Lew, usually, knew his face, but this morning, being transfigured and all, it was like he pass unidentified.

* * * * * * * * * *

Could Lew's moment of clarity, the moment on the bus where the light changed and he began to see things differently . . . could that represent his crossing the boundary through to another dimension/timeline? Has he literally transcended to a new plane of existence yet again? This new reality is the actual reality of Against the Day where he meets one of the characters already established in the book. The evidence that he's once again found himself in a new version of Chicago is that nobody recognizes him in a place he's always previously been recognized. Sure, perhaps his sense of self and his place in the scheme of things has been transfigured to such a degree that it's also altered his outward appearance and mannerisms. But that's just as unlikely as my interdimensional travel suggestion!

The bottom line is that he's definitely changed in some tangible way, some way that's not just a quirk of his own brain chemistry or sense of perception. His change has had an effect on the outside world around him as well, so much so that he's now unrecognizable.

This could be a metaphor for becoming sober, or for being born again. The idea that it's not just an abstract concept for the person undergoing the change. It's as literal and real as anything else in the world. The idea is that there exists a literal sense of grace that can descend upon a person and change everything about their world.

I mean, I don't buy it. I think people have these transcendent experiences in mostly selfish ways. It's not like my father had his moment of clarity when I was two and he was abandoning his family for drink. No, he waited until I was eighteen and drinking was literally destroying his life before he decided, "Oh, I have a disease that I can't control and now I'm going to get better and maybe my son will still want to have a relationship with me!" Ha ha! So funny.

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 In the cafeteria next door, the early crowd had been and gone.

* * * * * * * * * *

In the cafeteria next door, the early crowd had been and gone,
Talking of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the dusk, the dawn, the night, the day,
I have measured out my life with anime.

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 "You had breakfast?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Why, Nate? You need Lew to describe it to you in excruciating detail?

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 "Not really. Just, nobody ever asks."

* * * * * * * * * *

Just because nobody asks if you have some kind of photographic memory, it doesn't mean it isn't fucking amaxing.

Nope, nope. Still not working. Sorry.

I'm still perplexed how Nate Privett knew Lew had this power. I'm just going to have to believe that Nate tests the observation skills of everybody he meets because he's always looking for new detectives. It's the only rational explanation.

And if there's one thing I demand from my Pynchon novels, it's rational explanations!

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 "Amazing."

* * * * * * * * * *

Who else thinks "amazing" should be spelled with an "x"?

"Amaxing."

No, you know what. That was an LSD thought. It only worked for a moment when I thought I was touching some greater truth in the universe. But upon closer ezamination, it proved to be a stupid thought.

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 "Shiny black little trap, three springs, brass fittings, bay gelding about four years old, portly gent in a slouch hat and a yellow duster, why?"

* * * * * * * * * *

As far as I can tell, since I can't differentiate between a trap with two springs or three, bronze or brass fittings, and any type of horse, this is basically what Lew saw:

You'll have to imagine the chubby man in the yellow duster and slouch hat. And also the color.

To help you envision the man, here is his slouch hat:

And here's Selena Gomez modelling his yellow duster:

The first image in my head when I read "yellow duster" was of Curious George's foster parent, the Man in the Yellow Hat. But apparently he doesn't wear a duster and the image I have of him in my mind is of some Elseworlds' Old West cowboy version of him.

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 "Notice things. What was that just went by the window?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Still the most remarkable part of this interaction between Lew and Nate is that Nate noticed a guy who notices things using no evidence. But I guess that's why he's the boss of White City Investigations!

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 "What?"

* * * * * * * * * *

"What?"?! You're telling me Lew's got a visual photographic memory but he has an inability to comprehend conversations? What is he confused about?! Here's how the conversation went:

"How many cigars are in that box?"
"Seventeen."
"Not many people can do that?"
"What?"

No, no. I'm being too cynical! I suppose Lew could have meant, "What? Count?" or "What? Recognize cigars?" or "What? Perform tricks at the request of strangers?" I suppose the "What?" is supposed to indicate that Lew's visual memory is such an ingrained part of him that he doesn't realize what he just did was unique or special.

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 "You know not everybody can do that."

* * * * * * * * * *

Not everybody can tell how many cigars are in a box after a quick glance. Know something else not everybody can do? Recognize a person who can tell how many cigars are in a box after a quick glance after a quick glance.

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 "Seventeen," said Lew without any hesitation the other man could detect.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Seventeen. There's seventeen, George. Tell me about the cigars, George. How many are we going to have? Say 'Seventeen, Lenny.' Right, George? And we can roll them and humidify them and smoke them?"
    *BLAM*

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 He watched Lew for a while, just short of staring, before asking, with a nod at the display, "That box on the bottom shelf—how many colorado-claros left in it? Without looking, I mean."

* * * * * * * * * *

What kind of super observation skills does it take for a person to observe that another person has super observation skills? This guy just ran into Lew and he's asking him to perform Rainman tricks on fatter, juicier versions of toothpicks? Why would he suspect that Lew knew how many cigars were left in a box after having glanced at the box briefly? And if you have super observation skills like that, why would you need somebody else with the same skills?

Oh wait! I know the answer to that question! In fact, I knew the answer to that question long before I rhetorically asked it! If you're running a detective agency, you need as many people with super observation skills as possible. I don't know if this is Nate Privett because I don't remember if he's plump and dapper but I'm sure he's, at least, a business associate. We're finally getting to the story about how Lew Basnight found himself working for White City Investigations.

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 A plump and dapper individual was in buying domestic cheroots.

* * * * * * * * * *

How dapper can he be if he's buying "domestic cheroots"? That's like calling a guy who just popped in to the convenience store to pick up a six pack of Budweiser "fancy."

Whenever I hear/read the word dapper, I think of this: "To speak of it is not too dapper; it was invented by a man named Crapper" from Scavenger Hunt. It's probably why my initial reaction to the word is to think it has to do with attitude and demeanor rather than dress. Which you already knew after reading my initial comment on the line while probably thinking, "A guy can buy cheap cigars and still look nice while doing so, you stupid twat." And to that, I must say, "Touché! I am, in fact, a stupid twat!"

Anyway, it's 1893 and this guy can afford a cigar, even if it's a cheap one. Isn't everybody in that position sort of required by social contract in the 1800s to look "dapper"? How horrified would the people of the 19th century be to see the bullshit clothing modern people wear to walk around in public? And almost everybody sans hat! The shock! The horror!

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 It was that early hour in cigar stores all over town when boys are fetching in bricks that have been soaking all night in buckets of water, to be put into the display cases to keep the inventory humidified.

* * * * * * * * * *

Is this a morning wood joke? Maybe combined with a wet dream joke? Boys soaking in "water" all night? The early hour at the cigar store. Keeping the "inventory" "humidified."

Ha ha! I'm laughing so hard! It's just like my penis's teenage years!

Hmm. Now I'm doubting myself. What if this wasn't a metaphor for morning boners and wet dreams? What if it's just Pynchon not wanting the 1800s cigar store research he did go to waste? I suppose it could be both if you're desperate enough to read as large a percentage of Pynchon as you can get away with as penis jokes.

Ha ha. "Humidified." So true!

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 He must have descended to the sidewalk and entered a cigar store.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh! Oh! Cigars are phalluses! It's been too long since we've had a good Pynchon penis pun! Did I just say in my last post that we live too long? Well, I lived just the right amount! I hope Pynchon doesn't disappoint me! I'm like an athlete on a Grecian urn right now!

But before we get to whatever boner joke Pynchon has up his sleeve, I should probably think about this line. I guess what it's saying is that in Lew's moment of clarity, in those seconds of reverie of the strange light and the odd feeling of revelation that descended upon him, Lew had a moment of highway hypnosis. But as a pedestrian and not as a driver and/or passenger on public transportation. He sort of sleep walked off the carriage/bus/"L" train or whatever and wandered into the cigar store. Is it because he's found his way back into his furrow and the cigar store is his destiny? Or is this just more of his delirium?

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 He understood that things were exactly what they were. It seemed more than he could bear.

* * * * * * * * * *

Occasionally I'll break my "One Line at a Time" rule because the lines need to remain together. A semicolon would have been nice here, Pynchon! Maybe think of bloggers who will eventually get sued into taking down their blog because it's reprinting your whole book one line at a time when you write your next novel, okay?!

Lew's moment of clarity, written simply, and heartbreakingly familiar.

There's a feeling I've been having lately, at 49, that I truly never expected to feel: humans live too long. My entire life was always plagued by the idea that our lifespans are so short. And yet, lately, it seems like all the color has worn off my surroundings. It's like being in a library where every book has been read. And it's realizing that a large percentage of the other humans on this planet are selfish, violent bullies stripped of empathy and compassion.

I re-watched The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies last night and was gutted by the elves going to war. Before one of them even died, I was heartbroken by the fact one of them might. How does one justify the sacrifice of immortality for a brief and bloody conflict? I absolutely didn't judge Thranduil when he was ready to walk away from the war. A man is sacrificing maybe twenty or thirty years; an elf is gambling eternity. Sure, a life is a life. But Thranduil is fucking right when he asks what the difference is if a dwarf dies today or in ten years or in a hundred. I was on his side so hard even though he was meant to be seen as a selfish isolationist not willing to do what was needed to save the world.

I had a dream once where an old woman was asking me about my cat, Judas. Eventually she asked if I'd kill my pet to save the world. And I easily and quickly answered, "No." I told that dream to my cousin and, years later, she asked me if I remembered that dream I had. And I said, "Yes, of course." She said, "You were right." She hadn't thought so at the time. But she eventually came to realize the truth of it. There is only so much we can give for this world; some times we are asked too much. Not only would I not have killed Judas to save the world; I would have given my life to save my best friend.

I miss him so Goddamned much.

Maybe it's not that we live too long. Maybe 49 isn't the problem. Maybe it's that my grief over a damn cat simply overwhelmed me and stole the colors from my world. Maybe Tauriel's grief of Kili, and the loss of love, and the need to have love taken from her, affected me more than I want to admit. Maybe immortality is too much to bear when heartbreak and loss exist. Of course, that's part of the reason Thranduil decides to abandon the battle. He's not an unfeeling king. Tauriel has lost one dwarf she recently fell in love with and it's too much to bear; how much then is Thranduil suffering upon looking at his friends lying mutilated all across the battlefield?

Heartbreak is too much to bear and yet, at the same time, it's entirely worth it. Because it's inevitable when one allows themselves to love so much.

"It seemed more than he could bear." Such a simple sentence full of power. What a great description of life and everything in it.

Sorry for rambling.

Lew, having his moment of clarity, seeming almost like a mystical revelation, actually winds up doing the opposite: he sees through the veil of hope and magic and possibility to stare the mundane world directly in the face. This is it, Lew. This is life. Troth is gone. Live with it. And he thinks, "I don't know if I can."

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 Lew found himself surrounded by a luminosity new to him, not even observed in dreams, nor easily attributable to the smoke-inflected sun beginning to light Chicago.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh man! I forgot this book has something to do with light! Or, at least, this chapter being that it's called "The Light Over the Ranges." And also there's that stuff about photography which we've seen a bit of with Merle but we'll see much more of in a later section. Here's a reminder of how the quality of the light, being the thing which allows vision to happen, changes perception.

Lew is having a mystical experience akin to Reverend Cherrycoke's transformation in Ludgate prison (unless it was the Tower of London, the big liar). But I can't easily attribute Lew's experience to ergot. Although it is the early 1890s so he's probably recently ingested some weird chemical, drug, or toxin that's warped his brain. Maybe just inhaling all the cow meat in the air can cause a guy to get a little wonky in the morning.

But does the cause even matter? Shouldn't a mystical experience be simply taken as a mystical experience even if the cause is something explicable? In a tangible world of science and understanding, does a mystical experience have to be completely unexplained in any way? What does the cause matter to the person having the experience? They're going to be transformed in some way whether or not somebody can say, "Oh, yeah, chemicals flooded your brain in that traumatic moment and lack of oxygen as you were bleeding out. It wasn't actually angels visiting you and declaring you're the most special and unique person ever." The brain breaking out of its furrow is a powerful thing. Seeing the world the same way every single day because everything in the brain is in the same working order and then suddenly the brain decides everything is absolutely different? That's fucking powerful. It's why so many people get religious and weird over hallucinogens.

Something happened to Lew's brain in this moment. Clarity. Revelation. Atonement. Whatever it was, he suddenly saw the world differently, "in a new light," as they say. Everything was about to change for him.

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 Passengers snorted, scratched, and read the newspaper, sometimes all at once, while others imagined that they could get back to some kind of vertical sleep.

* * * * * * * * * *

They're animals just like the horses. Maybe worse. Broken. Trained to stay in their furrow, allowed small pleasures like scratching and sleep and access to bureaucratically and politically curated news stories. The only delirium they know is that of the dreams that come when they sleep, and so they attempt, whenever possible, to slip back into slumber.

Maybe I'm being too cynical! Maybe these are all just actions that produce small and varied vocalizations that contribute to the morning overture. The trumpet-like snort. The washboard sounds of scratching. The occasional mutter or assent over something read. The snores of those managing the vertical sleep. It's like a cartoon and so it's way more upbeat an interpretation of the scene than my initial one.

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 The horses stepped along in their own time and space.

* * * * * * * * * *

The horses can't comprehend what they're a part of. They simply go the way they're asked to go, thinking whatever horses are capable of thinking about the chore. What does a tame horse think of the tasks it's asked to perform? And how rude is it that we say, after taming a horse, that we "broke" it? That's a terrible self-confession of the sin committed on the horse! "Oh, yeah, that horse? It used to be a perfectly good horse doing its own horse things and being all horsey. But then I broke the fuck out of it. Totally not a horse anymore. Like that lamp I knocked off the end table. Just doesn't do lamp stuff anymore. Never be the same. Just a wreck of its former self. I'm so proud! Of the terror I inflicted on the horse, of course, and not what I did to the lamp."

It's like that Douglas Coupland quote from Generation X (unless it isn't but I love this quote so read it):

"And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened."

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 Girl amanuenses in little Leghorn straw hats and striped shirtwaists with huge shoulders that took up more room in the car than angels' wings dreamed with contrary feelings of what awaited them on upper floors of brand-new steel-frame "skyscrapers."

* * * * * * * * * *

"amanuenses"
People employed to write or type what somebody else dictates.

"Leghorn straw hats"

"contrary feelings of what awaited them"
I imagine those contrary feelings are steeped in the sexist culture and sexist work environment and sexist society and all its expectations and implications. The girl's contrary feelings probably stem from her work place being her main public locality to meet a potential husband (other than church) and so she perhaps dreams of meeting a genuinely good guy at work but knowing that mostly she's just going to get advances and sexual innuendo from cads and misogynists. Or maybe I'm thinking about this in too sexist a way, being programmed to think of everything in the past as even more sexist than the sexism pervading culture today! Maybe their contrary feelings are simply "work is boring" but "looking out of the windows of a modern skyscraper is exciting." Or maybe the contrary feelings were "working way up in the sky is terrifying" and "but I need this job to feed my starving kids!" I don't know! Just like a lot of Pynchon's writing, it leaves certain things vague so that the reader can fill in the negative spaces.

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 A rolled umbrella dented a bowler hat, words were exchanged.

* * * * * * * * * *

Fucking umbrella wielders. Back in college, for an assignment to write an argumentative essay, I wrote about how terrible umbrellas and their wielders were. The professor actually thanked me for writing a humorous essay because everybody always took writing essays as an exercise in serious business.

Just to clarify for the horrible people who carry their umbrellas everywhere: I'm not against the use of umbrellas. Just like I'm not against dogs. But, in general, umbrella wielders and dog owners are unbearable people.

Just to clarify: I'm being hyperbolic and facetious. If you love poking people in the eye with your umbrella while diverting water from your head to the shoulders of those around you, or you love letting your dog run around off-leash while constantly screaming at frightened people, "Don't worry! He doesn't bite! He's friendly!" then don't let me dissuade you! Go for it! Be the best jerk you can be!

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 Men went on grooming mustaches with gray-gloved fingers.

* * * * * * * * * *

Chicago rapid transit in the 1890s was just like being on Portland rapid transit in 2021.

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 Despite the sorry history of rapid transit in the city, the corporate neglect and high likelihood of collision, injury, and death, the weekday-morning overture blared along as usual.

* * * * * * * * * *

"corporate neglect"
Can you even use the term "neglect" when corporations pay for studies to determine which would cost them more, improving the safety of their product or paying off civil suits to those harmed by them? That's not even "willful neglect." That's just capitalism.

"the weekday-morning overture blared along as usual"
There's no medley of numbers from a play about weekday mornings happening here. At least I don't think there is. Sometimes Pynchon pulls weird shit like that and suddenly a Pavlovian researcher is involved in an intricate dance number with a bunch of mice and rats. But here it's just a metaphor for all the daily, mundane things the riders of the city's rapid transit are involved in on their way to work or school. Daily rituals that consume their attention even though simply riding the rapid transit is a dangerous affair. Perhaps more-so consumed by their activities as a form of denial of death's all-too-possible possibility. So Pynchon is simply comparing this cacophonic group of disparate activities to the mixing and combining of musical numbers of a staged production.

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 One mild and ordinary work-morning in Chicago, Lew happened to find himself on a public conveyance, head and eyes inclined nowhere in particular, when he entered, all too briefly, a condition he had no memory of having sought, which he later came to think of as grace.

* * * * * * * * * *

Here, Lew has a moment quite similar to a moment in Methodist founder John Wesley's life:

"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

It's a moment that may possibly have turned Wesley's mind away from the stricture of predestination, supported by his Methodist co-founder George Whitefield. Wesley chose to believe, as Drave seemed to be telling Lew earlier, God's grace is freely given. And not just to an elect few as Whitefield's predestination suggested. It's interesting in Lew's case that he wasn't seeking this moment because it seems to me most people who suddenly feel saved by Christ are those most desirous of the knowledge of their salvation. But Lew comes to it accidentally, probably because it's not a religious state of grace. It's simply a moment of clarity, as they say in the twelve steps. Perhaps even a moment of enlightenment.

This is the moment Drave suggested would come to Lew, whether he worked toward it or not. Drave even seemed to suggest working toward it was a waste of time, or busy work, because if it were to happen, it were to happen, to be tautological about it.

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 Some vice-president or something.

* * * * * * * * * *

This is the type of description given by somebody who absolutely knows every detail of the guy his ex-wife married after the divorce and he's downplaying it so that he doesn't seem invested. The "or something" means Lew knows the company he's vice-president of, the location of it, his hours, the man's name, and where he generally goes to lunch during the work week.

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 Troth was long gone, remarried it seemed the minute the decree came down, and rumored now to be living on Lake Shore Drive someplace up north of Oak Street.

* * * * * * * * * *

Troth was now out of Lew's reach, whether he liked it or not. His penance had begun in earnest. Although, according to this description, he's keeping pretty close tabs on her. Knows exactly where she lives and how long it took her to get married after the divorce. "Rumored" probably just means "absolutely and positively" because Lew has been keeping tabs on her. It must be one of his skills since he joined a detective agency.

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 Parasols and sidelong glances reappeared.

* * * * * * * * * *

The wind has died down, the sun has reappeared, and people are horny.

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 Winds off the lake moderated.

* * * * * * * * * *

It was spring! The winter winds died down so people could enjoy going outside without some kind of crazy negative sixty degree wind chill factor.

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 Spring arrived, wheelfolk appeared in the streets and parks, in gaudy striped socks and long-billed "Scorcher" caps.

* * * * * * * * * *

This is another language. What are wheelfolk? What are "Scorcher" caps? What are . . . okay, fine, I know what striped socks are. Although not the gaudy kind. I only know the ones we used to wear in the 70s that went up past your knees and had like three thick stripes at the top, usually of blue and red. Wearing those socks for years caused me to wear booty socks for decades.

"wheelfolk"
Cyclists. People riding bicycles. I don't know if bicycles had chains back then or the pedals were just attached to the front wheel. But I suppose if they didn't have chains, wearing long old socks was just part of the look as opposed to being necessary to tuck your pants into so your pants didn't get caught up in the chain.

"long-billed "Scorcher" caps"
I can't find anything that might be a style of cap called a "Scorcher" from the 1800s but modern "Scorcher" caps seem to be Baseball caps. The "long-billed" part sort of gives it away as the same thing but then it could also be a cycling cap as well.
    I suspect it's what we think of as a bicycle cap but with a long bill since wheelfolk who rode fast were called Scorchers, especially the women. I suppose a man riding fast was just a man being a man on a bike, just like all the other men who, totally obviously, ride fast and hard too! But a woman who took cycling seriously and raced the boys? She was a total Scorcher! Pynchon's use here is probably gender neutral, simply suggesting the kind of long-billed cap, threaded with elastic, that serious cyclists might be found wearing. What other kind of hat would stay on your head? And it was the 1890s so you couldn't be seen out of the house without a hat covering your head.

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 "Not sure. Maybe."

* * * * * * * * * *

This is the last line of this section within a section (meaning Pynchon doesn't begin a new section on a new page (I mean, he does but it's just a coincidence of space here!)) depicted, like my breaks between the quotes and my rambling, by a line of asterisks. At this point, I'm not sure what the next section is about. But what I do know is that this whole story about Lew Basnight and his time at the Esthonia Hotel was seemingly telling the story about why he was now working for Nate Privett's detective agency. Maybe I simply misunderstood. That makes sense because I'm a natural at misunderstanding things. I also stubbornly stick to the misunderstanding for as long as possible, like that time Colleen Henline told me that "Rock and Roll All Nite" was Poison doing a cover of a Kiss song and I was all, "How dare you! This is Poison at their finest!"
    Hmm, that might be my most embarrassing confession ever on the Internet.

Anyway, Drave can't commit to doing the thing he's asking Lew to commit to. I don't know what that means but I think it means Lew Basnight might want to rethink his association with Drave. Or it could mean Drave is just a really straight shooter!

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 "Would you?"

* * * * * * * * * *

What a question. Would you take a chance at something totally different if it meant you were losing all that you previously had? Not many people ask that question in exactly this way. But many people love to point out how every weird and remarkable thing that happened in their life led to the place they are now, and they say things like, "I'm glad I never had that super duper awesome incredible experience that I chickened out of having because then I never would have met my lovely husband Ronald!" And isn't that kind of the same thing? They're saying, "No, I wouldn't want that." Although aren't they sort of just easing the regret they feel for missing out on certain experiences in their youth? They're justifying their regrets based on how seemingly happy they are now.
    But imagine if they had done that other thing. Guess where they'd be? They'd probably be in a great relationship saying, "I'm glad I didn't turn down that super duper awesome incredible experience that I almost chickened out of having because then I never would have met my lovely husband Arthur!"
    What I'm suggesting is that I don't think it matters and I don't think you have a choice and asking the question is just a means of calling up regrets and justifying their existence with the life you're currently leading. I suppose the question is most easy to answer by people who are in a terrible and painful state in their lives. I'm sure they'd be quite happy with the do over.

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 "It's something you don't want?"

* * * * * * * * * *

What Drave is offering Lew (maybe not literally in that it's not Drave's to give . . . he's just suggesting the possibility) is a second chance. And he's perplexed that maybe Lew doesn't want it. Which is understandable since what Lew seems to mostly want is Troth back. What I'm not sure of is if he's being literal and wants his wife back or if he's being figurative and wants the truth of his life revealed back to him.

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 "What do I do with that?"

* * * * * * * * * *

Lew is unsure how to make his delirium productive, I suppose. "What good is knowing I'm off my trolley and that that's pretty much the modern equivalent of the etymology of delirium? How am I supposed to use that to be productive? And what does productive even mean in this context? I just live this new life and forget about the old one? Is this digging a new furrow? Who the hell are you and what the fuck is happening?!"

As you can see, I'm a worse writer than Thomas Pynchon. But you already knew that if you were reading my Mason & Dixon blog where I restate all of his 18th century dialogue.

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 "'Most people,'" not raising his voice, though something in Lew jumped as if he had, "are dutiful and dumb as oxen. Delirium literally means going out of a furrow you've been plowing. Think of this as a productive sort of delirium."

* * * * * * * * * *

"Think of this as a productive sort of delirium"
So Drave doesn't want Lew to get back on track. Drave doesn't want Lew to "get back to the way most people live." Drave want's Lew to see his derailing as a chance to change. I was going to say "do better" but I think that implies too much judgment on the quality of the change and I think Drave is ambivalent to that aspect. His description of most people as "dutiful and dumb oxen" suggests (or is it outright? I'm being too wishy-washy, aren't I?!) a negative connotation to your trolley remaining on the tracks or your plow staying within the furrow.
    Delirium is characterized "by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence of thought and speech." Lew is definitely suffering from illusions and his life itself has become incoherent, first and foremost his inability to remember the sins of his past. And now Drave and this weird Chicago neighborhood and the Esthonia Hotel/Maze and his sudden immersion in a vague 12 Step Program and/or religious cult. He has definitely jumped the furrow. Now Drave wants him to use that to move his life forward. He wants him to engage in the other aspect of delirium, I would think: wild excitement and ecstasy. To jump from your furrow is to escape the dreary mundanity of the life you thought you had to lead. To escape from the plow and the harness should induce excitement and ecstasy.

I've never known the etymology of the word delirium before (unless Neil Gaiman discusses it in The Sandman and then I knew it for half a second before forgetting it again). I see it as a lovely idea. And yet the use of this picture—your plow escaping your furrow—was given such negative connotations. Delirium is something you don't want. It's a bad thing because you've somehow split from reality. But what good is reality to the ox strapped to a plow being driven in a straight line over and over again? The main connotation of delirium is that escaping from your life, what is your expected reality, is a bad thing and shouldn't be done. You've gone crazy now. You need help to get back into your mold. It's authoritarian propaganda. "Keep in line or it's the nut house for you." (Again, this reminds me of Reverend Cherrycoke from Mason & Dixon.) But the second definition of delirium . . .wild excitement and ecstasy . . .that's the one that I'd embrace. Some might think you've gone crazy, throwing your life away as you skip out of your furrow and trundle off across everybody else's furrows and out of the field. But there's excitement in that. Adventure! A promise to be who you want no matter the cost.
    It's Enid boarding the strange bus at the end of Ghost World. It's Chief Bromden throwing the tub room control panel through the window to escape the asylum. It's Orr crashing his plane over and over again practicing until he gets the chance to escape the army and the war and the insanity of it all in Catch-22. It's me leaving my home town in my 1972 VW bus with only a box of comic books and a large stack of tape cassettes.

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 "Going off my trolley. And you're trying to help me get back to the way most people live, 's that it?"

* * * * * * * * * *

"Going off my trolley"
This means going mad. So this is another interpretation of what's happening to Lew. Has he simply gone insane? In a way, can't that be seen as losing one's path to their destiny? If we assume madness as some kind of outside affliction, couldn't it be seen as the cause of derailing so many people's destinies, causing them to miss out on the life they were supposed to lead had they kept their sanity? This is a philosophical argument because we can just as easily believe that insanity was their destiny and there was no way to avoid it.
    In Mason & Dixon, Reverend Cherrycoke is banished from England after being declared insane to rebuke him for his leaflets proclaiming certain personages in authority as criminals and miscreants. Being declared mad is a punishment for not keeping your trolley on the track expected of you. Cherrycoke realizes that his name, the thing that is almost interchangeable with his actual identity, never belonged to him. Names are labels for bureaucratic use by authoritarians to keep watch on and to punish those who bounce from their intended rails. Lew is suffering much the same problem. Lew doesn't remember sinning but he's paying the price for somebody using his name (presumably him but, well, he doesn't remember it) which is now tied to the horrible reputation. His name is the signifier for others to treat him punitively.
    I suppose Tyrone Slothrop also goes mad in quite a number of ways in Gravity's Rainbow but I can't quite pluck out any specific scenes from my memory right now. But as for names, he does, in a relatively close space to the center of the book, become dubbed Rocketman. With his new name, he accomplishes things Slothrop probably wouldn't have had the nerve to accomplish and finds himself in places he almost certainly would never have found himself as Slothrop. Like a rocket blasting free from Earth's gravitational pull, Slothrop frees himself by shedding the name that doesn't actually belong to him and taking up an anonymous superhero moniker.

"you're trying to help me get back to the way most people live"
I don't know if Drave is trying to do that, exactly. At this point, I'm not sure what Drave's interest in Lew is. Unless Drave is the devil and he's trying to grab up another soul. Otherwise what does Drave have to gain in this matter? Unless this is some kind of Scientology scheme and he's trying to get Dave back out in the real world to become a success and to owe that success to Drave's weird community, kicking back monthly payments to Drave.

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 "It's nothing supernatural. Most people have a wheel riding up on a wire, or some rails in the street, some kind of guide or groove, to keep them moving in the direction of their destiny. But you keep bouncing free. Avoiding penance and thereby definition."

* * * * * * * * * *

"It's nothing supernatural"
This is a weird statement in the middle of what is a pretty supernatural discussion, being about sin and repentance. I suppose we could consider it metaphysical, or philosophical, perhaps scientifically metaphorical. But Drave is ultimately trying to point out what he's describing must be part of the natural order of the world. Destiny as a scientific principle encoded in the fabric of reality, probably, according to all the new age people who don't understand it, based on quantum physics.

"Most people have a wheel riding up on a wire, or some rails in the street, some kind of guide or groove, to keep them moving in the direction of their destiny"
Drave is suggesting free will does not exist. But on a scientific level, remember! Nothing paranormal about having no free will. But I totally get that. If you view a life from the end of the life back towards the beginning, you see a full picture of that life. At that point, the life is unchangeable. It is set in stone. You can say whatever the elderly person did or who they became was destiny. Because that's what happened to them. Nothing different could have happened to them because of the way time works. That's it. Their one life.
    So if we can see how life is unchangeable after having lived it, can we not expect it to work the other way around? Can we not look at a baby and realize their life is already plotted and complete? They have the illusion of choice as they age but can ultimately only choose a single path. They are headed toward their destiny because your destiny cannot be something that never happens to you, by definition.
    Scientifically, this doesn't rule out free will. We can perceive that a person is free to make their choices as they move through time. But we know each choice they make cannot be undone. So from an early perspective, it looks like free will. From a later perspective, it looks like destiny. Drave is pointing out that most people are on rails. For whatever reason, most of their choices are obvious or, in some way (chemical, environmental, genetic), pre-planned. But it does not mean you cannot go off the rails of the destiny expected of you. Philosophically, this can be looked on as somebody "bouncing free" of their destined path. And scientifically? Well, that gets into some philosophy of science stuff that probably verges on the paranormal whether Drave wants it to or not.

"But you keep bouncing free"
This can be read as Lew keeps moving away from his destiny simply in the standard "making the wrong choices" kind of way. But we know, scientifically, time doesn't work in a way which causes a person's life, at the end, to be different than what it was supposed to be. What a life becomes is what that life was always meant to become. So how, then, if this is not a paranormal concept, does Lew keep bouncing free of his destiny?
    My scientific theory is that he's dimension hopping. The only way to avoid your destiny is to hop timelines. Looking back at the timeline a person dies within gives one the full scope of "their" timeline. But we understand the idea of multiple timelines which branch out from one timeline, creating an infinite amount. If Lew jumped timelines, bounced free of his rails, he would be avoiding his destiny. Because he would now be in a timeline of a different Lew. And this would account for his lack of memory of his sin. Because in his original timeline, he avoided the sin that has ruined the life of the Lew in this timeline. Where did this Lew go? Who knows?! Perhaps all Lew Basnights have the ability to shift dimensions and they just sort of flip-flop all across infinite realities constantly. We're not concerned with that Lew though. This is the only Lew that matters to us, the readers.

"Avoiding penance and thereby definition"
I'll admit I'm unsure about the meaning of this line. Although why do I feel the need to admit that?! I'm unsure about my interpretation of loads and loads of lines in this novel but that doesn't stop me from blathering on. What is Drave driving at with this line?
    Perhaps the "avoiding penance" is the thing that causes Lew to jump timelines. He refuses to face any consequences for his actions in any particular timeline and so he jumps to a new dimension to avoid punishment. And by doing so, he avoids defining himself. Instead of learning from the past and building his personality based on successes and failures, he simply discards his past and begins anew in a new dimension. Discarding one's past could easily be seen as "avoiding definition." What are we if not the sum of our experiences? And then what are we if we bin those experiences whenever we dislike them? We are a blank slate. We are a word with no definition.