Out the window in the distance, contradicting the prairie, a mirage of downtown Chicago ascended to a kind of lurid acropolis, its light as if from nightly immolation warped to the red end of the spectrum, smoldering as if always just about to explode into open flames.
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"contradicting the prairie"
So instead of horizontal and boring, Lew's view was vertical and exciting!
"a mirage of downtown Chicago ascended to a kind of lurid acropolis"
I guess his view is mostly of the light of Chicago, shining up above the city. So he's seeing not the city but "a mirage" of the city, kind of floating up as if some kind of fortress on a hilltop, lurid due to the display of lights. Possibly he's also seeing a "Fata Morgana" of the city.
"its light as if from nightly immolation warped to the red end of the spectrum"
Light shifts to the red end of the spectrum when moving away from the viewer. Does this mean Lew or Chicago is moving further from the other? Or is this just meant to say the light of Chicago, which is normally the regular old yellow color, seems redder as it escapes the city, making the city look less like a city and more like something burning?
"smoldering as if always just about to explode into open flames"
Okay, not burning, not yet! But smoldering! As if Chicago is a powder keg just about ready to kick off and show the world something spectacular.
Whatever this description ultimately means, it's definitely a reminder of the time the whole city burnt to the ground in 1871. I doubt Lew's recount of his life before coming to work with Nate Privett's detective agency takes place over twenty years prior but if so, Lew might be having a prophetic vision in this scene! Nah, Lew is definitely not in his forties when he winds up on the Inconvenience. He's referred to as a young man at the beginning of the section and in no way would even a man of Pynchon's age, nearly 70, when he wrote this think of a forty year old as a young man. No wait. A seventy year old would almost certainly call me a young man in public even though I'm nearly fifty. But I don't think a writer would describe a middle-aged character as young. That would simply be poor writing.
This description of Chicago, contradicting the prairie, is certainly one of potential energy, a vision of urban life and newfangled technology ready to propel us, through an explosive release of that potential, into the future.
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