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 It would've helped if he could remember, but all he could produce was this peculiar haze.

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This whole Lew Basnight thing is some parody I'm not quite getting, isn't it? Some trope of literature that colors a character as sinful and despicable without ever allowing the reader to truly understand why. I've been too far outside of my college reading days. I think I re-read too many Xanth novels last year and destroyed a bunch of my academic memories. Or maybe it's just because for every great novel I read and subsequently let lapse in my memory, there's a section of my brain overflowing with the memories of a book like Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland. Why couldn't that be what Pynchon is referencing?!

"all he could produce was this peculiar haze"
This could be evidence that Lew Basnight is some kind of Dr. Jekyll figure, slipping into some deranged personality that delights in blasphemies. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published in 1886 although I guess that's neither Dr. Here nor Mr. There.

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 He became known as the Upstate-Downstate Beast.

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Apparently "Downstate Illinois" refers to the "down" side of Chicago which is in the Northeastern part of the state. So the "Upstate" part of his name is probably clarification that he's a Beast of the Chicago area and not the Southern Illinois area which is what most people might think when they hear "downstate." I know, not being familiar with Chicago or Illinois, I would never think "Downstate Illinois" referred to an area around Chicago. That's a ludicrous definition!

Anyway, Lew Basnight has committed a sin so unforgiveable that he's garnered a nickname usually reserved for Satan. The guy is a monster! Apparently. I don't know what he's done, or if he's done anything at all, but all of this circumstantial evidence has convinced me just like it's convinced seemingly everybody else. Where there's smoke, there's fire! Probably. I mean, I suppose it could be mist or clouds mistaken for smoke. But there's almost certainly fire if a bunch of people are screaming "Fire!" even if none of us can currently see it.