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 "Perhaps," one beaming Oriental suggested, "it was hallucinating you."

* * * * * * * * * *

At least this jerk is trying to be mysteriously philosophical about Lew's problem. A little metaphysical creativity never hurt anybody. Unless it was advice being given to somebody who really needed some sort of physical cure. But Lew's just being plagued by The Unknown Sin. If it was hallucinating him then that means the sin is real and Lew just a figment of someone or something's imagination. Which would explain why even people who haven't heard about the sin look upon Lew with disdain and disgust. Because they're looking directly at the sin!

I think this Oriental guy is onto something!

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 "Spontaneous Hallucination," diagnosed the more scientific among them.

* * * * * * * * * *

How is that scientific?! Maybe the fad of blaming spontaneous combustion on everything caused the more scientific-minded to simply begin appending "spontaneous" to all of their theories and diagnoses. To get the average populace excited about it. Sort of like modern day pharmaceutical adverts.

I mean, I don't even know how to interpret this answer. Other people are hallucinating your sins? You hallucinated the cover-up of your sin so you can't see it clearly? How is this advice?!

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 "Future lives," said other confident swamis.

* * * * * * * * * *

Past lives. Future lives. Am I in an X-men comic book now?

You know whom I wish had been shunned due to some perverse experience from their past? Scott Lobdell!

"swamis"
Why is Lew going to see swamis for advice? Maybe once somebody suggests "past lives" as a cause for your trouble, you go see a swami about them. But then who expects the swami to be all, "No no no no! Future lives! Now give me your money."

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 "Past lives," some assured him.

* * * * * * * * * *

What kind of advice is this?

"Why does everybody hate me? What did I do?" pleads Lew, hair falling out in great big nervous patches.
    "Past lives," assured the therapist slash conman slash prick.
    "I am going to become a detective, discover your darkest secret, and ruin you!" declared Lew now more angry than anxious.

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 The experts he went to for advice had little to tell him.

* * * * * * * * * *

Maybe this Lew Basnight sin is an analogy! Maybe this is actually referencing Pynchon and his critics! Pynchon is all, "What have I done wrong?! Why do people think I'm some unreadable academic wanna-be intellectual?" Except all the critics seem to love him and his sins (i.e. books) according to the blurbs on all of this books. Like this one:

"Heller. Barth. Vonnegut. And now Thomas Pynchon. Catch-22. The Sotweed Factor. Slaughterhouse-Five. And now Gravity's Rainbow."

Talk about a boring book blurb! Maybe that was just the publishing company's back cover copy. "You guys have all heard how great these books are, right?! Well now add this one to the list!" What intrigues me about this list is that I've owned The Sotweed Factor for as long as I've owned Gravity's Rainbow. I just read Gravity's Rainbow last year and it became one of my favorite books alongside Catch-22 and The Grapes of Wrath (I know it would have made more sense to add "and Slaughterhouse-Five" there but I just couldn't do it. I love all of Vonnegut but in a general miasma that includes all of his works in a giant cloud of vapor in my brain which doesn't distinguish his individual novels, essays, or stories). So I suppose I should get to reading The Sotweed Factor already, right?! I mean, it can't be any harder to read than Giles Goat-Boy?

I suspect Giles Goat-Boy was particularly difficult to read because I never attempted post-graduate academic work and that book seems to be all, "Hey? Remember all that shit we went through in graduate school?! Wasn't that silly but also super important because it was our entire universe and our lives depended on it?!" As a non-academic, the only part of Giles Goat-Boy I remember is when the woman bent over the desk in the summer dress.

"The experts"
What experts do you go to when your reputation has been ruined and you don't know why? It's not like they had ways of scrubbing the Internet of that racist photo you took with the other cheerleaders. Oh no! Unless "scrubbing the Internet" in 1893 was just murdering everybody who knew the horrible story?! Maybe that's how Lew stumbles into the detective business!