Hershel was large for one of his calling, looking less like a uniformed jockey than an ex-pugilist.
* * * * * * * * * *
Hershel is security. He's there to keep people from leaving. This is a cult and perhaps I was naïve to think it was an analogy of religion or Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm beginning to suspect this is an analogy of Scientology.
"Arrangements are in place, sir. Please go with Hershel now, and try to remember the way, for he won't want to show it to you again."
* * * * * * * * * *
Arrangements in place?! Forget The Twilight Zone. I think Lew has found himself in the Philip K. Dick short story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Maybe Lew was a powerful mob boss in Chicago who wanted a normal life and had his mind wiped! But now he's returned to the neighborhood where he was considered a hero of the people and they're all making accommodations for him. Or he had made the accommodations himself in the case he ever found himself back in this neighborhood.
Or it's probably some combination of my first theory, a mystical and/or scientific theory regarding interdimensional doppelgängers, and my second theory, the devil is trying to obtain Lew's soul.
The theory I don't believe is that Lew has just found himself amidst a bunch of really friendly and helpful people. It's more likely They all work for Them and Lew Basnight is Their Slothropian experiment for this novel.
"But I didn't bring anything, no luggage, not even money—which reminds me, how will I be paying for this?"
* * * * * * * * * *
This is when the lightning flashes during which the creepy shadows of bare tree branches briefly appear on the wall behind Lew looking like a ragged bony claw reaching out to pull out his very soul.
He couldn't be expected to find it on his own.
* * * * * * * * * *
There it is. The tag that assures me Pynchon was saying everything I suspected he was saying about self-help groups, both secular and non-secular. They profess to have the answers but they can't just give them to you for you to work out your own problems. The basic unspoken tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous is "You can't be expected to stop drinking on your own." Maybe it's spoken. I don't know! I've only gone as a guest to a bunch of meetings!
The basic blatantly spoken tenet of Christian dogma: "You can't be expected to find eternal salvation on your own." What can you find on your own? Enlightenment, maybe? But then that's been co-opted by Gurus who make loads of money and own fleets of Rolls Royces who say otherwise!
The only thing you can find on your own is an orgasm and people have a lot of negative shit to say about that as well.
When the application, having been sent off to some invisible desk up the other end of a pneumatic house-tube, at length came thumping back hand-stamped "Approved," Lew was told that one of the bellmen must conduct him to his room.
* * * * * * * * * *
The pneumatic tube was the pinnacle of technology for every kid around ten. The first time you saw a pneumatic tube, the world became an entirely new place. How could this kind of wonder actually exist? How did nobody ever mention this before? The most magical thing in the world and nobody thought to say, as soon as you were old enough to comprehend them, "You have to see this!" And how come the entire system only existed to send small volumes of things around buildings?! Why not people sized pneumatic tubes?!
Eventually that wonder dies because going to the drive-thru bank just to watch your mom send her checks through the tube to somebody five feet away kills the magic.
What Lew has just discovered is that people with solutions most often do not simply give away those solutions. They often become gatekeepers so that they may judge those coming to them for help and only help those they deem worthy. Do you want to atone for your past sins? Do you want to stop drinking? Do you want eternal salvation? Well, none of that matters unless the people helping you approve you for their program.
My current favorite t-shirt is a take on the Comics Code Authority label which said, "Approved by the Comics Code Authority." The t-shirt looks just like the Comics Code Authority label but says, "Approval is an authoritarian construct." It was merch from Cerebus in Hell?
