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.
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.
Parasols and sidelong glances reappeared.
* * * * * * * * * *
The wind has died down, the sun has reappeared, and people are horny.
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.
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.
"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!
"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.
"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.
"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.
"'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.
"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.
"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.
"Many people believe that there is a mathematical correlation between sin, penance, and redemption. More sin, more penance, and so forth. Our own point has always been that there is no connection. All the variables are independent. You do penance not because you have sinned but because it is your destiny. You are redeemed not through doing penance but because it happens. Or doesn't happen.
* * * * * * * * * *
Well, Drave set me straight on his take on penance, sin, and redemption! I, apparently being one of those people who see a mathematical correlation between them, projected that idea onto Drave two posts ago:
"Sometimes making oneself a better person is too hard. It's easier to just take a dozen lashes with a whip and be done with the guilt of your sin. But as Drave correctly points out, atonement and penance are not two variables in different equations; they're values on the same side of an equation balancing out the other variable, guilt. Lew will rightly punish himself for having hurt his wife which will probably lessen the amount of time atonement will take. Without penance, atonement just takes the standard amount of time that needs to pass before grief isn't in control anymore. You really don't have to do any work; time will do it all for you!"
Drave wasn't pointing out the thing I thought he was pointing out. He was simply bringing it up so that I would think, "Oh yeah! Guilt! Penance! Sin! Atonement! It's all entangled!" Then he could play Devil's Advocate (or simply Devil because, come on, he's totally Satan, right?) and say, "A-ha! But no! The variables aren't connected at all! I'm talking predestination here, good buddy! Either you're saved or you're not saved. All that shit you do to atone or to deny sinful temptations or to perform holy work? Doesn't matter! Either you're destined to salvation or you're not. Elect or Preterite."
Drave believes in unconditional election. That means God chooses a specific number of people to be saved regardless of anything they do. Conditional election takes the view that God, being omniscient, has already saved an elect few because he knows beforehand that they will use their free will to do good works and resist temptation. It's kind of the "Wait a Second Clause!" where some holy thinkers realized that unconditional election meant nobody ever needed to seriously act out their faith and religion. Why bother when God has decided beforehand with no standards at all?!
Drave, being the Devil (probably), now teaches people on Earth that they don't need to be holy to atone. Why bother?! Just be your usual selfish self, don't worry about guilt, don't bother with penance, and don't lose any sleep over redemption. If you're destined to it, it'll come, whether you're lashing yourself with a thorny whip or shagging, gambling, and drinking to your heart's content.
