But if the Frontier was gone now, did that mean Lew was about to be disconnected, too, from himself? sent off into exile, into some silence beyond silence as retribution for a remote and ancient vice always just about to be remembered, half stunned, in a half dream like a surgeon's knot taken swiftly in the tissue of time and pulled snug, delivered into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well?
* * * * * * * * * *
This is Lew Basnight momentarily lapsing into Tyrone Slothrop. Although, has he not already been Slothrop and I just wasn't paying attention? This line is pure paranoia ending in the fear of being controlled by some unknown other power which is why I finally connected the two (unless I previously did connect them but I don't remember, having written so many notes over so long a time!). But hasn't Lew been Tyrone this whole time with something unremembered in his past driving him into exile from the world he knew, to wander searching for some unknown that will explain why his life is the way it is? Slothrop in search of the Scwarzgerat and/or the quintuple zero; Basnight in search of the sin he once committed. Slothrop becomes lost in the Zone while Basnight becomes lost in an unknown and mystical neighborhood of Chicago. Slothrop becomes a superhero known as Rocketman while Basnight becomes an unnamed superhero with paranormal powers of observation. Both wind up riding in a balloon! Both have thoughts like Lew's in this passage which I find incredibly difficult to parse being that my brain is composed of Pynchon's definition of anti-paranoia: the belief that "nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long." I mean, I've borne it my entire life so I'm just one of the "not many," I guess.
"if the Frontier was gone now, did that mean Lew was about to be disconnected, too, from himself?"
I don't understand how the two are connected in the first place but then I don't think like a paranoid. Lew was given an assignment in Denver not "on the Frontier." It's Lew's own fault if he thought he was being sent "to the Frontier" and so sees himself as being sent out to "a place that is now gone." I suppose this is part and parcel of having a paranoid mind: Lew mentions he's going to Denver; Heino says, "It'll be a different West than you expect!"; they discuss the loss of the Frontier; Lew arrives at the conclusion that he's being sent to a place that no longer exists!
"delivered into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well"
Why does this thought even come to Lew? I suppose, not knowing anything about the Denver office of White City Investigation, and already feeling like the change was a punishment from Nate (who perhaps, Lew thinks, may have recently learned of Lew's sin which always results in Lew being driven off). And if it's a punishment, the people in charge of the Denver office must be people who do not wish Lew well.
