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 "No experience with any of that."

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Lew is one of those people who avoid having to care by always saying, "I'm not political." When politics means caring about only certain types of people, you'd better fucking get political real soon. I'd rather not say I'm political either! I'd love to say, "No experience with any of that," when somebody talks about cops killing Black Americans! I just want to play The Temple of Elemental Evil computer role-playing game for the eighth time and not worry about systemic racism and authoritarian movements to entrench the ideas of old white wealthy men! I have enough to worry about! But guess what? I do care about that shit! I care about making the world a better place. And guess what that means? It means change. So if you care about changing the world for the better, you are against conservative and traditional values that want to keep the world the same, with all its advantages for some and disadvantages for others. So fuck saying, "No experience with any of that." That's libertarian speak for "The individual is responsible for themselves and I'm just going to ignore how, in my ideal world, that would mean we're all fighting for survival against anything corporations choose to do for profit, or how systemic racism rooted in the founding of this country still has its tendrils in equality today. If I'm okay and successful and I never got shot by cops, everybody can do it too!"

Now I'm all worked up just because Lew was all, "I keep my head down!"

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 "See, it's not safecrackers, embezzlers, murderers, spouses on the run, none of the dime-novel stuff, put all that out of your head. Here in Chi, this year of our Lord, it's all about the labor unions, or as we like to call them, anarchistic scum," said Nate Privett.

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Here's Nate expressly showing his true colors rather than exposing them through off-hand comments and stacks of pancakes. But a close reader knew this was coming!

What Nate is saying is that regular detective work doesn't pay much. What really pays is infiltrating labor unions for the corporate money-pants elite and causing trouble so that the public sees labor unions as anarchist troublemakers instead of workers fighting for a fair and equitable work environment. Some guy trying to catch his wife cheating is hardly going to be able to pay for all the long hours of surveillance. But some corporate fat cat has plenty of money to throw at you for the simple act of othering labor unions so that the general masses see them as a threat to life and property.

Nothing's fucking changed!

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 He poured syrup on a towering stack of pancakes out of which butter melted and ran.

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Leisurely and luxuriously, Nate Privett is about to tell Lew Basnight all bout the evils of unions and immigrant labor. Is what I suspect! He seemed like a dick when Randolph met with him and he seems like a dick now.

Remember Nate's first description in this chapter: "A plump and dapper individual . . . buying domestic cheroots." Cheroots are cheap cigars, cheaper even, I presume, if they're made domestically. So he looks nice, he's well fed, and he buys cheap cigars. When he eats, it's a towering stack of pancakes full of butter and syrup. I'm getting a really unflattering image of a low-to-middle income believer in capitalism, earning his money while walking on the heads of those worse off than him, like Legolas fighting orcs while standing on the heads of dwarves in barrels.

I just re-watched (and read!) The Hobbit so I'll probably be using a lot of Hobbit metaphors and analogies during the next few weeks.

The bottom line is that Nate seems like a grotesque and gluttonous human being with shitty priorities. Maybe all of that evidence isn't completely, um, evident but I think I know a shit human being when I see one. Also remember he sent Lew aboard the Inconvenience to spy on "anarchists" which is definitely the detective agency codeword for "unionists." He may as well be a Pinkerton.

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 "Ironworkers' Union," he nodded. "After enough of 'em, a man begins to develop an ear."

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The Iron Workers Union wasn't founded until 1896. So Nate Privett doesn't have as good an ear as he thinks he does. Or maybe it's even better and he can hear future bombings? Being that Chicago was a burgeoning battleground for unions and workers' rights, and because it was the first place to truly begin building iron and steel buildings (due to a new ordnance prohibiting wooden buildings in downtown Chicago after the Great Fire in 1871), a movement among ironworkers had begun and maybe they were calling themselves the "Ironworkers' Union" before the actual Iron Workers Union that was formed in 1896 and exists today.
    The essence of Nate's statement is that workers from different unions and associations, all being used and bled dry by employers, were using bombs in their fight for 8 hour days, health & safety, and living wages. And because they all made their own bombs, and bombings were so frequent, Nate now had an ear for it.
    Mostly it just sounds to me like Nate is playing up the chaos because he's one of those jerks definitely on the side of the employers and big business. I mean, it's not like he's going to make any money off of immigrant workers barely being paid enough to take care of their families.

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 In the near and far distance, explosions, not always to be identified in the next day's newspapers, now and then sent leisurely rips through the fabric of the day, to which Nate Privett pretended to be listening.

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This has been a pretty slow section that hasn't really needed much commentary or explication. That's the problem with a project like this, especially being done by somebody who hasn't previously read Against the Day at least once. But that's okay because you never know when one of these moments will mean something more later in the book (which is why having previously read it would be helpful). And by concentrating on each line separately, hopefully they'll more fully embed themselves within my mind. Although on the down side, this project will take nine years so how likely am I going to remember one of these early lines seven years down the line?!

"explosions, not always to be identified in the next day's newspapers"
In other words, some explosions are politically acceptable to cover and some might just upset the general masses. If the police blew up an abandoned property where immigrants were squatting, it probably wouldn't get a mention. If anarchists blew up some machinery during a strike, you better believe it will be covered.
    Also some of the explosions are probably mundane everyday explosions by the railroad company or the meat packing industry or construction workers. I don't claim to know what industries regularly blow things up but those sound like three that would totally make blowing things up part of their business model.

"which Nate Privett pretended to be listening"
How does one pretend to listen to explosions happening around you? Aren't you simply automatically hearing them? Or does Pynchon mean Nate is making an excessive show of listening to the explosions? Like nodding and cocking his head to the side when one goes off, perhaps putting one finger in the air as if to say, "There! There! Now that was a good one!"
    Nate's pretending to listen might make more sense when he gets a chance to explain in the next sentence!

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 His companion introduced himself as Nate Privett, personnel director at White City Investigations, a detective agency.

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I guess I've just been assuming, up until this point, that this guy was Nate Privett. I probably shouldn't do that. I should probably read this as literally as I read The Bible, using only the evidence supported directly by the text! Jumping to conclusions and needing to control people's behavior is what made the story of Onan into some kind of anti-masturbation allegory instead of a commentary on breaking contracts and disobeying your parents.

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 Everybody here knew Lew, usually, knew his face, but this morning, being transfigured and all, it was like he passed unidentified.

* * * * * * * * * *

Could Lew's moment of clarity, the moment on the bus where the light changed and he began to see things differently . . . could that represent his crossing the boundary through to another dimension/timeline? Has he literally transcended to a new plane of existence yet again? This new reality is the actual reality of Against the Day where he meets one of the characters already established in the book. The evidence that he's once again found himself in a new version of Chicago is that nobody recognizes him in a place he's always previously been recognized. Sure, perhaps his sense of self and his place in the scheme of things has been transfigured to such a degree that it's also altered his outward appearance and mannerisms. But that's just as unlikely as my interdimensional travel suggestion!

The bottom line is that he's definitely changed in some tangible way, some way that's not just a quirk of his own brain chemistry or sense of perception. His change has had an effect on the outside world around him as well, so much so that he's now unrecognizable.

This could be a metaphor for becoming sober, or for being born again. The idea that it's not just an abstract concept for the person undergoing the change. It's as literal and real as anything else in the world. The idea is that there exists a literal sense of grace that can descend upon a person and change everything about their world.

I mean, I don't buy it. I think people have these transcendent experiences in mostly selfish ways. It's not like my father had his moment of clarity when I was two and he was abandoning his family for drink. No, he waited until I was eighteen and drinking was literally destroying his life before he decided, "Oh, I have a disease that I can't control and now I'm going to get better and maybe my son will still want to have a relationship with me!" Ha ha! So funny.