The Sexual Angle

Etymology

Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, naming his character after at tune by Dr. Dre called "Bitches Ain't Shit" (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). The phrase "BAS night" is now used to mean "Boys night out." And, hey, he meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie? Twat?), where he meets Yashmeen, a very sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode (p. 183)(Beaver?). Perhaps something worth following up. WikiAdmin 07:31, 6 March 2007 (PST)

Lewis' surname may be connected to basalt, whose origin is the Latin basaltes, a variant of the Greek basanites, from the Greek basanos, 'touchstone' (indicating Basnight may be a schist, a bellwether, or a barometer).

Basalt is a dark, fine-grained volcanic rock that sometimes displays a columnar structure. It is typically composed largely of plagioclase, a feldspar, with pyroxene (pyro-, of or relating to fire, + the Greek xenos, 'stranger'), a prismatic crystal, and olivine.

"Basnight" could also by a process of wacky subsitution (i.e., bas+night, bas+knight, bas chevalier, bachelor) associate Lewis with the Knights Bachelor, the earliest form of English knighthood but ironically also the lowest in order of precedence. Knights Bachelor were landless knights who belonged to no recognized Order (like the Knights Hospitalers, Knights Templars or Knights of the Garter), so they had no banner to call their own, fighting instead under the banner of whichever Order contracted their services. The sort of Joe Dokes of the Knightworld that Bill Mauldin might have sketched. Although Lewis is himself no bona fide bachelor, such an association seems fitting in a book set into motion by those daring young bachelors, the Chums of Chance.