The Sexual Angle

Etymology

Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, working a whole sexual angle, naming his character after the very 21st century phrase "BAS night," meaning a boys' night out, "BAS" being an acronym for "Bitches Ain't Shit" from the "song" by Dr. Dre (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). And, hey, Lew meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie Shaft? Twat crossed w/clit? A-and isn't that tetractys an inverted beaver?), where he meets Yashmeen, a very sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode (p. 183) (Beavers, fercrissakes!); and in Venice we meet, yes, Bevis Moistleigh! 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.