AtD (37) p.1043 "the ole RJ, earthquake, Santa Barbara, right angles of History

[Mark Kohut]

P. 1043

Royal Jacaranda: http://www.pensandcalls.com/id144.htm............. 

Earthquake, June 29, 1925: http://projects.crustal.ucsb.edu/sb_eqs/1925/1925.html that 'stucco and beam philosophy" of architecture--see the link for Official name, Mission style, lead to Santa Barbara's rep as a great tourist center.  

"relentlessly unacknowledged past" [of Santa Barbara]: "Santa Barbara became the winter destination for the titans of post-Civil War America. Private railroad cars clustered on the sidings at Santa Barbara. The Potter Hotel overlooking Santa Barbara's West Beach was a world renowned resort. Owners of industry visited Santa Barbara and chose Santa Barbara hillside locations for their grand estates." wikipedia  

"right-angled piece of local coastline" [check it out on a map. I had no idea] Right angles are one of Pynchon's tropes in AtD that link--and lead-- to the "rationalization" [ala Weber] of modernity and, yes, death. Related to Cartesian grids and linear thought. 

See the first important use on page 10. "that unshaped freedom being rationalized...into straight lines and right angles...that lead to the killing floor". There are other instances.

(anyone remember any?). (There is a 'safe right-angle" use in GR, I relearn)
There is a very important use coming up that puts an Icelandic Spar ending on AtD, if I am seeing clearly. 

Next sentence is a deep clue, somehow, I think, to this meaning: 
'This angle was the worst of all possible aspects....condemning to "endless cycles of greed and betrayal"'.........Such an angle, such 'rationalization' is modern Western History? Here is the cycle motif, mostly in the historical senses (not the Jungian nor Buddhist) as a philosophy of History, I suggest.