BEg2 chapter 17 oddments & suchlike

[Michael Bailey]

“Roll on, four-wheeler, roll on”
Maxine driving back from the Hamptons, apparently riffing on country
classic - for an educated urbanite, rather an outrè taste - which,
considering the frequent and not-always-completely-snarky  references to
such music in the Pynchon oeuvre, he may share with Maxine. (And me, to
some extent)

https://youtu.be/wyQA5SYzZ6E -
Alabama’s “18 wheeler roll on”

Another tearjerker, not extreme as Red Sovine’s “Teddy Bear,” but poignant
enough.

If she’s emotionally labile enough to identify with the driver of the
titular vehicle and his family - not a bad bet - we can highlight this
moment as her feeling lost in a blizzard (or Ice storm) in “Illinoise” and
can only hope she makes it to safety like the dude in the song.


“ Maxine doesn’t think of herself as especially timid, she’s walked into
fund-raisers wearing the wrong accessories, driven overseas in rental cars
with alien gearshifts, prevailed in beefs with bill collectors, arms
dealers, and barking-mad Republicans without much hesitation bodily or
spiritual.”

Not just survived, as but prevailed, as William Faulkner recommended!

And yet, the Ice sub-basement scares her.


Randy doesn’t want the ‘91 Bordeaux -
https://www.wine-searcher.com/vintage-1991-bordeaux

“…the 1991 vintage was not a good one.

“The 1991 vintage for Bordeaux got off to a shaky start. Severe spring
frosts and below-freezing temperatures mid-April caused significant damage
to vineyards. Overall, it was the second-coldest vintage ever recorded.
Summer arrived and the weather picked up but extremely heavy rains then
struck in both September and October. The deluge prompted the development
of serious rot….

“Altogether, the vintage was so unsuccessful, many estates chose to
declassify their wines. Very little is still worth buying today, although
it’s possible there may be the odd surprise from the Right Bank.”


How to get to Ice’s “Fuckingham Palace” from visitor parking at the Montauk
Lighthouse:

“They drive out of the lot again, follow the loop around to Old Montauk
Highway, presently hook a right inland on Coast Artillery Road.”

>From the Ice compound it’s possible to see that “[o]ver the tops of the
trees rises a giant old-time radar antenna from the days of anti-Soviet
nuclear terror, soon to be a state-park tourist attraction.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/travel/escapes/under-the-radar-a-montauk-park.html

Oh, I see what they did with the headline: “under the radar” but I have to
wait for a quota refresh to read it - or is that “reread” because I have
this deja vu and maybe even shared the link before?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hero_State_Park

Gabriel retreats occasionally, or will once it’s finished, to the shadow of
a major avatar of the Cold War, which gave rise to the Internet (although
sometimes it does seem like something similar, and maybe better, would have
arisen without the DOD) which is the source of his wealth.

One could fill a Blue Book (nowadays they have recycled paper Green Books,
I recently learned) with
how this helps to characterize Ice.