BEg2 chapter 17 Lighthouse lament; the briefest of envois

[Michael Bailey]

“ They continue out to the Montauk Point Lighthouse. Everybody is supposed
to love Montauk for avoiding everything that’s wrong with the Hamptons.
Maxine came out here as a kid once or twice, climbed to the top of the
lighthouse, stayed at Gurney’s, ate a lot of seafood, fell asleep to the
pulse of the ocean, what wasn’t to like? But now as they decelerate down
the last stretch of Route 27, she can only feel the narrowing of
options—it’s all converging here, all Long Island, the defense factories,
the homicidal traffic, the history of Republican sin forever unremitted,
the relentless suburbanizing, miles of mowed yards, contractor hardpan,
beaverboard and asphalt shingling, treeless acres, all concentrating, all
collapsing, into this terminal toehold before the long Atlantic wilderness.”

Narrowing of options echoing the first Chicago scene in AtD.

Population pressure transforming the landscape. It’s not unlikely the
author spent some childhood quality time here.
There’s also a touch of Innocence and Experience, grownup eyes seeing more
problems.


The flip side of the deluxe Hamptons mansions is the poor side of town they
drive through first,
“ dismal residential streets gone tattered and chuckholed, full of small
old rentals and dead-ending against chain-linked parking lots.”

This is connected in a spacy-humorous way by Eddie in the barroom,
 “Real-estate karma,” …. “A crib as out of scale as Ice’s would mean a lot
of smaller houses somehow have to be destroyed, part of maintaining the
overall balance.”

- while that doesn’t really necessarily follow, the failure of wealth to
trickle down sufficiently to upgrade the dismal streets is at least
partially due to the rapacity of Ice et alia.

The “history of Republican sin forever unremitted,” I think speaks to
mindless, knee-jerk blocking of so many positive initiatives by
reactionaries in the pay of greed-heads. Republicans come in for several
offhand lambastings - even in this chapter there’s also that passing
reference, in Maxine’s litany of ferocious challenges surmounted, to
“barking mad Republicans.” I think he probably knows he’s preaching to the
choir here and that’s why he doesn’t go into detail.

Also - isn’t there kind of a “technical” feel to the phrase “forever
unremitted” that reaches back towards “The Meritorious Price of Our
Redemption” just tickling the speculative lobe with, like, “why
unremitted,” “why forever,” is there some authority that is withholding
remission?

Weren’t the colonial Pynchons Protestants? How did TRP’s branch of the
family become Catholic? Which canon of remission is being referenced?

Does “unremitted” also connote the remittances that the Ice treasury is
withholding - defrauding the laborer of his wages is one of the sins crying
out to heaven for redress, isn’t it?

And on to Chapter 18 - Excelsior!