BEg2 chapter 17 Lighthouse lament; the briefest of envois

[Mark Kohut]

"....the history of Republican sin forever unremitted,"

This wonderfully concise phrase just nails what 40 years of Republican
policies have done
to America. A summary of all of Perlstein contained in what we see all
around us, this part of Long island all of middle class America.

On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 2:12 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> “ 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!
> --
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>