BEg2 chapter 17 Lighthouse lament; the briefest of envois

[Mark Kohut]

But going back to the text, Republican could easily mean and in fact with
the sweeping histories involved
probably does mostly mean, the US Republic......You know, as Franklin said,
"a Republic if you can keep it"
associatively.

And the words are not Maxine's I would now say. Free indirect discourse...

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.”

On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 12:49 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Maxine knows how evenly distributed the abuse of power is, so some of this
> blaming of republicans for the universal bad choices of a society addicted
> to war and impossible growth is flat out bullshit in my opinion. Are they(
> republicans) disgusting in many social positions, worse on gerrymandering,
> social justice. No doubt they are, but are they really uniquely responsible
> for suburbs, defense factories, asphalt shingling, treelessness. I mean
> please Max/Pynchon/ whoever, who actually believes this crap? Not one of
> the things listed here is particulalry republican in origin nor are most(
> not all) important issues of basic human rights.  The wars and military
> spending: bi-partisan, the bailing out of fraudulent investment businesses:
> bi-partisan, the end of Glass Steagall: bi partisan, the endless drilling
> and spilling and mountain top removal: bipartisan, the sureveillance state:
> bi-partisan, the coups in South America: bipartisan, the wars in the Gulf
> and Africa: bipartisan, the most expensive and least effective health care
> among the so-called advanced nations: bipartisan, a congress that votes
> according to who bribes them the most: bi-partisan, the election of
> douchebag racist mayors in NYC or other cities: bi-partisan.
>   Cities and suburbs are both destructive and rapacious of the biosphere
> and are part of the same project.
> Am I saying there is no difference? NO, I’m not. I’m saying the
> differences do not make enough of a difference on most important
> issues.There is no political party with any power that is not owned by
> greed and war. The unremitted sin of greed and crime is systemic in the
> most bi-partisan way. The parties fight over who runs and benefits from the
> reign of corporatized bullies with armies.
>    As to how this fits in the book, I don’t know. People look for some
> entity to blame for habits and conformities that are universal. When a
> person is legitimately angry at the republicans this is how it is easy to
> think, but it is short sighted and unreal. Over 80% of Democrats supported
> Bush’e mandate for war on Iraq. LBJ escalated the war in Vietnam.
>
> This argument is not pointed at anyone. It is my opinion on a passage in a
> novel that feels facile and wrong for the reaons I have given.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 7, 2022, at 2:11 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!
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>