BEg2 chapter 17 Montauk, Time Travel, and Republican Sin

[rich]

if there's one thing Pynchon does well in BE, its Long Island. Having lived
there for many years, its depressing reading.

rich

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 8:27 AM Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com>
wrote:

> I've been dealing with a few personal time-consuming things, but now
> trying to get back into the group reading! In fact, two weekends ago I
> drove out to Montauk and rented a place just off the beach—rates are pretty
> low in January, and the place was a ghost town. I had been there many
> times—I used to go fishing off the coast—but I haven’t been there for
> years, and I wanted to walk around the places Maxine discusses—the
> lighthouse, what is now Camp Hero, etc. It was sufficiently bleak, just me
> and a bunch of surfers in wetsuits. Sadly, no traces of Gabriel's mansion,
> and even more sadly, no Reptoids.
>
> Anyway—yes Joseph! This passage deeply intrigues me. It's one of the
> places in BE where the supernatural seems to bleed through into the normal
> world. Very "Against the Day," to me, like those cave goblins. When I read
> it, I get the sense that there is definitely some lingering *presence*
> there...also connected to whatever haunts DeepArcher and the Dark Web, etc.
> But like so much in Pynchon, it's never really explained or resolved.
> (Which is not a complaint.) So yeah, what did Maxine see? As I have said
> before, the world of BE is not our literal world. It's not as "fictive" as
> M&D or AtD, but still.
>
> And regarding the time travel. While that obviously links to the
> conspiracy mythology surrounding Montauk, this passage from Chapter 22 is
> one of my favorites in the book:
>
> "Time travel, as it turns out, is not for civilian tourists, you don’t
> just climb into a machine, you have to do it from the inside out, with your
> mind and body, and navigating Time is an unforgiving discipline. It
> requires years of pain, hard labor, and loss, and there is no
> redemption—of, or from, anything."
>
> And I can’t help but think Pynchon is also referring to the only form of
> time travel we have: aging...
>
> As for this passage:
>
> "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.”
>
> I take that as 100% literal—Republicans. That's how Americans use the
> term; nobody here, especially in New York, refers to Americans as
> "Republicans" in general with a capital-R, like Irish Republicans, for
> instance. However, while I agree with Joseph that the Democrats share mush
> guilt re: defense factories, etc., (1) I still read this narration as being
> "influenced" or semi-representing Maxine, and many New Yorkers I know are
> really blind to Democratic sin; and (2) Long Island is a Republican
> bastion, so perhaps Pynchon literally means the inhabitants themselves?
> Especially given the suburban riffs.
>
> —Quail
>
>
>
> On 2/4/22, 3:38 PM, "Pynchon-l on behalf of Joseph Tracy" <
> pynchon-l-bounces at waste.org on behalf of brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>     Am I right that this encounter in the passsage from Ice's cellar is
> the first time Maxine has seen something that may be a ghost or spirit? We
> know she has some fairly reliable sensitivities and extra-logical modes of
> getting information like the writing on bathroom walls. Mostly she seems
> down to earth, a careful observer, and not likely to let her imagination so
> completely take over. Later she has other encounters which also imply other
> dimensions.
>       My thinking is that Pynchon includes these coexisting dimensions as
> matter of fact parts of his constructed world and lets the reader decide
> what they mean.  What he doesn’t do is restrict such encounters to flaky
> characters. He seems to present them more as common experiences, not easily
> dismissed as completely imaginary or unreal.
>        The idea of depth seems important to Pynchon and is heavily used in
> all his work. This encounter takes place in a cellar facing down some
> stairs in the depths of Ice’s world and his potential connections to
> military secret projects.  Earlier we have a smilar encounter between Eric
> and Ice as Eric is searching the dark web and is warned with threats.
>       One obvious reason for this limit on how deep one is allowed to go
> as writer/reader has to do with the secretiveness of what is hidden from
> public view. They represent real limits on what we can know in the the US
> today. Pynchon chooses money as one of the trails into hidden doings but
> money has to do with motive and that gets even murkier. It has to do with
> what we hide from ourselves and the overlap between what the leaders of a
> society hide and what the members of the society prefer not to know about
> what their money and government and bosses do.
>      How much of this secrecy can co-exist with political freedom,
> informed choices, fair economic competition, international policies?
>        Part of the obvious problem being outlined concerning the role of
> communication tech is the imbalance of power between the watched and the
> watchers, the deciders and those for whom things are decided.
>        Any other thoughts on the 2 kinds of spooks or this particular
> scene?
>
>     > On Feb 4, 2022, at 12:29 AM, Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>     >
>     > Starts on pg 190 of 470 (Nook pagination)
>     > At the 40% mark in the book
>     >
>     > Ends on pg 201, 43% in
>     >
>     > People
>     > - Maxine
>     > - Randy, a guy in the bar
>     > - Westchester Willie, a guy from the video
>     > - Bethesda, a young woman in the bar, wearing painter’s overalls and
>     > Chinese tats
>     > - something in a child-size fatigue uniform
>     > - Heidi
>     >
>     > Places
>     > - the LIE in a rental Camry
>     > - Junior’s Ooh-La-Lounge (barroom, ladies’)
>     > - the burned ruins of Shae, Bruno, and VIP’s old playhouse
>     > - Montauk Point Lighthouse parking lot
>     > - Gabriel Ice’s summer retreat (“Fuckingham Palace”)
>     > - the house thereof, swarming with contractors
>     > - the wine cellar for Randy to loot in an attempt to recover unpaid
>     > invoices for his materials, let alone labor
>     > - a spooky underground passage behind a coded-access door in the
> corner of
>     > the wine cellar
>     > - a dream landscape
>     > - a deli around the corner from Tail ‘Em and Nail ‘Em
>     >
>     > Action
>     > - Maxine gets teary eyed over a country song while driving, about a
> couple
>     > who forgot to ground their Airstream trailer & kept getting shocked
> off the
>     > walls
>     >
>     > - Maxine following clues from the video to get that boots on the
> ground
>     > look at its setting
>     >
>     > - stopping at Junior’s Ooh-La-Lounge when she figures she’s near her
> goal,
>     > for directions from
>     > locals
>     >
>     > - Maxine charms Randy, a contractor to whom Gabriel Ice owes big
> money, he
>     > gives her more info about Bruno and Shea (like, the playhouse burned
> down!
>     > Though no bodies were found)
>     >
>     > -Maxine and Randy agree to go together both to the scene of the
> video, and
>     > to Ice’s place, pretending to be on an assignation
>     >
>     > - There’s a friendly conversation among the tavern guests about the
>     > tribulations of the contracting business
>     >
>     > - Bethesda, another tavern guest, takes Maxine aside in the ladies’
> room
>     > and treats her to a Montauk makeover, with abundant hairspray, so
> she will
>     > be less conspicuous on her sortie with Randy
>     >
>     > - Bethesda and Randy both think that Gabriel Ice torched the
> playhouse,
>     > likely because he was also using it for sex & was getting
> blackmailed.
>     >
>     > - at the playhouse’s burnt remnants Maxine opens her purse for her
> digital
>     > camera to photograph it, and Randy sees her Beretta. A little gun
> badinage
>     > - he says he has a Bersa 9 millimeter & perhaps excited by the
> armaments
>     > talk, advances his palm to her rear. She’s pleased to note that he
> removes
>     > it when challenged.
>     >
>     > - she leaves her car in the visitor parking at the Montauk
> Lighthouse so
>     > they can discreetly drive together to Ice’s house.
>     >
>     > - Randy grabs a bag of grout and a cup of coffee to walk them
> unnoticed to
>     > the wine cellar thru the throng of workers at the house.
>     >
>     > - he chooses with a discerning eye some wine and explains he might
> sell it
>     > on eBay to recoup some of the costs that Ice hasn’t bothered to pay
> him for
>     >
>     > - while Randy takes that load to his truck, Maxine opens a key-code
> door in
>     > the corner of the cellar, using one of a list of Hashslingrz codes
> she got
>     > from Eric Outfield via Reg Despard
>     >
>     > - the corridor behind the door is spooky, with many doors on its
> sides, and
>     > she begins to hear weird military-type call signals and such. Her
> notion is
>     > that the lacquered coiffure Bethesda gave her is picking up these
>     > transmissions. But she is daunted, no question
>     >
>     > - she believes she is heading toward the urban-legend secret Montauk
>     > installation
>     >
>     > - when she comes to a stairway leading down and sees a child-size
> figure in
>     > fatigues coming up, she turns tail and runs (“All right, Air
> Jordans, do
>     > your stuff!”)
>     >
>     > - back in the wine cellar, Randy also seems nervous enough to be
> less picky
>     > about his second load of wine. They return to his truck; he returns
> Maxine
>     > to her rental Camry, and after a friendly invitation to meet up at a
>     > shooting range in Yonkers called “Sensibility” (‘Men always
> welcome’) which
>     > Maxine tentatively accepts without actually specifying when, and
> after she
>     > decides to let him keep the burgundy she had selected after all, he
> leaves
>     > her to it.
>     >
>     > - “it” being the drive back to Manhattan, accompanied on the radio
> by the
>     > vocal stylings of Droolin’ Floyd Womack on the subject of his
> throbbin’
>     > brain.
>     >
>     > - Maxine’s throbbing brain that night treats her to a dream that
> sort of
>     > recaps all that’s been going on, but skewed of course
>     >
>     > - next day Heidi comes by the office & they get some salads at the
> corner
>     > deli. Maxine asks for Montauk lore, which, as we know, Heidi is an
> SME
>     > (subject matter expert) on, teaching a course in fact.
>     >
>     > - However, Heidi is less informative than meta: she talks about the
>     > relationship of urban legend to truth and to the popularization of
> wild
>     > tales. Few deets!
>     >
>     > - what Maxine already knows, however, and her “throbbin’ brain,”
> cause her
>     > to lose her appetite. Heidi is glad to help her finish the meal, and
> Maxine
>     > finally teases back ( when I saw no riposte for Heidi’s earlier,
> “Maxi,
>     > earnest Maxi…” I was worried, but though she’s lost her appetite, she
>     > hasn’t lost her complete quiver of quippage) - “Fress, Heidi, fress
> please.
>     > I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”
>     > --
>     > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>
>
>     --
>     Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>