BE: This has to echo (via loss) the famous ending of Great Gatsby, set on Long Island, of course.---"long Atlantic wilderness" and "terminal toehold"

[rich]

If we look at Pynchon's work in terms of the time periods (I know time
being relative in Pynchon world),  it is interesting to see that boomerang
effect in at least the US, beginning in colonial times, outward expansion,
violence, the midwest industrials, the prairies, mountains, mines, alas
California and then the slow trek backwards to that fateful tip of Long
Island, the mapping into certainties that defined America's growth, leads
us to this dense concentration and collapsing into the terminal at most
eastern point (relatively), defense contractors belly busting on either
shore, the country dotted with these tiny bits of 'other' each slowly
stomped on or rotted from within (the counterforces, communes, unions,
anarchists, the Chums, the unexplored lands, Deep Archer), if we are
viewing Chum-like from above. If BE be Pynchon's last, he has in some way,
returned home, all of us left pretty much worrying, caring, loving those
dear to us. Maybe that is all we have left he seems to be saying against
the monstrous things out there: V, rockets, Trystero, the EIC, the FBI, the
old Scarsdales and new Ices of this world

rich

On Fri, Feb 11, 2022 at 6:43 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.”
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>