Word: merrymount
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Teeters, recently transplanted to Merrymount, Conn., is from Backbone, Ark., where a scarcity of cultural opportunity has sharpened perceptions of social reality. "The trouble with treating people as equals," he says, "is that the first thing you know they may be doing the same thing to you. Such reprisals seriously disrupt the pecking order, especially in a democracy where the class distinctions are so much more finely balanced than in other systems...
...short, Teeters walks the tightrope between the egalitarian ideal and the reality of status. Merrymount society allows him to play the game, though it does not spell out the regulations. Rule 1 is that friendliness and even sexual intimacy do not automatically confer acceptance. Rule 2 is that the home team gets to suspend Rule 1 whenever it wants to flaunt its self- assurance. Cynthia Pickles, local ice princess and founder of Overview ("a journal of opinion for all sides"), coolly sleeps with Teeters, accepts his nuptial propositions but marries smooth, rich Jerry Chirouble. Pickles' underclass equivalent is Toby Snapper...
...confusion in which the suburbs become the stage for fragments of Elizabethan comedy, bits of Wodehouse farce and a generalized send-up of The Great Gatsby. There is even a climactic courtroom scene in which Teeters must defend himself against charges of smut peddling. Unfortunately, he has arrived in Merrymount one beat behind the conservative backlash and cannot convince a jury that his cassettes are the visual equivalent...