IT REACHED ITS PEAK in the early ’90s, when Amy Fisher shot Mrs. Joey Buttafuoco: the decades-long transformation of Long Island into a laughingstock. The setting for “The Great Gatsby” became known as a cultural valley of the ashes, home to loud girls with big hair and the Guidos who married them. A recent novel and a newish movie, both of which garnered significant critical praise, do almost nothing to defend the honor of this unusual, punchy, and wonderful place.
Which would hardly matter if their stories simply took place on Long Island. But such is not the case in last year’s “L.I.E.,” a novel by David Hollander (who grew up in Suffolk County), or this year’s “L.I.E.,” an unrelated movie directed and co-written by Michael Cuesta (also a Long Island native). L.I.E. stands for Long Island Expressway, a six-lane highway that runs all the way from the western end of Queens to Riverhead way out on the north fork. Judging from these two works, the L.I.E. is to Long Island what the Beltway is to Washington, D.C., a handy and unpleasant symbol for people who don’t like the place anyway.
