Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Line 59 (1040)

 There were light addicts who around sunset began to sweat and itch and seclude themselves in toilets with portable electric lanterns.

**********

"light addicts"
Wait. I've never thought about this before but am I . . . addicted to light? I'm not even sure I could give it up any time I want! It's completely taken control of me. Perhaps these folks aren't addicted to light. Maybe they're just like rabid fandoms on the Internet where people can't just love something but have to express how much they love that thing more than the next person. The Internet has broken these kinds of people because before the Internet, they just had to love Disney more than a few of their friends on the same block to be thought of as the biggest Disney fan ever. But on the Internet, they suddenly have to be a bigger fan of Disney than every other biggest fan of Disney in the entire world and who has time to prove that much love for Disney? Well, apparently a lot of people because some Disney fans don't have any room for any other aspect of their personality. That's what I like to think these light addicts are actually about.

"who around sunset began to sweat and itch and seclude themselves in toilets with portable electric lanterns"
I think maybe they're just afraid of the dark!

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 60: Line 58 (1039)

 There were diet faddists who styled themselves Lightarians, living on nothing but light, even setting up labs they thought of as kitchens and concocting meals from light recipes, fried light, fricaseed light, light á la mode, calling for different types of lamp filament and colors of glass envelope, the Edison lamp being brand new in those days but certainly not the only design under study.

**********

"Lightarians"
Being that I was raised on In Search Of and, later, the Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series (not to mention dozens and dozens of pulp paperback books about myths, legends, paranormal activity, Oak Island pirate treasures, and more), I figured the whole "Breatharianism" movement was something that sprang out of the '60s and '70s New Age need to find a better  (meaning, at the time, more simple and natural) way to live. Pynchon's "Lightarians" aren't exactly the same thing as "Breatharians" but are definitely an offshoot of the same drive. Here's a bit from the Wikipedia entry on "Inedia" which closely links the two movements:

The 1670 Rosicrucian text Comte de Gabalis attributed the practice to the physician and occultist Paracelsus (1493–1541) who was described as having lived "several years by taking only one-half scrupule of Solar Quintessence". In this book, it is also stated that "Paracelsus affirms that He has seen many of the Sages fast twenty years without eating anything whatsoever."

I don't know exactly what a "Solar Quintessence" might be but sounds to me like he was eating light!

"light á la mode"
Being that these faddists are only eating light, I'm guessing this recipe wasn't a plate of ice cream sitting next to a candle and actually meant to be "eating light in the popular style." I don't know what that was in 1887. Maybe the bit following ("calling for different types of lamp filament . . .") was a direct continuation of the "á la mode" bit, meaning the "popular style" meant eating light from trendy lamps and current colors in style.

"Edison lamp"

Chapter 1: Section 7: Pages 59-60: Line 57 (1038)

 Groups of these could be observed in Monumental Park at sunrise, sitting in the dew in uncomfortable positions, their lips moving inaudibly.

**********

"Monumental Park"
A park in Cleveland. Originally named Public Square as it was meant to be the village green center of the planned city, it became known as Monumental Park after a statue of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry was erected in celebration of his ability to destroy other ships and human lives before his was destroyed in the Battle of Lake Erie. It was also the place, in 1879, where the one of the first electric street lights was demonstrated. Pynchon always knows how to make his barely referenced references matter!

Pynchon gives us a portrayal of a certain set of "science enthusiasts" who have venerated the science of light to such a degree that they have now become sun worshipers engaging in morning prayer to the rising sun. He also points out how devotees love to sit in awkward positions. Perhaps this quick glimpse is meant as a warning to taking things too far, a warning ignored seeing as how this detailed inspection of light would eventually lead to the atomic bomb. Okay, maybe there isn't a direct link from sitting in the grass worshiping nature. But the fanaticism displayed here certainly is!

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 56 (1037)

 Some claimed that light had a consciousness and personality and could even be chatted with, often revealing its deeper secrets to those who approached it in the right way.

**********

"Some"
This line convinced me Pynchon's "some" are the ones rounded up in the asylum which makes sense because this is the same paragraph that began explaining what the cop meant by "Newburgh."

While this line sounds like Pynchon is describing some woo woo séance hoodoo mumbo jumbo, a less cynical reading could simply see it as a way of describing what scientists do. Obviously they don't think light has a consciousness and a personality and is eager for a quick chat over a nice tea. But it does have, as a stand-in for those things, intrinsic properties which can only be learned via controlled experiments and careful observations (or chats!). The Michelson-Morley experiment itself is one of these chats trying to get light to reveal one specific secret dealing with how it travels through a vacuum as a wave. Light will have nothing to say on the matter of Æther which will be a statement of a kind anyway, leading to further discoveries once scientists have decided that the inclusion of Æther in the movement of light is a dead end.

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 55 (1036)

 Some were inventors with light-engines that could run a bicycle all day but at nightfall stopped abruptly, causing the bike to fall over with you on it, if you weren't careful.

**********

"Some"
Pynchon can get pretty confusing with referrants at times due to his narrative's loose connection to any one time, place, or perspective. This "some" is simpler than most because it's either referring to the scientific enthusiasts who merely came to the city for the experiment or the ones who were locked up in the insane asylum. This should be an important distinction and maybe subject to your distrust of authority figures and how petty they can be when challenged on any of their beliefs. Did they throw a guy in a mental institution because he invented a self-propelled bike that shut off at night? If the bike didn't also have pedals to continue being used in a regular manner as soon as the engine stopped, I'd have thrown him in an asylum as well.

"light-engines"
I desperately want to read this as some grand science fiction space engine but I'm sure it just means "solar-powered."

"at nightfall stopped abruptly, causing the bike to fall over with you on it, if you weren't careful"
This just sounds like a conservative trying to scaremonger the pubic away from solar-powered engines. "Oh, it works perfectly fine during the day, does it? But what about . . . NIGHT TIME! Have you thought of that? A child not realizing night was super slowly coming on the way night always comes on could be killed when the bike abruptly shuts off! Would you have that on your conscious? No? Then stick with the coal burning steam versions that only occasionally blow up in their inventor's faces, killing them!"

Looking at the sentence less literally, we can read in it one of Pynchon's themes of the book. The book began with the Thelonious Monk quote, "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light," suggesting, perhaps, that without purposeful intervention, things would be dark, bleak, despairing. Our bikes will fall over if we aren't careful. The light sustains us, shows us the way, allows us to proceed in a forward manner towards the future. This can also be more metaphor than literal in the sense of light, or illumination, being seen as knowledge. Without the constant influx of scientific knowledge, we will eventually crash (if we aren't careful!).

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 54 (1035)

 They were talking about the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum, a few miles southeast of town, in which currently were lodged some of the more troublesome of the scientific cranks Cleveland these days had been filling up rapidly with, enthusiasts from everywhere in the nation and abroad for that matter, eager to bathe in the radiance of the celebrated Æther-drift experiment in progress out at Case.

**********

"Northern Ohio Insane Asylum"
Pynchon being generous here and explaining one of his references for those weirdos who don't keep the Internet at hand while reading a Pynchon book.

"currently were lodged some of the more troublesome of the scientific cranks"
Holy heck how troublesome can these science fanatics be?! Feels more like maybe a few nerds stood out from the crowd too much and these bully cops decided to give them a brief incarceration instead of a wedgie. I suppose this experiment has become some kind of a spring break for science nerds. Sort of like how at the beginning of the book, the World's Columbian Exposition was spring break for ballooning enthusiasts. That's where the kids met Merle and his penchant for photographing naked ladies!

"eager to bathe in the radiance of the celebrated Æther-drift experiment"
This is a pun. Bathe in the radiance of a light experiment.

"Æther-drift experiment"
The Michelson-Morley Experiment was supposed to prove the existence of Æther through how light moved through it while traveling in different directions. It was theorized that the Æther would drift based on its interaction with the movement of the Earth. This should have caused light to move at differing speeds when moving in perpendicular directions. It did not. But this failed experiment was possibly the beginning of moving the world into special relativity. So that's probably why it's so important to the beginning of this novel. Special relativity will probably be important towards the end of the novel which sucks because I'll finally have to try to understand what all that's about. I'm sure it's more than just "light moves at a constant velocity no matter what which means time has to be the changing variable! Wacky!"