Like all of Pynchon's big books, this is a strange, freaky trip. Probably even more so because the freakiness of this book isn't that of V. or Gravity's Rainbow, with their bizarre blend of modern, techno-social paranoia, but of how freaky the beginnings of rational, modern civilization itself are. Mason & Dixon wander through the dark sewers of the Euro-American enlightenment, Through far flung island colonies, dank old world taverns, the bizarrely rendered wilderness of young America etc., everywhere they go they encounter a world in the throes of transitioning from an older, confusing age to a newer, even more confusing one. They meet talking dogs (weird) vengeful mechanical ducks(really weird), they get in sea battles and walk through gigantic vegetable gardens all while trying to make sense of the bizarre web of potential manipulations they find themselves wrapped up in in an increasingly interconnected age of commerce and geographic science. Pynchon's Olde Englishe writing style is easy to grasp (especially if you've read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cylce, which owes a very strong debt to this work) and both the prose and narrative focus are much tighter though no less sprawling and wide ranging than in his previous books. Even though its probably one of his strangest books, Mason and Dixon is also one of his most sympathetic and humane. Reading this, it occurs to me that historical fiction, an often maligned term, is really Pynchon's default mode of writing. He excavates a past of bizarre ideas, outlandish characters and hallucinatory set pieces as a way of both shedding light on and at the same time increasing the obscure mysteries of the world we live in. This is a delightful, profoundly weird book from a delightful, profoundly weird artist. Highly recommended.

Ineffably comfy fever dream.

Second time around. Better than the first. Yeah, definitely my favorite Pynchon. In fact…RANKED

1) Mason & Dixon
2) Against the Day
3) Gravity’s Rainbow
4) Vineland
5) V
6) The Crying of Lot 49
7) Bleeding Edge
8) Slow Learner
9) Inherent Vice

I used to hate Pynchon's novels. I'd never finished one, putting them down after a few pages feeling confused, irritated and bored. Reviewers didn't help: Either they were boys thrilled by his postmodern toys (ooh,shocking, he makes a dig at Clinton with the joke about not inhaling; hacleverha, the narrator is called Rev. Cherrycoke)or they were acolytes in awe who clearly didn't quite get what he was on about(all those postmodern master comments and references to particle physics). Interestingly no review I've read of Mason & Dixon has referenced events past page 50. Guess even the professionals give up sometimes.

But, fellow reader, Mason & Dixon is a great and joyful book and completely worth reading to the end. It's about friendship between people (and between peoples), and made me realize how few books are about deep human relations as opposed to the exploration of an individual's consciousness and its conflicts with others. Pynchon never reduces life to a single unity. Instead we get the muddle and mystery of how our feelings for each other get tangled up with physicality, technology, logic and geography and motives and history and structures. Who's to say that they way through that mystery/muddle might not be lit by a mechanical duck that flies as fast as a V2, or a Learned English Dog? And where there is nothing to say--the genocide of Native Americans, a friend's death--Pynchon skirts the lacuna with lyrical, heartbreaking prose. As for the confusion of his writing, I ultimately found it distinctive and thrilling rather than bewildering. Reading his books isn't about parsing every line or nodding at every reference, it's about the experience of being caught up in a world outside our own consciousness and individuality. He needed to write it that way to make his point. And it makes for an exhilarating and enthralling read.

I haven't thought or felt so deeply about a book for years. Highly, highly recommended.

… but the question is: How many times does a book (esp. a novel) compel you to consult other reference works (dictionaries, wikis, Google search, etc.) before it becomes, well, a bad book?

I enjoyed this book. I vacuumed up the younger Pynchon (through Slow Learner: Early Stories) as a young slacker. Then my attention wandered away during his long silent period from the '70s to the '90s. Reading this book (the product, apparently, of the long silent period) was like meeting a old friend who had aged well. Some of the old things I had loved remained evergreen. Other parts improved with age.

…. but the above-posed q. remains. By the time I was finished reading this book, I had eight index cards filled with the evidence of approx. 320 occasions where a reference, word, or phrase was unfamiliar enough to note down. That's one trip to a reference work every two-and-a-half pages. Perhaps that's too often?

A book can be both profound and enjoyable without sending the person of adequate, but not exceptional, education (which I present myself to be) to the dictionary, etc., on even a single instance. However, no reasonable reader resents being challenged on occasion. How many challenges are too many? In a recent Merlot-fueled dinnertable discussion with the Long-Suffering Wife, we agreed to disagree. I thought that once every twenty pages was my bottom limit, where my wife (as is her wont) was inclined to be more flexible, suggesting once every ten pages, or perhaps maybe less in the case of especially talented writers.

I am perhaps less tolerant of obscure references because my touchstone when I am invoking childhood fairy tales is the Emperor's New Clothes, which fits in nicely with my vaguely Pynchonian conviction that the world (at its best) is a great conspiracy to deceive. When reading, the deceivers are members of the book-selling and public-dialog-setting class, some of whom seems to be convinced that, if they just present their ridiculous and indefensible views in an incoherent enough manner, they will be treated as wise by those too insecure to call their bluff.

The reader who needs help with Mason & Dixon is not without easily-available resources. The novel has a wiki here. It is maintained by the same person who maintains the wiki for David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest -- see that wiki here.

It is interesting to compare the two. I recently read Infinite Jest. Its wiki is very professional and conforms admirably to the three Core Content Policies of Wikipedia: neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research. This is probably a result of the many hands involved in its care and maintenance, which in turn seems to be a result of the enduring popularity of Infinite Jest. This wiki is a tremendous public service and a great aid to the enjoyment of the novel.

Mason & Dixon (sadly) has not attracted such a following, and its wiki, comparatively, is sort of a sad thing, like an unmaintained vase of aging household flowers, once thought an object of great beauty before attention turned elsewhere. There was apparently a lot of enthusiasm in the project when it started in the mid-2000s. As a result, many of the mystifying references in Mason & Dixon are well-explained and there are links to interesting images and research, which aid understanding. However, it did not achieve the critical mass of long-term editors necessary to maintain Wikipedia-style Core Content Policies, and there are repeated violations of principles one and three above. In addition, some very obvious things (e.g., Birmingham, England (p. 763)) are explained, while other less obvious things (e.g., Draco (p. 181)) are not.

My two attempts to enlist as a new editor went unanswered. This is probably because the editor has moved on to newer, more interesting projects, or maybe my application fell into a hole in the ether. Perhaps I didn't make a great first impression by remarking, when I applied electronically for a wiki editorship, that the site could stand some improvement. I tend to make a similar mistake during job interviews also, which is one reason I have never achieved any time-sucking position of responsibility, and have time to read long novels like this one and nit-pick websites about them.

The book is effectively a story told by Reverend Cherrycoke to the children and adults of relations he is staying with indefinitely (on condition he amuses the children) and is in its simplest form an account of the historical collaboration of the historical figures of Charles Mason (Assistant to the Royal Astronomer and mourning his wife Rebecca) and Jeremiah Dixon (a lustier and plain speaking ex-Quaker land surveyor from Durham).

The book begins with them travelling on behalf of the Royal Society to the Southern Hemisphere to observe the Transit of Venus and help determine the Solar Parallax. Their initial voyage is interrupted by an attack by the French, causing Mason and Dixon concern as they believe the Royal Society knew they were sending them to danger. They try to refuse or alter a second commission but are overruled by the Royal Society and thereafter feel forced to follow events as they take course for fear of accusations of desertion or cowardice. They travel to the Cape, a mix of Malay influences and barely suppressed lust and passion seething beneath the outward respectability of the Dutch colonists of the VOC. Mason then spends a spell on the wind battered St Helena with the (he soon realises) insane Neville Maskelyne – brother in law of Clive of India and soon made Royal Astronomer over Maskelyne, while there he starts seeing the ghost of Rebecca.

Returning to England (where Mason meets his sons from whom he is distant and relives his difficult relationship with his own father and Dixon remembers his upbringing with a famous northern mathematician and, in this account, purveyor of lessons in ley lines and flying) they accept a commission to go to the American colonies (in the period immediately pre-revolution) and survey the disputed East-West boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania – the line they draw being famously the Mason-Dixon line often considered the boundary between the North and South – as well as a North-South boundary between Delaware and Maryland – a mix of a circle and a tangent – while there they meet people such as Washington and Franklin. While in America their adventures become increasingly bizarre the further West they travel.

The main theme of the book is the post-Enlightenment period – Mason and Dixon see themselves as men of science trying to impose order on time and location. However they find the actual world doesn’t always follow Newtonian/Cartesian certainties and logic. Firstly due to the influences of politics (the VOC, the British East India Company, the competing colonists, the jealousies and intrigues of the Royal Society, even the failure of the curved earth to follow the 2-D geometrical boundaries set by the King). Secondly by the influence and presence of older forces – ley lines in England, Malay magic in Cape, Indian mysticism in US, a Chinese Feng-Shui expert, bizarre part magical part scientific Jesuit forces, ghosts on St Helena, astrology, divination, Golems, hollow earth theories, werewolves.

The seems to be partly due to the overtaking of Newtonian certainty by chaos and quantum mechanics – which is often alluded to (e.g. the curvature of space and more implicitly of time – with the constant references to the missing 11 days connected to the change to the English calendar).

A further key theme is history and what it means to tell a story.

Cherrycoke happily narrates incidents he cannot have seen or experiences and at one point a sub-story read by two cousins from a gothic novel they find merges with the “real” story. Deliberate anachronisms (allusions to Popeye, Clinton, Patrick O’Brien, Dolly Parton, Dr Who, Starbucks, Coke, Ketchup, Rock’n’Roll, Star Trek) and fantasy (a Talking Learned Dog, a Jesuit conspiracy to convert the Chinese and a bizarre lovelorn mechanical duck) mixed with accurate and detailed historical happenings and with a period style with much use of obscure 18th Century words and allusions. This theme is both integral and implicit to the very structure and nature of the book as well as often explicitly discussed by characters e.g. Cherrycoke at one point quotes one of his religious treatises as saying:

Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers, - Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin.... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to lawyers, - nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other, - her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit, - that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever, - not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All, - rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common

Another theme is the Founding of America, seen here as a dispute over property rights between competing colonies themselves stolen from Indians. The book talks of the deliberate extermination of Indians via Smallpox infected blankets and fact that one of the key liberties the colonies fought for was freedom to take away other’s freedom.

Slavery is a key theme (and one which the Mason-Dixon line ultimately demarcated) with discussion of its part in the British Empire and its colonies as well as being a lynchpin of the Cape culture (a Cape family’s seeming attempts to seduce Mason are actually revealed to be designed to drive him to sleep with one of their slaves and produce a mulatto which can be sold for more money at a slave auction). Mason (as part of the industrialising Midlands where he has seen troops set on striking workers) and Dixon (whose surveying was mainly based around Enclosure acts which eventually led to tied workers) both have seen pseudo-slavery in England too.

At times brilliant, at times incomprehensible.

Βαθμολογία: 9/10

Το μακρινό πλέον 2011 διάβασα τέσσερα βιβλία του Τόμας Πίντσον, έχοντας πάθει ένα μίνι αμόκ με δαύτον εκείνη τη χρονιά ("Βάινλαντ", "V", "Βραδείας Καύσεως" και "Έμφυτο ελάττωμα"), μετά έπρεπε να περάσουν τρία χρόνια για να ξαναδιαβάσω κάτι δικό του (τον Φεβρουάριο του 2014, το μικρό αλλά απαιτητικό "Η συλλογή των 49 στο σφυρί"), και τώρα, οχτώ και πλέον χρόνια μετά, ξαναπιάνω βιβλίο του Τόμας Πίντσον στα χέρια μου, το ογκωδέστατο και απαιτητικότατο "Mason & Dixon", ένα πραγματικά επικό μυθιστόρημα γεμάτο γνώσεις, πληροφορίες, εικόνες και συναισθήματα, με το ένα επεισόδιο να διαδέχεται το άλλο, με ένα κάρο χαρακτήρες, με ένα σωρό παράλογες και παράδοξες σκηνές και τρελά σκηνικά. Όποιος διαβάσει το βιβλίο θα συναντήσει όχι μόνο τον Τσαρλς Μέισον και τον Τζερεμάια Ντίξον, τους δυο αστρονόμους/τοπογράφους πρωταγωνιστές της ιστορίας που εκτός όλων των άλλων είναι υπεύθυνοι για τη δημιουργία της Γραμμής Μέισον-Ντίξον, αλλά επίσης ένα κάρο άλλα πρόσωπα, τόσο πραγματικά (π.χ. Τζορτζ Γουάσινγκτον, Βενιαμίν Φραγκλίνος, Σάμιουελ Τζόνσον κλπ) καθώς και της φαντασίας του συγγραφέα (ξυλοκόποι, Ινδιάνοι, πολιτικοί συνωμότες, απατεώνες, λωποδύτες κ.α.), όπως επίσης έναν σοφό σκύλο που μιλάει και μια μηχανική πάπια που (μάλλον) είναι ερωτευμένη με έναν Γάλλο μάγειρα. Γενικά το βιβλίο έχει πολύ πράμα μέσα και είναι δύσκολο να συνοψίσω σε μια κριτική όλα αυτά που διάβασα, όλα αυτά που ένιωσα κατά την ανάγνωση, αν και μπορώ να σας πω ότι ένιωσα δέος μπροστά στις γνώσεις και τη μοναδική ικανότητα του Πίντσον να χειρίζεται τόσα θέματα ταυτόχρονα, κρατώντας το ενδιαφέρον από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος. Σίγουρα είναι ένα απαιτητικό βιβλίο, και ίσως να μην γίνονται όλα πλήρως αντιληπτά, όμως προσωπικά παρά τις όποιες απορίες μου εδώ κι εκεί, το βιβλίο το απόλαυσα όσο περισσότερο γινόταν, με τη γραφή να είναι τόσο υπέροχη, πολυσύνθετη και καθηλωτική. Και σίγουρα είναι από τα βιβλία που κάαααποια στιγμή στο μέλλον θα ξαναδιαβάσω, τόσο για να πιάσω όσα δεν έπιασα, όσο και επειδή ήταν τόσο υπέροχο, τόσο ταξιδιάρικο και ατμοσφαιρικό και επικό και... εντάξει, καταλάβατε.

A novel about the surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, after whom the Mason-Dixon line between the states of Pennsylvania and Maryland is named. Pynchon traces the emergence of modern America to the pre-Revolutionary years of the mid 1700s (the Age of Reason, foax!) In some passages, it is a particularly contemporary America he traces; for instance, he suggests that concepts like designer coffee were around even as early as when George Washington was still only a colonel.

Like Gravity's Rainbow, which employs rocket science as a structural device, and The Crying of Lot 49, which employs the concept of entropy, Mason & Dixon is structured around scientific concepts, in this instance astronomy and geometry. In addition, like other Pynchon novels, dominant themes include colonialism and conspiracy. However, there are significant differences between this novel and Pynchon’s earlier work. For instance, the characters, particularly the title characters, are developed and represented realistically. Most frequently, the latter are shown bickering, but it is clear that underneath their disagreements, they are friends.

Stylistically the novel is a pastiche of the writing of colonial America. In some instances, this is reflected in the complexity and length of the sentences. However, the archaic spellings, forms of diction and historic references do not get in the way of the “Joaks,” of which there are many. Comic passages include a talking dog and a near-fatal encounter with a giant cheese (the novel includes humor both astronomic and gastronomic). As in other of his works, Pynchon exaggerates and distorts historic fact for comic effect. In addition, in some instances he represents things that will seem to most readers as if Pynchon made them up, but that actually happened.

Acquired Jul 1998
Probably from either Coles Books or Chapters in Montreal, Quebec

n  Cada vez que los topógrafos se separan, se topan con espesuras, ciénagas, pesadillas, pero cuando están juntos avanzan por el aire, están unidos a las estrellas...n

La novela histórica más histórica que he leído en mi vida. Es un libro complejo, algo que es característico en el autor, pero si no se tiene sabido un mínimo del contexto en el que se desarrolla el relato, una comprensión de lo que se lee sería una posibilidad remota. Por eso recomiendo averiguar sobre la Línea Mason-Dixon (todo lo concerniente a esto). Con respecto a otros temas, es preferible hacer sus respectivas averiguaciones si algo no se entiende o impide que se prosiga la lectura; en caso de no surgir ninguno de esos problemas, es mejor dejar que Pynchon los enseñe. Algunos de esos temas pueden ser:

-El Black Hole de Calcuta
-Colonización inglesa en los Estados Unidos y la enemistad con Francia
-La Ley del Timbre
-The Paxton Boys
-Feng Shui
-Jesuitas
-Los problemas con la medición de la longitud sobre el mar en 1700 (The Longitude Act)
-La batalla de Monongahela
-Jacobitas
-Royal Society
-Rebelión de Pontiac

First read this Thome back about twenty years ago. Felt like a total failure I did. Didn't feel at all I understood what I was reading. Not to be too hard on myself, this was a time almost counting as pre=reading for me. I just hadn't started reading the serious stuff yet. At any rate, never really felt like I could count this one as 'read'. And but so I picked it up again last August to try to notch that feather properly in my cap. Nope. Brain was not working at the time. Now but this time this year brain was functioning. Really, more than average, this seems a book that needs its pattern to at least approximate the functioning of the reader's brain. And when it does, boy howdy!

So but seems that M&D, at a general guess, counts as a favorite among the Pynchonistas. Seemlying nudging at GR, which, well, that would've seemed impossible. So be it. Still, though, given my memory of its reading (now years past), I'd probably still vote for Against the Day. That brick is what provides me yet with reading=memory goosebumps.

It's a Pynchon thing for me. Years of reading failure. Back long with those twenty years ago too I got stuck 2/3 the way through GR. Though I did finally notch that feather too not so long ago. And same with V ; needed to revisit it too before I could even claim a halting 'I read it'. I dunno. Pynchon still eludes me for the most part. Not to put too fine a point on that.

Mason & Dixon is a Christmas story…

Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starred the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,— the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stockinged-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peeled Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,— the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coaxed and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults. This Christmastide of 1786, with the War settled and the Nation bickering itself into Fragments, wounds bodily and ghostly, great and small, go aching on, not every one commemorated,— nor, too often, even recounted.

Yes, Mason & Dixon is a Christmas tale and as every magnificent Christmas tale should be it is full of adventures, festivity, merriment, mysteries and miracles.

When Brae, once, and only once, made the mistake of both gasping and blurting, “Oh, Aunt,— were you in a Turkish Harem, really?” ’twas to turn a giant Tap. “Barbary Pirates brought us actually’s far as Aleppo, you recall the difficult years of ’eighty and ’eighty-one,— no, of course you couldn’t,— Levant Company in an uproar, no place to get a Drink, Ramadan all year ’round it seem’d,— howbeit,— ’twas at the worst of those Depredations, that I took Passage from Philadelphia, upon that fateful Tide . . . the Moon reflected in Dock Creek, the songs of the Negroes upon the Shore, disconsolate,—” Most of her Tale, disguis’d artfully as traveler’s Narrative, prov’d quite outside the boundaries of the Girl’s Innocence, as of the Twins’ Attention,— among the Domes and Minarets, the Mountain-peaks rising from the Sea, the venomous Snakes, miracle-mongering Fakeers, intrigues over Harem Precedence and Diamonds as big as a girl’s playfully clench’d fist, ’twas Inconvenience which provided the recurring Motrix of Euphrenia’s adventures among the Turks, usually resolv’d by her charming the By-standers with a few appropriate Notes from her Oboe,— upon which now, in fact, her Reed shap’d and fitted, she has begun to punctuate her brother Wicks’s Tale, with scraps of Ditters von Dittersdorf, transcriptions from Quantz, and the Scamozzetta from I Gluttoni.

But Thomas Pynchon recounts Christmas stories his own way so all the escapades and mishaps are peculiarly edgy.
Every incredible tale, even the tallest one, shows its modicum of truth however.
The past seen through the prism of the present always becomes rainbowlike.

As with every Thomas Pynchon book I've read, I loved it, even if I had no clue what was going on. "Mason and Dixon" is probably more accessible than "Gravity's Rainbow", but it is still weird as hell and replete with Pynchon's trademark humor and stream-of-consciousness storytelling. It is the (somewhat true) story of the world's two most famous surveyors, as they travel from South Africa to Pennsylvania, meeting along the way: horny Dutch women, a talking dog, Jesuit assassins, a Chinese spy, and Native American were-beavers. Oh, and of course, there are the obligatory musical numbers. As weird as Pynchon is, the guy can write beautifully. I am in awe at the poetry in his prose.