Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were British astronomers and surveyors, most famous for journeying to North America to resolve the boundary dispute between British colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Their work took four years - from 1763 to 1767 - and the result became known as the Mason-Dixon line, which today stands as the cultural boundary between the northern and southern American states. The duo inspired the reclusive Thomas Pynchon to write this novel, which in turn inspired Mark Knopfler to write one of hist best known songs, the beautiful Sailing to Philadelphia.

To summarize this rolllicking and picaresque novel about two surveyors in pre-revolutionary America is a pointless task; unlike the Mason-Dixon line it is occupied with defying boundaries, and exploring contrasts. It is certainly a remarkable book, deserving attention for its prose alone: it is written entirely in a style which borrows works written in the 18th century, and yet remains uniquely its own; strange spelling variants and everpresent capitalization abound in its long and dense sentences, each meliticulously crafted with great attention - enormous effort went into writing this one, and it's difficult to resist mimicking it in personal correspondence. It's really a joy to read on textual level alone - to see the words, the way they're written and the sentences they form, and how the sentences combine to form a narrative.

Although the novel begins with Mason's and Dixon's voyage to the Cape Colony in South Africa, where they observe the transfer of Venus - and in the meantime encounter a talking Norfolk terrier, who calls himself "The Learned English Dog" (and is a character whom I felt was grossly underused) and the Cape family of Vrooms, which seems to be composed entirely of nymphomaniacs - it is not until their arrival in colonial America where the reader is exposed to a galore of, well, everything. The novel itself is like a new and yet unexplored country: untamed and wild with danger, but rich with promise and opportunity. The reader becomes an explorer of this land: he has to create a map of a narrative to serve as a guide through the wilderness of ideas.

Mason & Dixon explores dualism and dualities, and its ideas are like hot and cold currents. Each idea and theme is accompanied with an opposite, and the novel is focused on exploration of boundaries between them: how such boundaries come into being, how they are crossed and how the two different entities mix with one another, and how the boundaries which held them separate eventually disappear - and what is the result of all this. The still present elements of the mystic are contrasted with the age of reason and enlightement; melancholic and meditative Mason is contrasted with jovial and euphoric Dixon, and like Laurel and Hardy or Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa they venture to explore the weird frontier of America, where they meet a selection of historical characters, which at the time were not famous - but in history they will be: Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, who enjoys being accompanied by women of suspicious reputation and entertains his guests with conversation; George Washington of Virginia, who is partial to smoking hemp and munching on cookies baked by his wife, Martha, and enjoys being entertained by Gershom, his wisecracking slave servant; Thomas Jefferson is in the right place to overhear Dixon's toast to the "pursuit of happiness", and ask if he might borrow it.
The colonies are contrasted with a nation at the height of its imperial powers - growing differences in ways of thinking and hostility to the governing power will lead to a war, and eventually gain them independence. Jefferson, Washington and Franklin, among others, will form a nation of their own - one where all men are created equal, and can enjoy life, liberty and pursue their happiness, and view the destiny of their nation to spread these values beyond the thirteen colonies, from coast to coast. These noble ideas are in turn contrasted with reality and the way they're implemented - the effective theft of a continent from its native inhabitans - forced removals, killing and disregard for their life and happiness. How can it be the land of the free where all men are created equal, when its liberty and prosperity will be built with the hands of enslaved people, captured and brought there from another continent? The work of Mason and Dixon - the physical definition of boundaries in America - is at the same time an act of creation and division of the country; as the boundary between the frontier and civilization shrinks, one of the characters remarks that "Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a line". These words prove to be prophetic, as it the Mason-Dixon line will serve as a division between the North and South, and will split the infant nation in two and catapult it into the bloody civil war. The Mason-Dixon line can be seen as the symbolic line that started the uncountable dividing lines which put boundaries across America; the line of income inequality, of racial division and fear - turning the grand Cities into a dangerous frontier populated by various minorities, and forcing white settlers to flee to the safety of the suburbs.

The unsung hero of this tale is the reverend Wicks Cherrycoke (Ha Ha! Get it?), who is the narrator of the novel and tells the story of Mason and Dixon to his family in Philadelphia, in 1786 - 21 years after they finished their line. The narration, too, is dualistic - the narrated events take place before the American Revolution, and there is an enormous sense of it brewing - but are narrated from a perspective of ten years after the event. The book both anticipates the Revolution - and contemplates upon it.
Cherrycoke is a clergyman of questionable theology and a shameless moocher, sponging off his relatives who agreed to let him stay with them as long as he keeps their children entertained - if he won't perform then out with him to the streets ruled by harsh Philadelphia winter! Reverend Cherrycoke tells his tales to the twins, Pitt and Pliny - as it could not be agreed which one was born first, so each got a choice to be called "Elder" or "Younger" - who have heard him spin yarns about the faraway Indies and the faraway land of Hottentots, and request a tale about America. Cherrycoke claims to have met Mason and Dixon and accompanied them on a number of occasions, and tells the twins their story - which he liberally spices up with a heavy dose of invention, often describing events he couldn't have seen and people he has never met. Since his staying in the warm Philadelphia home depends completely on satisfaction of his listeners, Cherrycoke often changes his story according to their demands; jumping from one character to the other, using more action and fantastical elements to satisfy the boys - including a nod to the Canadian poet James McIntyre and a dramatization of his Ode on the Mammoth Cheese, stories of an amorous mechanical duck (which was based on a real invention - Jacques de Vaucanson's
The enormous lenght and many, many tangents of Mason and Dixon might discourage many readers, it remains highly readable and will benefit from revisiting. Although the honor of being Thomas Pynchon's best book is commonly bestowed upon Gravity's Rainbow, I would argue that Mason & Dixon is an equal, if not better, candidate for the title. It's an ambitious epic which is a show of satire and farce and mixes the fantastic with the historic to great results, filled with countless puns and jokes, with characters randombly breaking into bawdy songs. With all that, it is also a work of melancholy: ruminations on the lost influence of mysticism and religion - and imagination as well. The loss of the final frontier and man's conquer of the beauty of wilderness and is subsequent replacement with contemporary civilization - endless streams of condos, parking lots and shopping malls. In a country found on unity and cooperation, Red and Blue powers take sway over land and people, each trying to grasp more than the other.
But all this is seems like just a background to a simple story: one of two unlikely friends going on an adventure. The growing warmth between Mason and Dixon and the bond they form is presented with genuine affection and they become real, and so do their hopes, feelings and dreams, provoking genuine emotions. The final chapters, where we see them for one last time in their old age, are particularly touching.

I don't think that any review could do this novel true justice: there are simply too many ideas, themes, gags and jokes that academic essays could be written on it - and were. As for me, I can only give 5 stars for the novel and 5 stars for the novelist who had the balls to write it, first thinking of it in 1975 and finally publishing it in 1997, when he turned 60. Approach without fear: there is much to be found and savored here, and time spent on reading it is definitely time not lost.

Pynchon challenges my ability as a reader but not as much as James Joyce. I would recommend The Crying of Lot 49 be attempted before this. However, Ben Franklin is portrayed as a womanizing party animal. Our heroes smoke marijuana with George Washington. Then Martha brings out a large platter of pastries. Later Dixon, a Quaker, rescues and frees slaves being whipped.

"{...}Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,— who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.{...}"
—Ethelmer, p.350

This passage comes from the framing narrative with which Thomas Pynchon knits together Mason & Dixon, rather than directly from history, but it goes to the core of Pynchon's extended fabulation about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon—a work part historical, part biographical, but in sum neither history nor biography by any means—and it gives a taste of the flavor of his prose besides. If you can navigate the above without stumbling, you should be able to—well, not to make short work of Mason & Dixon (I certainly did not breeze through this book, even on second reading), but at the very least to make your way with dignity thro' this meandering, sprawling, magnificent mess of a tale.

Mason & Dixon is not a typical Pynchon work (heh... not that there's any such thing as a "typical" Pynchon—which is one reason why I think he's such a great writer). Nor is this novel my favorite Pynchon book, I must admit. So far, at least, that honor must go to Against the Day. But Pynchon did manage to captivate me a second time this time...

"And if it goes far enough up your Nose," adds Uncle Lomax with a monitory tremolo, "Well. Then it's in your Brain, isn't it?"
—p.57

Mason & Dixon seems almost designed to get up your nose, and from thence into the Brain.

Yet even so I remembered very few specifics from my first reading, back in the 1990s... apart from this darkly humorous passage:

"Gentlemen," advises this ominous Shadow, "—you have fallen, willy-nilly, among a race who not only devour Astronomers as a matter of habitual Diet, but may also make of them vile miniature 'Sandwiches,' and lay them upon a mahogany Sideboard whose Price they never knew, and then forget to eat them. Your only hope, in this room, is to impersonate so perfectly what they assume you to be, that instincts of Predation will be overcome by those of Boredom."
—p.414

That, for some reason, stuck with me...

Much of the pleasure in Mason & Dixon comes from their often-contentious relationship. It can be difficult indeed to tell, as one onlooker eventually is driven to ask,

"Which is the Husband?"
—p.642

From early on:

"{...}No,— I've no problem with Anglicans."
"Thank ye. I welcome the return of at least an Hour's more Sleep each Night otherwise spent in Fretfulness upon the Question.{...}"
—Dixon vs. Mason, p.43

To much later, when Mason's preference for Tea collides forcefully with Dixon's love of Coffee:

"Can't understand how anyone abides that stuff."
"How so?" Mason unable not to react.
"Well, it's disgusting, isn't it? Half-rotted Leaves, scalded with boiling Water and then left to lie, and soak, and bloat?"
"Disgusting? this is Tea, Friend, Cha,— what all tasteful London drinks,— that," pollicating the Coffee-Pot, "is what's disgusting."
"Au contraire," Dixon replies, "Coffee is an art, where precision is all,— Water-Temperature, mean particle diameter, ratio of Coffee to Water or as we say, CTW, and dozens more Variables I'd mention, were they not so clearly out of thy technical Grasp,—"
"How is it," Mason pretending amiable curiosity, "that of each Pot of Coffee, only the first Cup is ever worth drinking,— and that, by the time I get to it, someone else has already drunk it?"
Dixon shrugs. "You must improve your Speed...? As to the other, why aye, only the first Cup's any good, owing to Coffee's Sacramental nature, the Sacrament being Penance, entirely absent from thy sunlit World of Tay,— whereby the remainder of the Pot, often dozens of cups deep, represents the Price for enjoying that first perfect Cup."
"Folly," gapes Mason. "Why, ev'ry cup of Tea is perfect...?"
"For what? curing hides?"
—Mason vs. Dixon, p.467

In point of fact, Mason & Dixon is in large and glorious measure a parade of appetites—gustatory, amative, bibulous... straining one's vocabulary as often as one's waistband. From the virtues of tea vs. coffee as above, to food (including "the first British pizza" on p.236, forsooth!), to the depraved slave-breeding intrigues of the upper-class Dutch in Cape Town, to the prodigious amounts of Ale and Wine that Dixon and Mason (respectively) consume, Mason & Dixon comes across as a consistent (and consistently fascinating) catalogue of excess.

Sometimes, though, I had to doubt Pynchon's commitment to unadulterated veracity:

The earth hereabouts is red, the tone of a new Brick Wall in the Shadow, due to a high ratio of iron,— and if till'd in exactly the right way, it becomes magnetized, too, so that at Harvest-time, 'tis necessary only to pass along the Rows any large Container of Iron, and the Vegetables will fly up out of the ground, and stick to it.
—p.476

And occasionally, Pynchon even becomes playful... for example, can you recognize this ahistorical addition to Mason and Dixon's Company?

"That is, 'I am that which I am,'" helpfully translates a somehow nautical-looking Indiv. with gigantick Fore-arms, and one Eye ever a-Squint from the Smoke of his Pipe.
—p.486

Not to mention the were-beavers, or the extended rhapsody on Vaucanson's renowned clockwork duck (pp.372-373 et. seq.), which also features so prominently in Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears.

From time to time, Mason & Dixon also brought to my mind Alan Moore's massive Jerusalem, which I finished just about a year ago now—not just for its size, but also by musing on such topics as Angels, who

"{...}drink and smoke, and dance and gamble withal. Thought ev'ryone knew that. Some might even define an Angel as a Being who's powerful enough not to be destroy'd by Desire in all its true and terrible Dimensions. Why,— a drop of their Porter? 'twould kill the hardiest drinker among ye,— they smoke Substances whose most distant Scent would asphysicate us,— their Dancing-floors extend for Leagues, their Wagering, upon even a single trivial matter, would beggar Clive of India.{...}"
—the Revd Cherrycoke, p.451

There's more like Moore later on, too, when the celebrated Line in progress is compared to

"A smaller Pantograph copy down here, of Occurrences in the Higher World."
—a red-headed woodsman, in a tavern called The Rabbi of Prague, p.487

And, as long as I'm comparing, Mason & Dixon strikes me as a good fit for fans of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy (which I have read, but have yet to reread for Goodreads), too.


For all the hectic tone of its many episodes, Mason & Dixon as a whole is leisurely paced—'tis more than two-hundred-an-fifty pages until Mason and Dixon even arrive upon American shores. Towards the end, especially, parts of Mason & Dixon felt more than a little padded. And, as the Line is fully drawn and the Company dissolves, the mood turns from rollicking to melancholy. But how else? How else to end this fantastic tale of the lives of real people, but by giving us a little bitter along with the sweet?


I have to thank Paper Moon Books on Belmont, right here in Portland (a store which still exists, although its web presence is sadly truncated due to an across-the-street move which did not go well for inventory management), for returning my attention to this challenging, rewarding and ultimately very satisfying book.

Em quase mil densas páginas eivadas de pujança literária, sarcasmo latente, numa miríade de narrativas e personagens secundárias em conexão com as principais, de humor quase omnipresente, não me limitei a «ler um livro», vivi a agora-muito-em-voga «experiência».
Foram muitas horas de roda da designada «literatura pós-moderna», dentro das quais Mason & Dixon surgiram, exploraram, viveram as suas vidas numa complexa relação, e depois se extinguiram.
Nessa Linha de vida, que foi também parcialmente traçada na mapeada linha com o nome dos astrónomos, há reflexões sobre o que é a América, a escravatura, a amizade, o amor, o desterro, a pertença, a solidão e a melancolia inerentes à condição humana, o fascínio da ciência e as tresloucadas teorias emergentes de ramos novos e velhos do saber.

Sem prejuízo do muito mais que constitui tão plúrimo e opulento livro, dele retirei duas grandezas maiores: a relação entre Mason & Dixon, complexa e única como as relações humanas verdadeiramente válidas tendem a sê-lo; e a contundente passagem em que - por ocasião de uma anomalia temporal relacionada com a supressão de 11 dias do calendário - Mason expõe o seu perene amor por Rebekah, reconduzindo a sua própria existência a um hiato até ela.