Mason & Dixon: A Novel [Paperback]

Thomas Pynchon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2004

Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatched pair--one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic--from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A sprawling, complex, and comic work from one of the country's most celebrated and idiosyncratic authors, Mason & Dixon is Thomas Pynchon's Most Magickal reinvention of the 18th-century novel. It follows the lifelong partnership and adventures of the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon (of Mason-Dixon Line fame) as they travel the world mapping and measuring through an uncharted pre-Revolutionary America of Native Americans, white settlers, taverns, and bawdy establishments of ill-repute. Fans of the postmodern master of paranoia will recognize Pynchon's personality in the novel's first phrase: "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs," a brief echo of the rockets that curve across the skies in the writer's masterpiece Gravity's Rainbow. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The publication of Pynchon's fifth novel is certain to be a highlight of the literary year. To try and summarize it would be an exercise in futility. Like his previous works, this one is complex?much more than a simple, rollicking tale of 18th-century surveyors as they wend their way south (to the Cape of Good Hope) and west (to America, where they drew the line for which they will ever be famous?the boundary that came to define North and South). Indeed, it is this line, this artificial border, that lies at the heart of the novel. When Mason confides to Captain Zhang that the unremitting forest disturbs him, his exotic companion replies that given that Adam and Eve, Buddha and Newton were all enlightened while sitting beneath trees, "A quick review would suggest that Trees produce Enlightenment. Trees are not the Problem. The Forest is not an Agent of Darkness. But it may be your Visto [line] is. ...Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a line." This belief in the danger of artificial boundaries?be they political, literary, or philosophical?is reflected in the very structure of Pynchon's novels, in his efforts not to let "rules" get in the way of what it is he is trying to say. His novel is often poetic, sometimes tedious, and occasionally arcane. The digressions may temporarily confuse, but the humor is sure to amuse (even Star Trek gets a nod). More accessible than Gravity's Rainbow, this is still not a novel to be read quickly. It is a work that grows on one, and as the reader follows from tree to tree, a forest truly does begin to emerge?with an important message for our "scientific" age. From one of the most unique, thoughtful, and challenging of contemporary authors, a work that is essential for every public and academic library.
-?David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 784 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (January 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312423209
• ISBN-13: 978-0312423209
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (149 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas Pynchon was born in 1937. His books include The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, and Mason & Dixon.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

154 of 160 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The more you give, the more you get December 27, 1999

By Doug Vaughn HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon is a huge, tough book. It is not beach reading. It is, however, very clearly a masterpiece. Without a single throw away line or phrase, this is a book that requires a lot of attention and, perhaps, some preparation to read. A somewhat satirical novel, written in the peculiar style of 18th novelists such as Fielding, the book presents the reader with a number of challenges: conventions of physical presentation (overuse of capitalization, strange abbreviations and variant spellings), sentence complexity (each sentence can contain such a number of clauses and phrases that one can reach the end and have to reread to figure out what modifies what), density of line (each sentence is packed with allusions, puns, jokes as well as whatever it is ostinsibly about), and subject matter (the plot is pretty straight forward but many of the situations and digressions require the reader to have a knowledge of 18th century literature, science, politics and conventions in order to make sense of what is happening).

The story is 'told' by the Rev. Cherrycoke to his twin nephews (named Pitt and Pliney - so they could be called either 'the Elder' or 'the Younger' as one chose) and the narrative's 'point of view' shifts dramatically (and with no warning) so that at times one is 'in' the story and then abruptly back in a room in Philadelphia where the story is being told. You have to pay attention.

The book is full of sly humor and outrageous wordplay. Anachronisms abound. In one scene a character is enjoined to avoid the 'hemp' on his travels, but if he must smoke to not inhale. There are strange scenes that seem to defy any reasonable convention. For example, the L.E.D (the 'Learned English Dog'), a dog who can speak, do complex mathematics instantly and figures in a pivotal and unforgetable scene. There are whole sections of the book based on facts of history or aspects of convention that are not explained and require the reader to provide the context. A good example is the section on 'The Ear'. The ear in question was a pretext for Britain going to war on the high seas, but without the correct historical context, the entire surreal section makes no sense.

This book, therefore, requires careful attention and, if one has no knowledge of 18th century history and culture, some preparation before starting it. It is one of those books that need to be read slowly - perhaps aloud, almost like an epic poem, so that the resonance between all the allusions and themes can be appreciated. The more one puts into this book the more one will get out of it, but perhaps never get to exhaust all the meanings. I suspect there are doctoral dissertations for decades to be made from this book.

Still, despite the complexity and even allowing for sections that might mean nothing if one doesn't have the 'key' to unlocking them, the book works as a travel tale, a 'buddy' story, a revisionist, picaresque, historical novel in which famous characters (Ben Franklin, for instance) make comic or bizarre appearances. Witty, intelligent, sexy, exciting and thought provoking by turns, the book is a pleasure to sink into.

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Difficult but rewarding February 19, 2000

By Peter Marcus

Format:Hardcover

Mason and Dixon is another epic Pynchonian tale. As many other reviewers have said, it isn't that easy to read. It takes time and patience and a lot of perserverance, but it is definitely worth it. The basic philosophy of the novel is dualism. There are opposing twins of everything - Mason and Dixon themselves; the stories of Mason and Dixon within that told by Rev Cherrycoke; Cherrycoke's relations, Pliny and Pitt, either Elder or Younger; Northern and Southern states of America; the differing philosophies of the Western world and the Eastern world; the differing attitudes of Art and Science (very much of importance in the 18th century); the Romantic and Gothic; the straight man and the comedian; Johnson and Boswell (who appear at the end and who are foreshadowed by Cherrycoke in the Boswellian role); Britain and America; European philosophy versus Native American philosophy; war and peace - the list goes on. A very good article to read on this is Ken Rosenbaum's in the New York Book Review. He saw this dualism as a metaphor of the zeroes and ones that obsess Pynchon: the hot and cold atoms as sorted by the Maxwell's Demon of CL49, the hot and cold states of America divided by Mason and Dixon. And through it they create the perfect "line" that is neither one nor the other, that exists but doesn't really. Pynchon is interested in the difference between the extremes of life, such as noise and silence, light and dark, being and nothingness. Mason and Dixon has apparently been on Pynchon's mind since the 70s, and it is very much a culmination of his life's obsession.

We have to search the novel for references and echoes. Look at the cover of the book. I'm sure it cannot be a coincidence that the "&" is the main symbol. Mason and Dixon is about the things that join us and divide us, the "&" between us all. And surely there is an echo in the fact that "Mason", "Dixon" and "Pynchon" all end in "-on", and that they line up on the book's spine. Pynchon, with his curious eye for detail and coincidence, could not have ignored that.

Like in his other works, Pynchon manages to create a link between his books. They form a great bustling world. Pig Bodine (from V) has an ancestor who appears in Mason and Dixon, and Cherrycoke's descendent appears in Gravity's Rainbow. Characters link in again, forming a total corpus of Pynchonian achievement.

Another thing that Rosenbaum's article mentions is the Transit of Venus that takes up a large chunk of the novel (the line-making seems to take ages to come along). Rosenbaum sees this as the Transit of V-ness, as if Pynchon is having another joke on us. He gives it connations that are too detailed to mention here, but should be read by interested readers.

I must reiterate that this is not a simple book. It requires work. It took me over a month to read. It is as long as GR. And it is written in an 18th century style, so it is often confusing and distracting. However, it is very funny and up to the usual standard of Pynchonian research. It is highly accurate (you can do your own checking)in the ideas, events and speech (including Mason and Dixon's differing dialects); and the mysterious fact that we know only the date of Dixon's birth allows Pynchon's mind to run riot - he has him flying over Durham with his teacher, walking into bizarre cave structures where everything is upside down, and so on.

This is a challenging but highly rewarding philosophical novel, bawdy, 18th century in many ways. It is one of Pynchon's greatest works, and although people are always wary to classify a work so soon, I believe it can be located quite happily next to GR.

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars off the shelf just in time September 15, 2006

By Heavy Theta

Format:Paperback

This thing sat on my shelf, half-read for the longest time. Only the notice of the upcoming release this November of Pynchon's next got me motivated enough to dig into it again. It's not that it isn't brilliant. No one else around can dazzle you with so much wit and wonder. The first encounter with the talking dog is as magical as anything you'll ever read.

And it's not like this is the only Pynchon novel that takes some effort to get into. There are plenty of folks who have had to to take a couple cracks at V or Gravity's Rainbow before catching the wave.

But Mason and Dixon is a lot of work, if for no other reason than the effort it takes dealing with the mid-18th century prose style. (Can you imagine the effort it took to produce it?) John Barth's Sotweed Factor is similar, and yet somehow infinitely more accessible (and highly recommended!). Pynchon's gift for rapid exposition is not necessarily suited to the constraint on verbal glibness. Especially in a work this voluminous.

And yet the darn thing is consistently challenging, if one has the patience and energy to put into it. It seemed to me that the beginning and ending were the best parts, but this could very well have everything to do to the enthusiasm one brings to a new book, and the emotional satisfaction one gain's when reaching towards the conclusion. One thing for sure, for once Pynchon truly has plotted out and delivers a conclusion worthy of the whole work, as opposed to suddenly rushing out a trap door and leaving the reader in a state of suspension (which of course is also one of the many delights of his first three novels). This time one gets the sense that the author has a good deal of affection for his featured players.

This book is a great as you want it to be, if you're willing to work at it. I'm just looking forward to the next one being a little more nimble. (Meanwhile, I've got a couple months to see if I can make more of a dent into The Recognitions.)