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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.
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From Booklist
Pynchon, an elusive, erudite, and manic satirist, has weighed in with another big book, another romp through the wild frontier of his imagination. As he did in his most celebrated work, Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and in Vineland (1990), Pynchon explores the paradoxes of a transitional era, this time harking back to the mid^-eighteenth century and the so-called Age of Reason. His heroes are the English astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the men responsible for establishing the Mason-Dixon line, and who, in his magic-making hands, embody their time's eager devotion to logic and precision even in the face of life's daunting chaos. As Pynchon chronicles their cultural and scientific adventures from their first meeting in London through their journey to Sumatra and the arduous surveying of the famous boundary line that carries their names, he considers such complex issues as colonization, slavery, the massacre of American Indians, and the conflicts between religion and science. But he also has fun, gleefully improvising on the assertive language of the time, taking sly liberties with the lives and personalities of the melancholy Mason and carefree Dixon, reveling in the buzz of pubs and coffeehouses, and animating a great cast of whimsical secondary characters. While Mason and Dixon survive all manner of extremes in weather, terrain, and human behavior, Pynchon transforms their world into a fun-house-mirror reflection of our own, reminding us that we still search for meaning in celestial events, that racism is still alive and virulent, and that friendship and love can and do transcend the dividing lines of prejudice and politics. Donna Seaman
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
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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.
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Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Every reader of Thomas Pynchon, like the long distance walker, will encounter one or more "walls"--barriers to deal with if the book is to be finished and a measure of satisfaction achieved. Although it is 773 pages long, length is not really a major "wall" in this novel. The first wall is language, words and their meanings. Long recognized as a master of techno-babble, this author of a 1000 voices situates his narrative in the 18th century, and (inevitably) chooses to render it in rhetoric that "seems" authentic, down to the slang and capitalized Nouns. Those who can read through or "flow" with this language will have that rare treat of entering a whole world created by language. This world becomes more and more familiar, especially when the scene shifts to America, where one recognizes more of the names, events, and places. The second barrier is one of knowledge: Pynchon builds a laybrinth of facts and pseudo-facts that can delight or irritate one to no end. Did George Washington smoke hemp? Did too many cups of coffee, plus sweets, plus tobacco in crowded coffee houses help propel the American colonists toward Revolution? If you're the sort who has to know "the truth," this novel could take over parts of your life! To my mind, Mason & Dixon is less a plot than a narrated world: Pynchon built it painstakingly, and some readers will want to stride through to its farthest corners, where it blends with our world
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
I found this to be Pynchon's most entertaining novel, as well as the most accessible. Though it may take readers a couple pages to get used to the narrative style, it soon becomes very smooth. What really amazes is that despite the historical setting everything here seems so modern. Its hows that people are much the same despite the era in which they live. And though the events chronicled are not always based on literal fact, they have a Kafkaesque ability to convey a higher truth.
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Mason & Dixon, a Tricky Novel
Like some kind of OutofControl Top or meandering Mad Man, the Plot of this novel Spins and Cavorts, pell-mell, and Hiddly-Diddly, rendering the Reader unable to ever Know What... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 11. Mai 2000 von scott gates
Pinch and Swallow
I can easily comprehend all the criticisms both for and againstthis novel and Pynchon in general. So why five stars? Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 21. April 2000 veröffentlicht
It's been said already
Perhaps the best book I have ever read: funny, poignant, cerebral, touching, delaing with the full gamut of human emotion. A work of genius.
Am 3. März 2000 veröffentlicht
Nutritious, and worth the wait
It's sort of a given at this point, that if you're not a devoted Pynchon fanatic, you'll never make it very far beyond "Lot 49" -- it's almost gastronomic in nature: if... Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 25. Februar 2000 von boeanthropist
Huh?
I consider my myself a reader who relishes literary challenges. Regretfully, I'll need to wait for the english language translation before properly assessing this novel's merit.
Am 22. Februar 2000 veröffentlicht
A surprisingly accurate piece of "fiction"
I must confess my bias towards this book before I start. My name is Richard Dixon-Teasdale, my Grandmother was MH Dixon of Cockfield, County Durham. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 11. Januar 2000 von Richard Dixon-Teasdale
A surprisingly accurate piece of "fiction"
I must confess my bias towards this book before I start. My name is Richard Dixon-Teasdale, my Grandmother was MH Dixon of Cockfield, County Durham. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 11. Januar 2000 von Richard Dixon-Teasdale
A surprisingly accurate piece of "fiction"
I must confess my bias towards this book before I start. My name is Richard Dixon-Teasdale, my Grandmother was MH Dixon of Cockfield, County Durham. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 11. Januar 2000 von Richard Dixon-Teasdale
I feel so strange
I figured that one either loves or hates Mr. Pynchon's works. So I feel quite out of place saying that I think Gravity's Rainbow is one of the most important books of the century... Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 29. Dezember 1999 veröffentlicht
The more you give, the more you get
Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon is a huge, tough book. It is not beach reading. It is, however, very clearly a masterpiece. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 27. Dezember 1999 von Doug Vaughn
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