Reason Read: quarterly read for Reading 1001, April/May/June. This is a book that should be read slowly, perhaps studied and maybe even in a coffee house. Mason & Dixon of course is the story of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon who are sent to America to draw the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Charles Mason is an English/American astronomer and the straight man, while Jeremiah Dixon, and Englishman surveyor and astronomer, as well as Quaker is the comic hero. As we learn about the two men through the story as told by rev Cherrycoke we become aware of the intimacies and the tensions. As the men aged I became more empathetic with them. Pynchon created great characters. The story is also full of word play and humor. It is written in 18th century Syntex which grounds the novel in time and place. Did I catch all the nuances, word plays, humor? No I did not. Would I recommend this book, yes but with warnings that it is not an easy read. I am fully convinced that Thomas Pyhchon is a brilliant author.

Quotes:
pg 683, "a cycle belonging to some Engine whose higher Assembly and indeed purpose they never, except from infrequent glimases, quite make out.
Pg 352, "To understand History, Ives Says, "you look at the evidence, the testimony, Teh whole truth".
Cherrycoke sees history as "a great tangled of lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the mnemonic deep."
"as above, so below." key statement repeated several times s and I think it is found in his other books (Against the Day and others?).
Theme is the Human Condition. ( )

Bizarre and fanciful, starting in a more realistic vein and then shifts to the bizarre. ( )

This is not an historical novel in the typical use of that genre, but rather in the Pynchonesque sense of the word. If you keep that in mind and do not require explanations for every absurdity you may find the journey through this large (750+ pages) novel one that entertains, provokes, and just possibly delights. ( )

Mason & Dixon is not difficult so much as obscure. For the first couple hundred pages, separate scenes and interactions kept me entertained, though I was often lost in terms of who the myriad side characters were, or how the situation fit into either protagonist's biography. I deliberately refrained from looking up the potted history of Mason or Dixon, thinking Pynchon might frame it for me. He never did. (Looking it up later I can see while little prior knowledge is necessary, having in mind the basics of the boundary disputes and the survey certainly would be useful, and would not spoil the story. I didn't know that going in, so the most difficult aspect of reading Pynchon's story cold was in maintaining faith that all would make sense, if only I would jettison expectations of an orthodox historical tale.)

About a quarter-way in, I'd figured out some references to keep me oriented as I tumbled about: the framing story with the interjecting audience, and Rev Cherrycoke -- who separately features in Mason & Dixon's timeline -- (sometimes) would recur at chapter breaks and unpredictable moments within a chapter; within that, the general outline of Mason & Dixon's professional chronology comprising first a trip to South Africa, then a return to England, and finally a trip to the U.S., with ghosts from their separate pasts flitting in and out this overarching plot. Ironically, the central signifier of the Mason-Dixon line, common to U.S. high school history classes, never makes an appearance: it turns out all that was posthumous, the two most likely never hearing their work referenced by that name.

But the revelation for me was something different, namely drawing the parallel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Like Carroll, Pynchon salts his tale with disguised historical vignettes: an attempt to measure the gravitational pull of a mountain, say, or the political salons of Colonial Philadelphia; the cultural significance of mesmerism, or the looming presence of Lepton Castle. These are presented in absurdist transformations as to be almost unrecognisable, Mason & Dixon looking on in deadpan confusion like expat Alices. I don't know for a fact these are historical referents, but they feel like them. The book is an extended romp through 18th Century Rationalism and Imagination, much like Carroll's novels do for the 19th Century.

If I ever revisit, it would be most interesting with the full-on Gardner apparatus.

The novel's denouement is highlighted by a picaresque chapter relaying the story of two Chinese astonomers, uncannily like our heroes; and winds down more poignantly than I would have thought possible, given the disparate confusion that came before. Mason & Dixon is both authentically American and recognisably Pynchonesque.

//

● "The past is a foreign country." M&D is in part a mimetic exercise, manifesting that "foreign-ness" on the page rather than eliding it. So: obscure, yes, like our understanding of 18th Century American and British people, language, customs is obscure. From the first paragraph, Pynchon demonstrates this with spelling and punctuation, and not only in idiomatic speech. I tried early on to puzzle out the caplitalisation rules, but never did. I'm aware spelling wasn't standardized as it is today, and suspect Pynchon played with that knowingly.

● Authentic Americana. White supremacy / slavery / racism are rampant throughout and described at times without comment, at other times with direct intervention by characters (the scene of Dixon accosting a slavemonger being only the most obvious and melodramatic).

● Science and Imagination. There is a thread reminiscent of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, sending up 18th Century Science with forays into superstition, error, and an extended subplot concerning talking dogs, automatons, and an invisible duck bent on revenge. ( )

More like 3.5. I should have liked this more. I will read again to confirm, because I know it may have just been timing.

UPDATE: Second read much better. ( )