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Title: Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon ISBN: 0805058370 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.94
Rating: 4
Summary: A mellow masterpiece
Comment: There is no longer any point in being defensive about Pynchon. I personally don't have any doubt that, on the strengths of "Gravity's Rainbow" and to a slightly lesser extent "The Crying of Lot 49", he is the greatest living novelist working in the English language, for what that's worth. These books are no more demanding than the average Jacobean tragedy. Which, really, isn't very much.
The rewards of Pynchon have always outweighed the difficulties, anyway. "Mason & Dixon" is perhaps the foundling child of the rumour, current in the 80s, that Pynchon was writing a novel about the Civil War. He ended up giving us "Vineland", his frothiest work, which isn't to say that it's not haunted by malevolent spectres of Nixon and Reagan. "Mason & Dixon" probably demands some vague acquaintance with 18th century fiction, in order to see what Pynchon is getting at stylistically, but really, guys, they're on the shelf at bargain prices, and if you haven't read 'em by now ... Gawd help you.
I use the word "mellow" because this seems to me to be a sadder and more tolerant Pynchon at work. (It may only seem that way cause he's older, and we expect this kind of thing from a Late Style, but nevertheless...I'll get back to you on it when I've read it again.) He manages to combine a mischievous sense of the contemporary with a feel for the America-before-America that seems somehow right, even if I don't know how. A good example is the episode where the stuffy Mason and the goofy Dixon pay a call on Colonel George Washington, who happens to be smoking a pipe filled with some substance or other; the three of them promptly get the munchies, and call upon the servants for some eats. Or the bit when a blue-bespectacled Benjamin Franklin plays a glass harmonica in a chophouse, thereby presaging the phenomenon of the DJ. Or the scene where the pizza is invented. And so on.
What's surprising and new about the book is Pynchon's (apparent) uncomplicated fondness for his two heroes. Mason, pious, middle-class, respectable and socially ambitious - southern English to a T - is forever being embarrassed by the blunt, wide-eyed, Northern Dixon. It's almost as though he sees future silent comedy duos in this unlikely partnership. The book is endlessly cheeky, but it has a beating heart, and the heart is in the relationship of the eponymous surveyors. The closing pages are amongst the most haunting and straightforwardly moving that he has ever written - and yet, in them, there is still a tragic awareness of how American history is going to turn out...
Yes, it's "picaresque", which is to say that it doesn't exactly have a swift, economical plot and isn't exactly unencumbered by digressions. But these are part of the pleasures of literature, or at least they were until the recent craze for the novel that you read in order to be able to say that you've read it. "Mason & Dixon" does not yield all its splendours in one go. Few good novels do. Hang on - make that _no_ good novels. Nabokov always said that you never really read a novel, you only reread it - meaning that if you get it all in the first reading, it probably wasn't worth writing. Pynchon took classes from Nabokov, and this lesson sunk in.
The man is still the greatest, at least in my mother tongue. (Though I'll wave a small flag with John Berger's name on it, just because I can.) I just finished this book, and I look forward to a time when I've forgotten what it's like, so that I can read it again.
Rating: 5
Summary: Pynchon may be the finest writer of this century.
Comment: I first read Pynchon about 30 years ago. Unlike some friends who can remember every character and situation of Gravity's Rainbow or V., it was not specific characters or events which most intrigued me in Pynchon's writing, but the sense of place he invokes. The place is not geographic, but experiential. To read Pynchon seriously (and this requires a certain suspension of disbelief), to follow his logic through(it is there, though sometimes difficult)is to experience a paradigm shift. One cannot read Pynchon and fail to experience the world a bit differently afterward. With Mason & Dixon, not only does Pynchon more clearly develop the significance of his theory of Entropy as it applies to human society (the obliteration of the mythic, the homogenization of culture, the blanding of the imagination), but he demonstrates that he has become wordsmith without equal in (at least)current English literature. The meaning of this work aside, it must be read by everyone who writes or wishes to write for the sheer beuty of its prose.This novel represents a synthesis of historic and scientific knowledge, social analysis, wit, insight and sheer mastery of description unequalled by anything I have seen in Twentieth Century literature. Don't be afraid of this book. Be afraid to be afraid of it.
Rating: 4
Summary: An enjoyable book for those who enjoy history and literature
Comment: I am an English reader who hasn't read any of Pynchon's previous works, and am an occasional visitor to North Eastern USA. For me this was a rewarding book: rambling, yes, but enjoyable for the ride. As an avid collector of obscure facts, historical and scientific, I found plenty of intellectual treats along the way. As for problems with talking dogs, ducks and golems, perhaps more sceptical readers can take comfort in the assurance that the whole story is an (imperfect) narration. The narrator (Rev. Cherrycoke)sometimes displays signs of the mania attributed to the characters of his narration. My main criticism is that changes of scene and perspectives are often seemless and may confuse the unwary reader. I certainly don't think the book would ever have been published if it were a a first novel, so I'm glad Pynchon is 'establishhed' enough to be able to write such entertaining, complex and imaginative material. After Pynchon's (fictional) gloss I won't be able to think of George and Martha Washington and of Benjamin Franklin in quite the same way!
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Title: Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Thomas Pynchon ISBN: 0140188592 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Vineland by Thomas Pynchon ISBN: 0141180633 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: V. by Thomas Pynchon ISBN: 0060930217 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon ISBN: 0060931671 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Slow Learner:Early Stories By Thomas Pynchon by Thomas Pynchon ISBN: 0316724432 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: April, 1985 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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