Mason & Dixon
by Thomas Pynchon(1997)
Novelc. 770 pages
“Snow-Loss upon the Cheeks of the Stars.”
One great work, every day
by Thomas Pynchon(1997)
“Snow-Loss upon the Cheeks of the Stars.”
Thomas Pynchon(1997)
Charles Mason, astronomer, and Jeremiah Dixon, surveyor, travel to America to draw the line that will bear their names and divide the nation. Pynchon writes in eighteenth-century English, complete with capitalized Nouns and long Sentences, and the novel is digressive, hallucinatory, and strangely moving. A talking dog appears. A giant cheese. The Line they draw will become the boundary between slave states and free. Pynchon never gives interviews; his reclusiveness is legendary. The novel is his most human work, a friendship at its center, America's original sin at its edges. They drew a Line. It is still there.