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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
slow-paced
In awe. I didn't know it when I started reading Mason & Dixon way back in April or May, but it would come to be a near-perfect companion when navigating the tenuous world of summer 2020. To reduce Mason & Dixon to one thing, one message or theme, would be doing it a disservice, but a large aspect of Pynchon's novel is a navigation of, a confrontation with, being a white person in a world that subjugates others for your benefit. Mason & Dixon are, to varying extents, well-meaning white people, trying to accomplish a scientific feat for the benefit of the world and not do too much wrong to the Black people and Native Americans they encounter and (also to varying degrees) sense as being unjustly positioned in their world. They want to make things better, but for the greater extent of the book, they cannot see far enough beyond their scope, literally and figuratively, to see how their project will play a role in the continued subjugation of entire races of people. This is an essential work examining the seemingly insurmountable power of white supremacy from those living within it.
Plus, it has all this business with talking dogs and mechanical chickens. What's not to love?
Plus, it has all this business with talking dogs and mechanical chickens. What's not to love?
adventurous
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A giant of a book. I don't want to get sucked down any particular rabbit hole so I'm just going to leave a few thoughts rather than a thorough review.
The vernacular and language is incredibly impressive. I think Pynchon does a great job. I don't know how accurate it is, but it is very distinct, incredibly readable and even illuminating.
The puns are fairly regular and for the most part hilarious. I laughed out loud reading this book probably more than any other I've read in recent memory.
The book drags way too much for me in the America section. I know the book was more of an adventure than a traditional arc in those, but it made it hard to pick up the book at times when I didn't have much riding on the characters or the story. For the most part the side stories were great, but the parts with Mason and Dixon themselves left me bored.
I thought the ending section (the last ~100 pages or so) was fantastic. The characters of Mason & Dixon were rounded out really well and I felt that I was able to relate to them as I never really had previously. This last section is really more of a prolonged epilogue, but if there's one thing that's for sure about this book it's that Pynchon has no problem prolonging any part of the story, and here he does it excellently.
The vernacular and language is incredibly impressive. I think Pynchon does a great job. I don't know how accurate it is, but it is very distinct, incredibly readable and even illuminating.
The puns are fairly regular and for the most part hilarious. I laughed out loud reading this book probably more than any other I've read in recent memory.
The book drags way too much for me in the America section. I know the book was more of an adventure than a traditional arc in those, but it made it hard to pick up the book at times when I didn't have much riding on the characters or the story. For the most part the side stories were great, but the parts with Mason and Dixon themselves left me bored.
I thought the ending section (the last ~100 pages or so) was fantastic. The characters of Mason & Dixon were rounded out really well and I felt that I was able to relate to them as I never really had previously. This last section is really more of a prolonged epilogue, but if there's one thing that's for sure about this book it's that Pynchon has no problem prolonging any part of the story, and here he does it excellently.
What a strange little ride — and calling it little is ironic given how bricklike this book is. This took me forever to read and I’m sure I only Truly Understood maybe twenty percent of it…. and yet! It was fun, it was brain-melting, it was written like very few books I’ve read. It was, simply put, Pynchon.
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Never going to stop thinking about this book!
The book is long (34 hours in the audiobook at normal speed) and 773 pages in the paperback. (I read this in audio and ebook format, so my quotes have location numbers rather than page numbers.) So, summarizing the plot seems inadvisable. And yet… Pynchon does just that in the book. Toward the end of the novel, he imagines the story retold as a stage production. And, so, I begin my review with a brief summary of the story in the author’s own words:
Dixon is dreaming of a Publick performance as well, except it’s he and Mason who are up on the stage, and whoever may be watching are kept invisible by the Lights that separate Stage and Pit. They are both wearing cheap but serviceable suits, and back’d by a chamber orchestra, they are singing, and doing a few simple time-steps, --
It … was … fun,
While it lasted,
And it lasted,
Quite a while, --
[Dixon} For the bleary-eyed lad from the coal pits,
[Mason] And the ‘Gazer with big-city Style, --
[Both] We came, we peep’d, we shouted with surprize,
Tho’ haf the time we coudn’t tell the falsehoods from the lies,
[M] I say! Is that a --
[D] No, it ain’t.
[M] I do apologize, --
[Both] The Astronomer’s Life, Sya,
Pure as a Fife , hey,
Quick as a knife, in
The Da-a-ark!
[M] Oh, we went, --
Out to Cape Town,
[D] Phila-Del-phia too,
[Both] Tho’ we didn’t quite get to Ohi-o,
There were marvels a-plenty to view…
Those trees! Those hills! Those vegetables so high!
The Cataracts and Caverns,
And the Spectres in the sky,
[M I say, was that --
[D] I hope not!
[M] Who the Deuce said that?
[D] Not I!
It’s a wonderful place, ho,
Nothing but space, go
Off on a chase in the Dark…”
(location 11523)
If you want a more straightforward summary of the book and its big theme, allow me to quote Michiko Kakutani from the New York Times:
In "Mason & Dixon," [Pynchon’s] long-awaited new novel -- and the most emotional and affecting work in his oeuvre to date -- Pynchon offers a variation on this favorite theme. This time, the overarching tension is between Enlightenment rationalism and absurdist despair; between the orderly processes of science and the inexplicable marvels of nature, between our modern faith in progress and the violent, primeval realities of history.
While accurate, Kakutani does not properly emphasize the humorous use of language contained in Mason & Dixon. The jokes, once you find them, are the reason to keep reading this 700 plus page tome. One of the joys of the book, at least for me -- this book is clearly not for every reader, is the language. Pynchon uses some words in unusual ways. In particular, the words Iliad and subjunctive. These are, as far as I know, not words one usually thinks of as humorous words in the same way that David Letterman thought that the phrase worldwide pants was uproarious, largely, because he just thought the word pants sounded funny.
Iliad, of course, refers to the Homeric epic of the story of Troy. The story of Achilles and Agamemnon and Hector, of pride, of rage (Menin in Greek) and of battles. Here are some examples of how Pynchon uses the word:
Mason surmises some long and probably tangled Iliad of Woe back among the Friths and Fells (location 6819)
During a long Iliad of hard soldiering and small, mortal, never-decisive engagements amid dramatic hilltops, haunted castles, mysterious flocks of bats that alwasys seem’d to be lingering about… (location 9048)
Consider also Pynchon’s use of the word subjunctive. Now, the subjunctive is a mood of verbs that is used to express uncertainty, what is imagined, wished for, or possible. For example, in English, while there is no subjunctive mood per se, one could think of this sentence as a subjunctive:
If I hadn’t eaten dinner at that restaurant yesterday. then I would have had more money today.
The subjunctive is usually contrasted with indicative or what, in English, might be called a declarative sentence such as the following:
I had dinner at a restaurant yesterday.
Consider Pynchon’s use of the word subjunctive to refer not to the mood of a verb, but, instead, to refer to possibility, or desire as a concept.:
All subjunctive, of course, --had young Mason gone to his father, this might have been the conversation likely to result. (location 3218)
,,,--serving as Rubbish-tip for subjunctive hopes, for all that may yet be true… (location 5310)
Way into the continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of governments, -- (location 5312)
...has she been trouping on, cheerfully rendering subjunctive or contrary to fact, familiar laws of nature and common sense. (location 5610)
He is become the central subjunctive fact of a faith, that risks ev’rything upon one bodily Resurrection … Wouldn’t something less doubtable have done? (location 7821)
Also worth noting is Pynchon’s new variant of the phrase carpe diem from the Latin. It literally means pluck the day and is usually used to mean something like make the most out of the present moment and do not be too concerned about the future. Pynchon changes the term:
The Romans ‘round here used to say ‘Carpe Carpum,’ that is, ‘seize the carp.’
There is no doubt that the length of the book and the fact that it is a historical novel (with a fair amount of science math and enlightenment theology thrown in as well) that simultaneously tries to immerse one in the time period mean that time and effort will be required to finish it. However, to the right reader Mason & Dixon is also an adventure story filled with anachronistic humor. Unlike Gravity’s Rainbow, the humor is not surrounded by pornographic violence. So, if you tried and failed to finish Pynchon’s first big novel, I suggest you are more likely to finish and enjoy Mason & Dixon.
Dixon is dreaming of a Publick performance as well, except it’s he and Mason who are up on the stage, and whoever may be watching are kept invisible by the Lights that separate Stage and Pit. They are both wearing cheap but serviceable suits, and back’d by a chamber orchestra, they are singing, and doing a few simple time-steps, --
It … was … fun,
While it lasted,
And it lasted,
Quite a while, --
[Dixon} For the bleary-eyed lad from the coal pits,
[Mason] And the ‘Gazer with big-city Style, --
[Both] We came, we peep’d, we shouted with surprize,
Tho’ haf the time we coudn’t tell the falsehoods from the lies,
[M] I say! Is that a --
[D] No, it ain’t.
[M] I do apologize, --
[Both] The Astronomer’s Life, Sya,
Pure as a Fife , hey,
Quick as a knife, in
The Da-a-ark!
[M] Oh, we went, --
Out to Cape Town,
[D] Phila-Del-phia too,
[Both] Tho’ we didn’t quite get to Ohi-o,
There were marvels a-plenty to view…
Those trees! Those hills! Those vegetables so high!
The Cataracts and Caverns,
And the Spectres in the sky,
[M I say, was that --
[D] I hope not!
[M] Who the Deuce said that?
[D] Not I!
It’s a wonderful place, ho,
Nothing but space, go
Off on a chase in the Dark…”
(location 11523)
If you want a more straightforward summary of the book and its big theme, allow me to quote Michiko Kakutani from the New York Times:
In "Mason & Dixon," [Pynchon’s] long-awaited new novel -- and the most emotional and affecting work in his oeuvre to date -- Pynchon offers a variation on this favorite theme. This time, the overarching tension is between Enlightenment rationalism and absurdist despair; between the orderly processes of science and the inexplicable marvels of nature, between our modern faith in progress and the violent, primeval realities of history.
While accurate, Kakutani does not properly emphasize the humorous use of language contained in Mason & Dixon. The jokes, once you find them, are the reason to keep reading this 700 plus page tome. One of the joys of the book, at least for me -- this book is clearly not for every reader, is the language. Pynchon uses some words in unusual ways. In particular, the words Iliad and subjunctive. These are, as far as I know, not words one usually thinks of as humorous words in the same way that David Letterman thought that the phrase worldwide pants was uproarious, largely, because he just thought the word pants sounded funny.
Iliad, of course, refers to the Homeric epic of the story of Troy. The story of Achilles and Agamemnon and Hector, of pride, of rage (Menin in Greek) and of battles. Here are some examples of how Pynchon uses the word:
Mason surmises some long and probably tangled Iliad of Woe back among the Friths and Fells (location 6819)
During a long Iliad of hard soldiering and small, mortal, never-decisive engagements amid dramatic hilltops, haunted castles, mysterious flocks of bats that alwasys seem’d to be lingering about… (location 9048)
Consider also Pynchon’s use of the word subjunctive. Now, the subjunctive is a mood of verbs that is used to express uncertainty, what is imagined, wished for, or possible. For example, in English, while there is no subjunctive mood per se, one could think of this sentence as a subjunctive:
If I hadn’t eaten dinner at that restaurant yesterday. then I would have had more money today.
The subjunctive is usually contrasted with indicative or what, in English, might be called a declarative sentence such as the following:
I had dinner at a restaurant yesterday.
Consider Pynchon’s use of the word subjunctive to refer not to the mood of a verb, but, instead, to refer to possibility, or desire as a concept.:
All subjunctive, of course, --had young Mason gone to his father, this might have been the conversation likely to result. (location 3218)
,,,--serving as Rubbish-tip for subjunctive hopes, for all that may yet be true… (location 5310)
Way into the continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of governments, -- (location 5312)
...has she been trouping on, cheerfully rendering subjunctive or contrary to fact, familiar laws of nature and common sense. (location 5610)
He is become the central subjunctive fact of a faith, that risks ev’rything upon one bodily Resurrection … Wouldn’t something less doubtable have done? (location 7821)
Also worth noting is Pynchon’s new variant of the phrase carpe diem from the Latin. It literally means pluck the day and is usually used to mean something like make the most out of the present moment and do not be too concerned about the future. Pynchon changes the term:
The Romans ‘round here used to say ‘Carpe Carpum,’ that is, ‘seize the carp.’
There is no doubt that the length of the book and the fact that it is a historical novel (with a fair amount of science math and enlightenment theology thrown in as well) that simultaneously tries to immerse one in the time period mean that time and effort will be required to finish it. However, to the right reader Mason & Dixon is also an adventure story filled with anachronistic humor. Unlike Gravity’s Rainbow, the humor is not surrounded by pornographic violence. So, if you tried and failed to finish Pynchon’s first big novel, I suggest you are more likely to finish and enjoy Mason & Dixon.
Man I really liked this at the beginning. It was fun amd kinda goofy. Loved the bit about the making of the first British pizza and the bit where they smoked weed with George Washington. It was interesting thinking about the setting and the job these two dudes had. Super wild for the 1700s. Looking at stars, creating lines not made by nature. Way more fascinating than I expected. Liked the weird stuff too: talking dog, duck, etc. BUT. It was too fucking long. Reminded me of Don Quixote. More episodes than arc with a bunch of whimsical navel-gazing. Fun but I desperately needed it to end and when it did I sorta shrugged. Binky bonk.
I was on and off with this for a while but I really got into the second half. I just needed them to really get into making the Line. Anyway, depressed me at the end.