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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
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:
Yes
Mason and Dixon was by far the most challenging fiction I've read this year (Midnight Children, Satanic Verses, and In the Name of the Rose were past years challenges). This is the story of a royal astronomer and surveyor who are asked to survey the boundary between Ohio and Pennsylvania, which requires the greater accuracy of astronomical techniques because of the great distances involved.
It's a meandering epic about the life of the main characters and feels like the episodic and mythological exploits of the Odyssey or arthurian quests. It's also a satire of colonial America and some important heroes of the revolution. It's very well researched and detailed. However, it is written in the vernacular of the time and can be hard to follow at times, but the work is definitely worth it.
It's a meandering epic about the life of the main characters and feels like the episodic and mythological exploits of the Odyssey or arthurian quests. It's also a satire of colonial America and some important heroes of the revolution. It's very well researched and detailed. However, it is written in the vernacular of the time and can be hard to follow at times, but the work is definitely worth it.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
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:
Yes
Save time and just spend a couple days reading the William and Mary Quarterly
I'm somewhat at a loss for how I feel about this book. When I intended to finally give Pynchon a real go of it, this was the novel I was most excited for. It was, really, the only one I wanted to read. But, given its length, I decided to start with the Crying Lot. While I didn't love that, I had been told it's among Pynchon's worst, so I wasn't bothered.
But this?
I hate when people write in period appropriate prose. I jsut do. If I had known this book had that, I probably wouldn't have read it. Even so, after about 100 pages, the stylistic quirk became somewhat invisible to me. I mean, the prose never becomes invisible. I'd say Pynchon's real strength as a writer seems to be his ability to write the best sentences you'll come across. And maybe that would have been enough for me ten years ago, but I find great prose to be something I very much appreciate, but if it's the whole show, I'm not very impressed.
But it's not the whole show. Just the main attraction, I'd say. There are stretches of this book that I loved and I think the friendship at the heart of it is worth sticking through to the end for--this redeemed the novel a bit for me, honestly. But a lot of the book begins to just feel like a lot of words. A lot of words strung together beautifully, but still just a lot of words.
I think part of the problem for me with this book is that it's essentially a buddy comedy, but I never found it especially funny. There were many times where I'd find myself acknowledging the joke or the humor I was reading, but it never made me laugh or even smile to myself. Like, I saw where the humor was but it was never funny enough to really make me react to it. Which is a problem!
So it goes. I was mostly disappointed with this. Part of me wishes I had given up around page 300 or 400. The other part of me is glad I stuck through to the end, to see the end of a great literary friendship.
But, yeah--this never really hit me the way it needed to, or the way I wanted it to.
Even so, I'm onto Against the Day. If I don't like this one, well, I suppose I'll be done with Pynchon.
But this?
I hate when people write in period appropriate prose. I jsut do. If I had known this book had that, I probably wouldn't have read it. Even so, after about 100 pages, the stylistic quirk became somewhat invisible to me. I mean, the prose never becomes invisible. I'd say Pynchon's real strength as a writer seems to be his ability to write the best sentences you'll come across. And maybe that would have been enough for me ten years ago, but I find great prose to be something I very much appreciate, but if it's the whole show, I'm not very impressed.
But it's not the whole show. Just the main attraction, I'd say. There are stretches of this book that I loved and I think the friendship at the heart of it is worth sticking through to the end for--this redeemed the novel a bit for me, honestly. But a lot of the book begins to just feel like a lot of words. A lot of words strung together beautifully, but still just a lot of words.
I think part of the problem for me with this book is that it's essentially a buddy comedy, but I never found it especially funny. There were many times where I'd find myself acknowledging the joke or the humor I was reading, but it never made me laugh or even smile to myself. Like, I saw where the humor was but it was never funny enough to really make me react to it. Which is a problem!
So it goes. I was mostly disappointed with this. Part of me wishes I had given up around page 300 or 400. The other part of me is glad I stuck through to the end, to see the end of a great literary friendship.
But, yeah--this never really hit me the way it needed to, or the way I wanted it to.
Even so, I'm onto Against the Day. If I don't like this one, well, I suppose I'll be done with Pynchon.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
To the extent these things matter, this would be a strong contender for The Great American Novel of the 1990s. I love my friends Mason and Dixon, and their all too futile attempts to understand America, this infinite beautiful space made a dumping ground of evil, which we were all too desperate in our cruel desires to claim, divide, and make sensible with methods poisoned and violative from the start.
challenging
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated