Pynchon's Mason and Dixon--Should I bother? Where's it stand in relation to his other stuff?

Yeah the bittiness is kind of the whole point. This is his best book, I think, although I do need to give it a re-read.

it's my favourite, but it's probably my favourite historical era

I love the discussion of the Black Hole of Calcutta and how it distorts history. It's a discussion of relativity in 18th century language.

He returned to quite a few themes in ATD - perhaps most memorably the hollow-earth theory - but I think they got fairly distinct treatments. ATD is rangier, more flippantly-written, more overtly psychedelic, more revolutionary in tone. M&D is very technical, subtly-detailed and elusive. It's almost an acknowledgement that America will always escape itself - that too much has been staked.

Oh - there were numerous astonishing sentences. Cherrycoke on History and its uses springs to mind (in fact, every Cherrycoke extract was incredible really, ditto Tox). There's one paragraph, spoken by an Indian to 'defecates-with-pigeons', that is one of the most haunting paragraphs I've read

You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip'd us away, and for less

"Coprophagously-agrin" is the phrase that sticks in my head,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fart_Proudly

#pynchoninpublic remembering my favorite Pynchon in that special day pic.twitter.com/ME4YXKH9cP

— David Tena (@Davirutena79) May 8, 2022

(adding: dr vick's brother once played me "sailing to philadelphia" on the ukelele)

(attn real hedz: we larfed non-stop)