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

yeah, that's a really really good point. the whole book probably hangs on it!!!

I just about fell out of my chair.

M.

btw i couldnt get hold of The Recognitons - i bought J R instead.

The slavery gloss, to me, overdetermines that beautiful little simultaneous dog dream that M & D have later in the book, taking it away from enigma and giving it over to the straightforwardly political, as the yoke of slavery gets strapped to where Mason and Dixon meet.

Although I suppose that's merely a different sort of joke altogether, enlisting all that high-powered machinery just to make a pun on the Mason-Dixon line. I wouldn't put it past him, I guess, but it's painfully, aggressively highbrow-cute, in its own gonzo sort of way.

M.

M.

Irrelevantly, I love love love that wonderful expression in Lot 49 with Oedipa "shuffling back through a fat deckful of days".

Pfft, what does Pynchon know.

So. I started Mason & Dixon yesterday. It's been on my shelves for YEARS all sad and abandoned and hardbacked.

Why didn't anyone do some sort of intervention when I read GravRain first! GravRain, I did not enjoy. M&D is... GRATE! I admit I am only 100 pages in, but if it carries on like "Carry On Up The East India Company" (Mason is Charles Hawtrey, Dixon is Sid James, those 3 Dutch girls are a trinity of Barbara Windsors) it can't go wrong.

I ampersand-hearted the Learn'd English Dog tho, I see upthread that he is not to everyones tastes. What, you don't *like* allegories featuring puppies? (It's better than yet another sodding 'rocket'. Oh, I did not like GR).

Started re-reading this a week or so ago, taking my time over it, each day more convinced that this might my favourite book (out of all of the books, not just Pynchons).

It's all about the cheese rolling scene.

I think it's an enjoyable romp at first, but becomes a bit of a slog once they're in the US - got heartily sick of Zhang & the Jesuits.

In the interests of not having to flag SBs I am gonna ignore this thread as much as possible for the rest of the day.

I really enjoyed this and should probably reread. My mind is telling me it's the best of the second wave of novels, but I haven't read it in so long that I can't quite trust that assessment.

I am almost certain this is my favourite book (out of all of the books, not just Pynchons), must read again to confirm.

Zhang and the Jesuits >>> Major Marvey

there's something peculiar about how totally occluded what actually happens in this book is, to me, though it might be that i both read it and re-read it, years later, when totally sleep-deprived

but something about i. the need to follow actual historical event ii. the temptation to go off on one -- makes it impossible for me to recall to myself any vague outline of what happens, other than: there is mason, there is dixon, they go to america, they follow a line

I couldn't finish M&D.

but something about i. the need to follow actual historical event ii. the temptation to go off on one -- makes it impossible for me to recall to myself any vague outline of what happens, other than: there is mason, there is dixon, they go to america, they follow a line

― thomp, Wednesday, 24 November 2010 15:43 (4 hours ago) Bookmark

not sure i remember a lot more than that, but i thought it was pretty great

I couldn't finish M&D.

i am very stubborn about finishing books i start but i gave up on this around p300 or so.

"What actually happens" is never of primary importance in Pynchon novels IMO, it's all about enjoying the journey. I sometimes open this book at random and read a couple of chapters without being overly concerned about how they connect up.

impossible for me to recall to myself any vague outline of what happens, other than: there is mason, there is dixon, they go to america, they follow a line

Ditto--I can remember nothing else from the book. Except something about a talking robot duck? Not sure if that's right, to be honest.

i am very stubborn about finishing books i start

otm

There is a very bizarre trick employed about 3/4 of the way through M&D that I have never before or since seen in a novel but also opens up the whole novel and changed the entire way I looked at it.

Also, the ending is heartbreaking and beautiful and worth reading for that alone.

Also, the mechanical duck. It is Pynchon's best book, I think.

what was the trick? i seem to remember the last few pages of this being really affecting

i'm dying to know about this trick.

My second favourite Pynchon I think, maybe even my favourite - tho' GR has that unassailable intensity, this is the more likeable book. I too find it hard to remember what goes where, and what's happening around the place, but I don't much mind: its looseness is part of its charm, and I like its movement, the way it drifts off, seems to be rambling, but then the digression's done another theme-and-variation - borders, things not quite there, systems tipping from one state to another, hinterlands.

His best character portraits, too, I think: answers a lot of the usual criticisms of P once you're over the style hump (Loved the style from the off: came out as I was starting my (long-)18th Century doctorate: my favourite novelist digging around the same places I was headed! EXCITED!)

I've never given this a full re-read. Maybe over New Year? I think that might be good.

i just finished this !! ahh!! i totally loved it, twice as much as gravity's rainbow, possibly because i actually concentrated and finished in a couple weeks instead of over the course of a few months.

not at lot really "happens" that you need to remember, much of it is just setpiece following setpiece. but its very funny! i was chuckling every few pages.

i think the "difficulty" of the prose is overstated--the anachronisms are mostly typographical, i.e. the capitalizations and older spellings and so forth. take that out and i dont think itd seem particularly different than GR stylistically.

i assume the "trick" matt is talking about is the introduction of the pulp "ghastly fop" novel that the cousins are reading into the larger narrative? its quite well done. was disappointed that ethelmer and tenebrae didnt get together.

i've read parts so many times, but i STILL have trouble not reading every Capitalization for goofiest possible ever-emphasis

i like this book a lot. prosewise it gives me more pleasure than any other pynchon; i probably read about a hundred (scattered) pages of it out loud.

yeah i read a lot of it out loud and then i got worried that my neighbors could hear me so i stopped

making me want to re-read

this book is great fun until the pair reach america. i stopped reading at that point.

it's still pretty fun after that! they get high with George Washington and meet a robot duck

did not know that mark knopfler's "sailing to philadelphia" was inspired by this book

i did but i'm not proud of myself for it

im not sure knopfler really read mason and dixon the same way i did but its a pretty song

also dont get why he has dixon sing "a glass of wine with you sir" when its established pretty early on that mason is the wine-drinker

weird how pynchon's britishisms are more convincing than knopfler's

anyway, have you heard pat benatar's pynchon concept album

http://img.maniadb.com/images/album/165/165413_1_f.jpg

i have heard of it

i mean everyone knows what a huge pynchon fan benatar is

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/05/2013-coopers-hill-cheese-rolling-and-wake/100521/

Finished it. Wonderful work, probably *just* behind ATD in my affection in that it often felt like a collection of really good bits than a single tectonic movement towards Truth, Beauty or othersuch (although it did of course have elements of this)

some of the individual bits are as good as anything I've read - Jenkin's Ear, the chapter where the duck is introduced, the chapter where Zhang is introduced, lots of the psychogeography and perhaps above all the parable of Hsi and Ho, which is possibly my favourite literary parable of all. and of course the ongoing badinage between our two heroes - the very book's soul. so much to love here.

didn't cry at the end - came close - it folds to an elegiac & superbly-weighted ending - the bits with SPOILER SORT OF Mason & his son especially

did not know that mark knopfler's "sailing to philadelphia" was inspired by this book

― max, Wednesday, October 5, 2011 7:47 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i had never consciously heard this song and i was in a grocery store during the "couplethree" weeks i was reading the book and it came on and i thought i was insane

like the guy in signs and symbols

Yeah, reread this over the summer. Loved the whole of part three, where the timeline gets really scrambled, and it seems as if noone is really sure what is going on. I want to write a(nother) paper on that part some day.

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)