My Thoughts on Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon

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. (Just for fun you can visit this article on subjunctive, although it does not even describe its use in Ancient Greek.) 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.