Reading Mason & Dixon

 I like reading long novels. Often they are among my favorites of  favorite authors, like Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City or Richard Powers' The Time Of Our Singing, Don DeLillo's Underworld (though my absolute favorite of his is the somewhat longish Ratner's Star) and Jim Harrison's The Road Home (nearly 500 pages on its own, it is also a kind of sequel to the shorter Dalva.) I've had stretches of taking on long classics all in a row: Moby Dick, War & Peace, Anna Karenina.  In the first few years of my retirement I read several long Dickens' novels, though I admit I haven't attempted the longest, Martin Chuzzlewit.  

I didn't come to this naturally (but that's a longer story) and I don't get through them all--I have yet to sustain interest in the world of Middlemarch, though I appreciate the skill of the writing.  I do need to be involved in the world of the novel, but what grabs me and holds me is the rhythm of the prose.  The pleasures of that are enough to keep me going, even when (as frequently happens) I'm not all that sure what's going on.  I've turned to plot guides, and in the case of Dickens, a good BBC/PBS film adaptation, to help me sort out the characters and events.

The writing, the mesmerizing rhythms of it have especially been the attractions of several of Thomas Pynchon's long novels.  I read V twice and had a pretty good idea of what was going on the second time.  I started Gravity's Rainbow several times, I loved the first section a lot (same with the first section of Ulysses) but couldn't get past it.  Then I read it through in the 1980s (when I noticed that the movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai stole the name of Yoyodine Propulsions from this book.)  After my retirement in 2016 I read it again, this time with a guidebook or two.  That added to the pleasure.

Gravity's Rainbow is very likely Pynchon's masterpiece, but I have a special fondness for the 1085 pages of Against The Day.  If it has a plot I don't know what it is.  I experienced it as a compendium of early twentieth century genres, including the western and especially boy's adventures. The group of boys as a kind of Starfleet in dirigibles is just perfect.

The occasion for all of this is that I have finally finished another long Pynchon, Mason & Dixon.  I read its 773 pages over several years--so many I can't remember when I started it, but probably two or even three this time.  I've had a copy since it was published in 1997, but I was always stopped in my reading tracks by the strange 18th diction and spelling, and especially the rampant Capitalizations of nouns and their modifiers, and perhaps more. 

  This still slowed me down in this recent attempt, and this hefty volume would drift to the bottom of the pile next to me.  But I'd dip into it every once in awhile, if only for a shot of Pynchon energy in a dismal verbal world.  Then I would get rolling for awhile.  But since I seldom understood what was going on beyond the particulars of a scene, I couldn't sustain the momentum.  Until I did, and read the last two or three hundred pages in a long series of consecutive evenings.  

In general, the novel really is about Mason and Dixon--before, after and especially while they were embarked on the one job for which they are remembered, fixing the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland that by the 19th century became the border between North and South.  Other characters in the novel have historical counterparts as well (George Washington and Samuel Johnson have cameos, and Ben Franklin comes across as a wily crank who keeps getting people to electrocute themselves.)  I suppose I actually did learn things about the 18th century , but basically I was just along for the ride.

Besides--as Eileen Ecklund notes in a contemporary review I chanced upon after writing this piece, "...the most basic of my Pynchon reading lessons: you will not be tested on this later."

Instead of plot developments I noted little allusions, buried anachronisms and jokes.  Several titles of other Pynchon works appear in the prose, like "inherent vice" (p. 272) "against the day" (p.683), and a brief appearance of a family name (Bodine--p.566) that appears in other Pynchon novels, notably in V and Gravity's Rainbow.  There are allusions that perhaps only a Doctor Who fan would know (a Coach designed by the Jesuits--the scientist/magicians of the day--is "bigger on the inside" (p. 354) and a structure decaying in the woods also suspiciously akin to the TARDIS (412.)  And then there's the Kabbalistick sect that flashes a strange hand sign while uttering, "Live Long and Prosper." (485)  

The Reader's Fortitude is rewarded with Pynchon elegance and eloquence, such as on the subject of slavery.  Stories of new scientific technologies and of magic intermingle, especially on the Pennsylvania frontier (including country I know from my own boyhood)  and there is plenty of the Fantastic (a Robot Duck and a Talking Dog for starters.) The futility of the frontier mentality--in which perfection is finally just beyond the next ridge, until it always isn't--and the fluidity of actual and metaphorical border areas, all appear to be themes. But I mention all this less to explain the book, than to celebrate the fact that I read it.

I had just about finished reading it in fact when I learned of the imminent publication of the Mason & Dixon Companion, out last month, which presumably suggests more than I discerned about the plot, themes etc. as well as the many allusions I'm sure I missed.   But as much as I enjoyed this book, I'm not quite ready to start it all over again, Companion at my side.  But maybe someday.  For now, I am comforted by noting that it took 27 years for anyone to write a Companion to Mason & Dixon.