>"We can get jobs," said William, "save enough to go out where you were,-- "
>"Marry and go out where you were," said Doc.
>"The Stars are so close you won't need a Telescope."
>"The Fish jump into your Arms. The Indians know Magick."
>"We'll go there. We'll live there."
>"We'll fish there. And you too."
I didn't want it to be over, bros. I wanted their imaginary journey where the Line continues forever to be true.
 |
 CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
|
Is this really kino? because I hated GR so much. I wanted to gouge my temporal lobe out reading that shit.
I liked GR, but this is by far the better book. I’ve read it about four times now and it continues to be enthralling.
What makes it better?
sieved
It really is. GR is a very technically good book and I personally enjoyed reading it, but M&D is far more human, which may draw you in better.
I think most of Pynchon's novels star isolated paranoiacs, which works for what he's trying to do, but having two central characters in this one who develop a deep friendship over decades allows for a whole different feeling.
>M&D is far more human
nah
Don't be a pithy little b***h. Say what you mean.
M&D is simply filled with a warmth that GR doesn't have. I think it's intentional, Pynchon seems to paint the world of M&D as when the seeds are planted for the societal contradictions that will tear everything apart in GR, so everything in the former remains quaint and mostly non-threatening, just ominous. GR remains one of my favorite books but the two are very different.
Really I'd argue that these two and Against the Day should be seen as a trilogy, and it's most obvious if you look at the bizarre supernatural elements that show up, spoilered because they are each very interesting and hard-to-parse parts of their respective books:
>The gnomes/fairies/whatever in M&D are innocuous, they leave behind inscrutable ruins but will come right up to the protagonists to talk to them. The gnomes even tell Dixon directly that they will soon disappear and don't yet know how it will happen. Humanity seems to be stumbling onto them harmlessly as we tame the wild parts of the world.
>The ones in AtD are a mixed bag, but definitely more of a threat; some seem outright angry. In isolated, weird cases they start to interfere with human affairs, shuffling things around, causing explosions like the Tunguska Event or warps or other strange shit with the Chums of Chance. Could also be interpreted as unsavory elements within humanity figuring out their power exists and experimenting with it. The book seems to be set at a time when their "world" is in its death throes - someplace else is bleeding into our world and its denizens are not happy about it.
>In GR everything is different. Men, Them, They have figured out how to harness supernatural evil for Themselves. Non-human entities only show up as the Angels, as enormous figures passively watching humanity in its most horrifying, destructive moments - they just loom in the background at the bombing of Lübeck and the nuke falling on Hiroshima. The harmless little sprites amd spirits are gone, all you get now is abject horror. One exception might be Byron the Bulb, a section I still don't know how to fit into the narrative as a whole, but he's very clearly struggling against humanity and losing.
I went off on a huge tangent largely unrelated to this argument but I just finished the book and my mind is racing.
tl;dr Ruggles uses a lot of his "weird" elements as ways to portray the unknown as a whole, things beyond humanity, and the prevalence and closeness of such things in the world of M&D makes a marked difference in its tone.
One of the sections from GR I was talking about, here. This part of the narration was being told to Cherrycoke, descendant of the frame story narrator from M&D.
Fricked up the pic.
And here again.
I know I'm not the first to pick up on this, there are far smarter people than me reading Pynchon who have assuredly mapped out all his kooky family trees and tied it all together quite nicely. Where's Bill Murray when you need him?
>faint and nonthreatening
bro I think you seriously missed what was going on with the line if you think that
The Jesuits on the side of the French and the Royal Society/East India Company/colonial financial interests on the side of the English were using the Line for evil, absolutely, but it was a distinctly human phenomenon, wasn't it? Symbolic of going out in nature and dividing it up, progress marching into the wilderness and imposing itself. The "others" were opposed to the Line, the Feng Shui guy laid that out very explicitly.
Stig and his other hyperborean dwarf bros didn't seem interested in hurting anybody and were quite welcoming to Dixon, the talking dogs were benevolent (although they're described specifically as English so maybe they aren't tied to the rest), and the giants had simply vanished.
>symbolic of dividing
No, that is literally what they were doing on the metaphysical level. The discussion of leylines, chi, hidden plates in the ground, the energy of the giant mounds, pre-Steiner biodynamic agriculture, Dixon flying on said ancient leylines in his youth, the actual destruction of portions of the sky and time through seemingly innocuous changes borne from man, like changing the calendar. These are anything but human phenomena. The juxtaposition of the gnomes, knowing their doom is impending, near the end of the book with the line almost completed, is intentional. Mason has an epiphany realizing that the sky is more than what it seemed to be despite measuring it and dividing it for decades. The line pretty blatantly is draining, diverting, or destroying the energy of the earth.
We don't even sound like we disagree, I guess I just wasn't being clear.
>changes borne from man
That was my point - the weird spiritual forces are in opposition to the darker human ones. We're the ones fricking everything up, from M&D to AtD to GR we steadily destroy nature and turn the charming gnomes into horrifying angels of death.
GR wears its heart on its sleeve. Vietnam was on
this makes me extremely excited to read atd as well as reread m&d and gr. i loved all of the magical elements in m&d and they definitely juxtapose well with some of the evil supernatural parts of gr. i'll keep all of that in mind when i get to atd.
AtD is massively overlooked, I think just because of its length. I don't know if I'd call it better than M&D, it's much less focused, but I love the time period so I didn't mind all of his flitting around between different aspects of it.
Having a physics/math background definitely enriches it as well, even more so than his other books - there's a lot of interesting stuff he does with the history of different competing theories at the time.
any helpful materials or prereading you would recommend for it?
I intend to go back through most of Pynchon again one day with stuff like that, but unfortunately I don't know of any yet. AtD seems to have much less attention in that regard than the other two big ones, but I'm sure there's some stuff out there.
It’s not Kino In the slightest
filtered, m&d is absolutely kino
it honestly could have been kino if it wasn't boring. Pynchon should've been a filmmaker, its clear TV and pot ruined him from being able to write classic novels (although he got closer than most of his contemporaries), and its sad to see some of his cool ideas wasted
I hated GR. Couldn't get past chapter 2.
I've read M&D three times and probably will again. This despite it being twice as long.
Everything that was overwrought and try-hard in Lot 49, GR, etc was polished and playful. The self-consciously anachronistic colonial English was a pleasure to read. Everything depressingly obsessive or politically byzantine was offset by magical realism and high adventure. It was just a delightful book.
Sounds like a good book OP, but does it have good LGBTQIA+ and POC representation?
There's a talking dog. Since dogs can't talk, it must be a trans dog, so yes.
Garden's doing well so I took this photo of my first edition a few days ago.
I can practically smell this picture. Nice tbh
Anyone remembers a sentence from M&D that said something like "regret is the shadow of every choice"?
I swear I remember reading something like it but I can't find it. I even downloaded the epub and did a ctrl+f for shadow, regret, and choice as indidual words but still I can't find it.
Am I losing my mind? Was the phrase in another Pynchon novel? or what?
Subpar compared to his first three book. Just read those or Sot-Weed Factor.
>Subpar compared to his first three book.
The other way around.
no
A cool part about the clock and another about the duck. Mostly a boring and nonsensical book. Not worth it unless you're a homosexual.
How the frick does he do it? How can one man write stuff like this? Maybe cause I'm an ESL, but how can you actually acquire such a domain over a language that you can produce stuff like M&D, Gravity's Rainbow, V., etc.?
Read his introduction to Slow Learner, his secret is watching Road Runner cartoons.
I'm almost through my first read of Mason & Dixon after I shelved it for a few months, preferring to pursue Against the Day first, which I enjoyed, but still have some qualms about. Overall, the experience is delightful and inspiring. I don't think I could appreciate any piece of historical fiction if it is not written in its period-style prose. I enjoyed Against the Day mainly because its a pastiche epic of the pulp magazine, dime novel type story from the late 19th, early 20th century.
>I don't think I could appreciate any piece of historical fiction if it is not written in its period-style prose
Not a lot of people do this. I can think of William Vollmann's Argall.
Yes, that's one that on my list as well.
V > GR > CoL49 > AtD > M&D. Haven't read any other Pynchon book. M&D has no redeeming facktors.