By far Pynchon's best work. I enjoyed it far more than Gravity's Rainbow even. Infinitely rereadable, timeless, funny, and all around a beautiful piece of writing. What do you all think?
Mason and Dixon
By far Pynchon's best work. I enjoyed it far more than Gravity's Rainbow even. Infinitely rereadable, timeless, funny, and all around a beautiful piece of writing. What do you all think?
I have it on my shelf to impress IQfyerati and girls that don't ever enter my room.
I have never read a single page.
I think you will be pleasantly surprised and instantly sucked in.
I like the part where Mason gets stuck in the skipped days.
I love mentally verbalising "son Thomas Pynchon & Mason & Dixon xon" every time i see that cover
You stop that right now! You know the correct title, and that's not it!
Yeah it clearly reads "a son Thomas Pynchon & Mason & Dixon ixon"
I always just read it as
SON
&
XON
*sees it on a shelf*
ai by thomas pynchon! one of my favorites!
"ai" is Japanese for love. And love is all you need.
I’m halfway through now and damn if it’s not one of the best pieces of literature I’ve ever read.
I've had this on my shelf for about 10 years and was always intimidated by it. You guys are making me want to read it now.
Why big book intimidating? Just read little at a time!
I'm reading it now and I'm about 2/3 through. It's incredible. The writing is amazing and I don't remember ever reading a book that has made me laugh this much. Also it is my first Pynchon.
I'm going to give it another go
Currently reading Shakespeare but looking for some prose to read
first editions are dirt cheap for a reason Try Barth's Sotweed Factor on for size.
Why are they cheap?
because people are generally plebs
just finished this the other day and I did enjoy it quite a bit, but I didn't find it as thrilling as V. or GR - it's pretty sober and collected for being Pynchon. Certain parts I found tended to be sequences of little vignettes which often in their own right were funny and beautifully written, but lacking in profundity or greater interest.
The richness with which the 1760s collective imaginary is rendered is marvelous, as is the rendering of the institution of science at the time and the relations with Jesuit and EIC forces. The characters are really good and the book has a narrative arch which is satisfying in a way Pynchon usually seems to want to avoid - there is an actual end with sentiment and reflection on the lives of the protagonists. It is a masterful "Late work", but I am inclined to take Pynchon as being at his best when he is young, scattered and intense.
I respectfully disagree. I didn't find GR to be very profound, but frankly I never read searching for profundity or new knowledge, I have to stumble upon it, since I don't usually learn anything new from fiction anyway. I just like the aesthetic experience, which I think M&D is superior in.
yeah gravity's rainbow is outdated as frick
obviously it was groundbreaking at the time but a novel about how WW2 was an inside job coupled with long rants about the incipient technocapital singularity isn't that unique in today's climate
Ha no it isn't
I agree with you entirely. I found the episodic, chapter-based presentation in M&D to diminish the impact of his writing and expression of his worldview. The chapters felt more like loosely threaded together shorts, like a cartoon serial. Compared to V or GR, there's less a feeling of revelation, and the events feel more mundane and less relevant to myself. M&D is definitely a really fun read, and worth experiencing, but it's also a thinner portrayal of Pynchon's world.
bruh they literally chief kush with george washington. Significantly more based than GR or V imo. This and Against the Day and Vineland are the triumverate for Pynchon. Anything else is only for completionists.
"...Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,— who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government..."
The George Washington sequence is fine, I liked the israeli slave.
>"Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,-- Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,-- nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,-- her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,-- that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,-- not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,-- rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common."
Nah GR's better
Mason & Dixon are literally me.
it's a much more open, breathable book.
I like it as much as GR but M&D is indeed a much more delightful reading experience (kind of by design, I assume)
I agree OP, good post
Son and Xon sounds like a really shitty sci-fi book.