Mason & Dixon
Thomas Pynchon
Jonathan Cape hbk, £16.99, since republished in paperback
Review by Andrew Hedgecock (1996)

Ever since the publication of Thomas Pynchon’s polymathic, multi-layered Gravity’s Rainbow in 1973, reports of an epic work in progress set in pre-revolutionary America have been circulating.

For 17 years there was no new work. And when Pynchon finally broke his silence, it was with Vineland (1990) - an enjoyable conspiracy thriller that blended political satire with black comedy. But for the purists Vineland just wasn’t Pynchonesque enough. It was, they claimed, marinated in sentiment, too traditional in form, lacking in linguistic invention. Worst of all, it offered little of the literary game-playing that had become the author’s trademark.

Now, after quarter of a century of anticipation, Pynchon’s novel of early American history, Mason & Dixon, is finally on the shelves – with its publication billed as the literary event of the decade.

But is it the book that Pynchon’s admirers - scholars, fans, critics, fellow-authors and the publishers rumoured to have forked out a massive advance - have been waiting for?

Mason & Dixon is a 773 page odyssey into the dark heart of the Age of Reason, packed with a strange cargo of complex allusions, erudite comedy, slapstick, linguistic pyrotechnics, baroque invention and philosophical speculation on the vast range of themes we’ve come to associate with Pynchon: the psycho-social impact of science, the fictive nature of history, the nature of time, the limits of knowledge, commercial and political conspiracy...

In essence, the book tells the story of the travels, lives and work of Charles Mason, an astronomer, and Jeremiah Dixon, a surveyor. In the 1760s these Englishmen were commissioned by the Royal Society to venture into the wild and uncharted New World, to effect a ‘scentifick’ settlement of the disputed boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The outcome of this work - the ‘geometrick Scar’ known as the Mason-Dixon Line - provides both the narrative drive and symbolic core of the novel.

The story is narrated 20 years after the event by the Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, Pynchon’s version of Scheherazade. As a ploy to extend his stay in the comfortable home of his brother-in-law, a prosperous Philadelphia merchant, Cherrycoke amuses the children of the house with a succession of flamboyant yarns. When asked for a tale about America he tells the story of the Mason-Dixon mapping expedition, on which he served as Chaplain. Cherrycoke’s narrative forms an extended rap on the subjective nature of history and its construction from fictive elements such as stories, interpreted memories, myth and fantasy. The tale is told in the form of a pastiche 18th century novel, complete with period diction, spelling and randomly scattered capitals. But this effect is subverted by the intrusion of anachronistic speech patterns and frequent allusions to 20th century culture. When Cherrycoke sets off on his first sea voyage, he’s given advice that might have come from the present occupant of the Oval Office:
‘Keep away from harmful Substances, in particular Coffee, Tobacco and Indian Hemp. If you must use the latter, do not inhale.’
And a splendidly realised sea battle is followed by a reference to a seaman called Pat O’Brien -- a spinner of yarns and repository of obscure nautical knowledge. Readers who spot the allusion to nautical novelist Patrick O’Brien are left wondering whether Pynchon’s rendition of a sea fight under sail is the product of 25 years of sedulous research or just a faultless parody of O’Brien’s ‘Jack Aubrey’ novels.

This sharp, self-conscious wit isn’t just there to supply fodder for the Pynchon anoraks. It also highlights the links between our own era and the Age of Reason. The late 18th century was a period, like the present, when the old certainties were under threat: an era of political upheaval, new economic relationships and - most importantly for Pynchon - ambivalent views about the value of science.

Mason and Dixon’s story is a fast forward review of the history of science: they set out with the belief that their knowledge, tools and techniques will enable them not merely to make sense of a complex world - but to improve it. But as their work develops they bear witness to exploitation, slavery and violence carried out in the name of order and progress. What begins as the reclamation of a wasteland through mantic readings of the celestial, magnetic and topographical data, turns into the commercial and political appropriation of land and lives. At every turn, the mapping mission seems to be manipulated by sinister and hidden powers - the Jesuits, the East India Company, the Masons and various European governments.

Mason and Dixon gradually come to feel they’ve been involved in the desecration of a sacred landscape, and that the line that bears their names is ‘A Conduit for Bad Energy’. And the massacre of Indians by white settler mobs and Dixon’s angry assault on a slave driver foreshadow the genocide of Native Americans and the bloodshed of the American Civil War a century later.

On one level, Mason & Dixon is a tragedy. The map-makers’ work puts power into the hands of people unfit to wield it. They suffer an overwhelming sense of loss as they come to the painful realisation that, far from being a ‘pure’ intellectual activity, the use of science can become a process of ‘Reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments’.

Heavy stuff, but leavened by the insane energy of the plot. The minor players include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Boswell and Dr Johnson. There are outlandish inventions, like a supernaturally gifted robot duck, a farmer who mutates into a beaver each full moon, a giant Golem, giant worms and the ‘Learned English Dog’, which breaks into song with the spontaneity you’d expect from a Marx Brothers movie.

This is a BIG book in every sense: many readers will be put off by its bulk, others will fall from Pynchon’s rollercoaster of manic invention, erudite wit and relentless gag-cracking long before Mason and Dixon have completed their mission. Which is a pity. This is a novel of high seriousness: exhausting, humorous and redemptive. Pynchon is often pessimistic but never earnest. And it’s funny, blending humour as sharp and erudite as that in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia with gags crass enough to have been lifted from a Carry On film. There’s such a rich mix that it demands at least a second reading. Which is just as well: if the present trend continues we won’t see Pynchon’s next before 2014.