Mason & Dixon

By: Thomas Pynchon

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatched pair - one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic - from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.

©1997 Thomas Pynchon (P)2019 Recorded Books

Amazing

What an awesome reading this is. And the story itself is a masterpiece of the imagination.

Takes a bit at first

Not easy to “get” since the prose are… well… just Reddit Thomas Pynchon, someone else will explain it better

Fabulous

This is a fabulous, phantasmagorical account of Mason and Dixon's effort at surveying in America. Pynchon at his best.

How to do things with words...

This is a brilliantly inventive novel by Thomas Pynchon, full of wonderful characters and outrageous adventures. This novel shows clearly that Pynchon - whoever he is - is very familiar with Britain, British speech, and the eccentricities of British life. At the center of it all is the complex relationship between Mason and Dixon, who can't be together and can't be apart. As usual with Pynchon, science plays a major role in this novel, but it's also a very tender investigation of human relationships. It's also wickedly funny. The reading, by actor Steven Crossley, is well-paced and very enjoyable .

Typical Pynchon in his element

If you liked Against The Day you’ll like this. If you’re looking for anything baudy or action packed like Gravity’s Rainbow, maybe start there or Inherent Vice