Word: mason
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Ever since the appearance of Thomas Pynchon's epic, mind-bending Gravity's Rainbow (1973), rumors have circulated among the faithful that the elusive author was working on two new projects: a novel about Japanese monster movies and one dealing with the 18th century drawing of the Mason-Dixon line between the (then) colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Fragments of a Godzilla-like episode indeed appeared in Pynchon's Vineland (1990), and now here comes a real monster: Mason & Dixon (Henry Holt; 773 pages...
...else can kid around as brilliantly as Pynchon. Mason & Dixon bears some resemblances to Gravity's Rainbow. Both books are huge (the first edition of Gravity's Rainbow ran 760 pages). Both have truncated double dactyls (Duh-duh-duh Duh-duh) as titles. Both manifest Pynchon's trademark narrative rhythm, repeated segues from cartoonish pratfalls into surreal episodes of phantasmagoric dread, punctuated by periodic eruptions of songs or poems...
...difficult than its famously challenging predecessor. This time out, the author renounces contemporary English speech altogether and casts the entire narrative in the 18th century diction allegedly spoken by a clergyman named Wicks Cherrycoke; he is the one who tells aloud the tale of his one-time acquaintances Charles Mason (1728-86) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-79) over what must have been an incredibly long night in Philadelphia during the Christmas season of 1786. Cherrycoke is given to utterances such as the following: "The Pilgrim, however long or crooked his Road, may keep ever before him the Holy Place...
...BOOKS. . . MASON & DIXON: Although there are similarities of length and his trademark narrative rhythm, Thomas Pynchon?s new novel (Henry Holt; 773 pages; $27.50) is in some ways even more difficult than its famously challenging predecessor, 'Gravity's Rainbow.' This time out, the author renounces contemporary English speech altogether and casts the entire narrative in the 18th century diction allegedly spoken by a clergyman named Wicks Cherrycoke; he is the one who tells aloud the tale of his one-time acquaintances Charles Mason (1728-86) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-79) over what must have been an incredibly long night...
...English Department," Lathbury, an associate professor at George Mason University, says as he answered the phone. Both times we called he seemed surprised and not terribly ecstatic that we had tracked him down. During our first conversation he confirmed that the book "is ready to go," and "should be out in January." In our second, mid-January conversation, he said the book had been pushed back, but wouldn't divulge the cause of the delay. We pried him for details, but all he would tell us is that the book would be undedicated, contain only the Hapworth story and that...