M&D Home Page

[doktor at primenet.com]

Thanks to Richard Romeo for alerting us to the M&D publicity site.  For
those without web access, I have posted the press release below:

[quote]

Mason & Dixon Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Cathy Melnicki

With the publication of Thomas Pynchon's first novel, V., in 1963, one of
the most celebrated careers in literary history was launched.  When his
masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow, arrived in 1973, there was widespread
agreement that Pynchon ranked among the foremost American writers. Critics,
lavishing enthusiastic praise, compared his oeuvre to the work of Melville,
Joyce, and Faulkner. In the decades since, the fervor over Pynchon's
writing has continued unabated, spawning an unparalleled flood of discourse
and commentary as contradictory and thought-provoking as Pynchon's novels
themselves.

Henry Holt's April 30 release of Thomas Pynchon's long-awaited new novel,
MASON & DIXON, will undoubtedly elicit further impassioned response as
readers and critics are once again confronted with - and challenged by -
the power and complexity of Pynchon's writing.

MASON & DIXON is a re-imagining of the lives of Charles Mason (1728-1786)
and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779), the British duo best remembered for running
the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we now know as the
Mason-Dixon line. Thoroughly dissimilar in temperament and background,
Mason - a melancholy, Gothic, citified astronomer - and Dixon, a sanguine,
pre-Romantic, rural land surveyor - are first paired on a failed expedition
to Sumatra which lands them instead at the Cape of Good Hope, where they
observe the rare Transit of Venus, an alignment during which the planet
visibly passes across the face of the sun.

Remaining improbably conjoined and loyal for many years, the two banter,
bicker, quest and cavort across islands and continents, into realms
earthly, celestial, and supernatural. A commission to chart and carve a
boundary line takes them to chaotic colonial America.  Teeming with a
diversity of beliefs, cultures, and split-loyalties - a place more wild
than civilized, with more possibility than history - the pre-Revolutionary
New World proves particularly fertile soil for Pynchon's singular
imagination.

As Mason and Dixon make their way through inns, taverns, coffeehouses, and
establishments of ill-repute - places "congenial to the unmediated newness
of history a-transpiring" - they encounter a multifarious case of
characters that includes: Ben Franklin; George and Martha Washington; a
talking dog; a trio of bodice-ripping Dutch sisters; clocks that converse
through their pendula; a Chinese Feng Shui master; and a French chef
pursued by an amorous robot duck. The voices of frontier folk, Native
Americans, nomads, royal appointees, expatriates, and religious fanatics
harmonize in a virtual symphony of gossip, recollection, debate,
confession, and confabulation.

Entangled from the start in a melange of motives, in conspiracies both real
and imagined, Mason and Dixon experience frequent crises of faith and
conscience, believing themselves at the mercy of political, historical,
commercial, and otherworldly forces they can neither control nor fully
comprehend. But the daring, mismatched pair manage to survive their
sojourns, and eventually return to England, where they live out the shadowy
yet redemptive turns of their later years.

A consummate wordsmith, capable of exquisite expression and evocation,
Pynchon also revels in linguistic playfulness. As precise as poetry, his
prose is always rich and often operatic - indeed, many of his characters,
without warning, break into hilarious, spontaneous song.

Complex, allusive, and erudite - drawing on what one critic has deemed
Pynchon's "astonishing knowledge of what appears to be everything" - MASON
& DIXON is also at turns romping, poignant, and uproariously funny. A
brilliant synthesis of fact and fiction, history and fancy - indeed, a
challenge to the distinction between the two - the book is both a vivid
re-creation of a historical period, with all its latent implications for
the future, and a grand
philosophical inquiry with forays into: the nature of time, knowledge, and
communication; the limits of science and reason; the human compulsion to
classify and divide; the terrors of wilderness; the evils of civilization;
and the pervasive systems in which we find ourselves hopelessly enmeshed.

Evident in these pages are Thomas Pynchon's far-reaching intellect,
philosophical depth, prodigious imagination, and extraordinary use of
language.  MASON & DIXON is a wildly ambitious tour-de-force, the product
of a writer at the height of his powers that once again substantiates
Thomas Pynchon's reputation as one of the major writers - and minds - of
the modern world.

Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's
Rainbow, Slow Learner, a collection of short stories, and Vineland. He
received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.

MASON & DIXON
By Thomas Pynchon
Published by Henry Holt and Co., Inc.
115 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
email: publicity at hholt.com

Publication and national laydown date: April 30, 1997

ISBN: 0-8050-3758-6
378 pages $27.50

For additional information, please contact Cathy Melnicki at publicity at hholt.com

[end quote]

A lot to chew on here.

--Jimmy

http://www.angelfire.com/oh/Insouciance/index.html