M&D review; possible spoilers?

[the finest Joke is upon us]

This review comes from "the Onion", a newspaper published in Madison,
Milwaukee, Boulder, and Denver.  The website, http://www.theonion.com,
didn't have the review; if you're keeping track, it's in the May 14-20
edition, with the headilines "Cuffed:  Trouser Downsizing Threatens Raver
Industry" and "Clinton Fires Cabinet After Watching X-Files".  All in all,
it's a wonderful newspaper, one of which TRP would surely approve.

back to lurking,
dan

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"An epic literary journey"

"Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as
of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware," begins
Thomas Pynchon's new novel _Mason & Dixon_, and readers may be forgiven
for asking themselves, "What does he mean by that?"  Pynchon is, after
all, the only contemporary author whose novels can be compared to James
Joyce's with a straight face.  His reputation as a literary heavyweight
will probably frighten many readers away from this book, as will its
substantial 763-page physical presence.  Many who do read _Mason & Dixon_
will consider themselves brave for doing so, and will read more and more
slowly at first, looking for the profound hidden meaning and complex
underlying symbolism that Pynchon books must possess.  Which is too bad
really. _Mason & Dixon_ begins with a snowball fight between two young
boys, which is a long way from "A screaming comes across the sky."  It's
Philadelphia during the winter of 1786, and among scenes of early American
domestic tranquility, the Reverend Cherrycoke is settling his nephews down
to tell them stories by the fire.  Whatt unravels is his tale of
accompanying astronomers/surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in
thier travels through the colonial wilderness to lay out the boundary
which still bears their names.  Cherrycoke's tale is a rambling,
philosophical account of a struggling colony becoming an infant nation,
but it's also a great read:  Pynchon writes with such elegance and
understated craft that it becomes easy to read through the historically
correct, enormous sentences and convoluted punctuation he uses.  His sense
of humor is displayed on almost every page, from an intricate and wickedly
funny account of a South African family's attempts to trick Mason into
impregnating their slave girls, down to the low humor of perverting the
18th-century practice of capitalizing nouns in order to end a senence with
the word Penis.  It's disarming, and eventually the reader learns to relax
and merely read the story.  Which is a task in itself:  At a turning point
in history, Pynchon introduces us to two colonies--the old, decrepit,
malevolent Dutch South Africa, and the rowdy, adolescent, unformed
wilderness of America--through two very different men.  Mason is
melancholy, dark, brooding, and British; Dixon is optimistic, romantic,
scrappy, and a man of all countries.  The affection that grows between
them is genuine, funny and moving, as is the sense of witnessing one
period of history melt clumsily with another as America is glimsped
preparing for revolution in the background.  The reader meets George
Washington and Ben Frankiln, and for perspective, a talking dog and a
mechanical duck.  Whatever else _Mason & Dixon_ may be, it's an engaging
historical novel; ambitious people--those who aren't esily
intimidated--will be able to get by with this book as their only summer
reading.  Whatever meaning and complex messages may lie hidden in
Pynchon's text ccan, for now, be left to develop subconsciously as the
reader enjoys the more immediate rewards of the work of a consummate
storyteller.  Pynchon is one, and he never quite lets you forget that
while this might be an epic story, it's an epic story told to wide-eyed
children who are up past their bedtime.
	--John Krewson