Dickens and novel that never ends

[Terrance]

What makes Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon a poetic act is
not just its
    fanatic ignorance of current fashion (this historical
novel almost makes a reader
    forget that beneath his cocky demeanor and hipster' s
cant Pynchon has always
    been a throwback), but its use of means, in its languors
as well as its language,
    more properly poetic. There have always been fiction
writers of poetic
    temperament: Joyce and Faulkner not surprisingly began
as poets; minor poets,
    perhaps, but they took their early understandings of
language through a form
    very different from fiction in its pretense, its rhythm,
its design. In the last
    century Dickens, the novelist then closest to poetry,
composed occasional verses
    as metrically right as they were poetically wrong.
Though he has learned from
    the modernists by coming after them, Pynchon is a
novelist of old-fashioned
    sentiments, not just in historical curiosity (his novels
of contemporary life,
    Vineland and the thinly mannered The Crying of Lot 49,
have been his
    weakest), but in his adoption of Dickensian comedy,
beginning with his absurd
    and fantastic names. 

    The narrator of Mason &  Dixon is Reverend Wicks
Cherrycoke, a name
    Pynchon almost gets away with. One difference between
Dickens and Pynchon
    is that Dickens usually gets away with his namesDickens
invents characters so
    true to their names they are false to their unreality;
Pynchon loathes the idea of
    character, and his names wither into whimsy at the
expense of character. The
    philosophy of names is too divisive to have bearing
here; but there are few
    words more Falstaffian, considering the worlds they
include, than poem or
    novel. Our unwillingness to deny anything with the
ambition of being a poem the
    honor of the name may make discretion impossible, yet
most readers have a
    Platonic sense of what a poem is and is not that sense
may be merely
    typographical). Though it may be modified by experience
or experiment, this
    sense is unlikely ever to admit a doughnut, a desk lamp,
or any literary act
    wearing the clothes of other conventions whether diary,
play, or novel, though
    there may be novels in verse, verse plays, and perhaps
rhymed diaries-they may
    use poetry without being poems). What calls itself a
poem may, within limits, be
    taken as poem; but those limits are less enclosing
boundaries than liberated
    tyrannies. 

    Mason & Dixon is a novel, and yet the experience of
reading it is at times purely
    poetic. Pynchon has embraced in his arguments and
actions the crowded
    ambiguity and frothy imagery of poetry; and to examine
them is not to suggest
    these means lie outside the novel, but to recall how
long they have been
    estranged, not just from recent fiction, but from recent
poetry as well. 

Logan, William, Pynchon in the poetic. Vol. 83, Southwest
Review,
    01-01-1998, pp 424.