Independent, September 22, 2000

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

While being able to return to the list after a long time (still in 
the process of reading Tuesday's posts; to my horror just realized 
that the message to McWay by the Charles Kinbote of pynchon-l isn't
fictional, but real! - deliberate offlist tactics this time instead 
of his already classic "accidents" of the past) I ran into the below 
piece elsewhere (sorry if it has been forwarded to the list already): 

Heikki
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"In the past, Knopfler has talked of his love of research, his delight in
unearthing details of distant and different lives. In the case of the
title track for the new album, much of the inspiration came from Mason &
Dixon, Thomas Pynchon's book about the two 18th-century English
astronomers who gave their names to America's Mason-Dixon line. 

'I suppose any good work, like the Pynchon book, makes you think about the
present. It's a book about many things. And in a way, a song is only an
attempt at a miniaturisation of something like that -- it's a huge great
baggy book, which goes in any one of a million directions. So, if you
like, the song is my three-minute take on a three-year book.'" 

>From
http://www.independent.co.uk/enjoyment/Music/
interviews/2000-09/straits220900.shtml