M&D

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Just something I stumbled across. Hope it's not a repeat

http://www.salon.com/april97/pynchon970425.html

weird morning in america

Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" travels back to pre-Revolutionary
times to map the "cryptic & perilous" contours of a nation.


BY SCOTT McLEMEE

[...]
But the most eloquent statement of the Caffeine Theory, as adapted to
American circumstances, appears about halfway into Thomas Pynchon's "Mason &
Dixon." The year is 1761. Charles Mason (an astronomer) and Jeremiah Dixon
(a surveyor) have reached Philadelphia, sent by the Royal Society in London
to establish the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania. They have yet to
put together a work team for the job. And their first trip to an American
coffee shop reveals a murky den of iniquity: a "Combination, peculiar and
precise, of unceasing Talk and low Visibility, that makes Riot's indoor
sister, Conspiracy, not only possible, but resultful as well." Infusions of
"the Invigorating liquid" and New World rowdiness give the place a decidedly
revolutionary atmosphere: "An individual in expensive attire, impersonating
a gentleman, stands upon a table freely urging sodomitical offenses against
the body of the Sovereign, being cheered on by a circle of Mechanics, who
are not reluctant with their own suggestions."
[...]