The Ampersand and the Capital

[Michel Ryckx]

http://www.revue-textimage.com/04_a_la_lettre/chamerois1.html

French article by Gilles Chamerois (organiser of the G.R.A.A.T. 
conference on Against the Day).

Resume in English:

"The ampersand and the capital: the letter and its meanders in Thomas 
Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon

In his historical novel Mason & Dixon (1997), Thomas Pynchon uses the 
very materiality of letters to convey some of his major preoccupations, 
and this in at least two ways. The ampersand on the cover plays on the 
opposition between curves and straight lines at the core of the novel, 
but also announces a deep interrogation on filiation which climaxes at 
the end of the book. The innumerable capital letters unsettle the 
rectilinear typography and, through the syntactic ambiguities they 
create, disrupt the very linearity of reading."

Michel.