The Ampersand and the Capital

[malignd at aol.com]

<<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." >>

Oh boy; let's hear more from this guy ... particularly on the deep 
interrogation on filiation which climaxes -- CLIMAXES! --- at the end 
of the book ...


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