Preparatory reading for Mason & Dixon

[David Morris]

M&D is my favorite after GR.  It is never "difficult," so you shouldn't get
stuck.  Like Keith, I never prepare to read Pynchon.  Just jump in, and
keep going, even if you feel a bit lost at times.  Just experience it raw
the first time so as to not be bogged down by too many preconceptions.

But a general understanding of aspects of the advent of Enlightenment will
help you a lot.  You probably already know enough of that to suffice.  Like
all things Pynchon, Reason, and all its units of measure, are big targets.
Knowing the orthodoxy will help with the humor.

David Morris

On Monday, November 21, 2016, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm deep into my third reading of M&D. What a great book. In my humble
> opinion, just jump in and read without any preparation. If you get stuck,
> then maybe go back and read some of the things recommended here.
> If you get through it once, you can always go back and prepare afterwards!
>
> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>
> On Nov 21, 2016, at 6:32 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','fqmorris at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
> You might want to read about some of the personalities in M&D.  In
> addition to the main characters, prominent ones might be George Washington
> & Benjamin Franklin.  Both are humorously portrayed.
>
>  I don't think Thomas Jefferson got portrayed, but he was one of the lead
> architects of the Constitution, and a proponent of "Enlightenment"
> philosophy, largely imported from France.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 4:51 PM, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','rpmahnke at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> This is an interesting question.  I didn't read anything in particular
>> before I read M&D, so I don't think there's any background reading
>> required.  But there's no fun in that answer.
>>
>> Apropos of that period of American history, very few Americans get much
>> history about the century and a half before the Revolution.  My son took
>> American History in the eighth grade a few years ago, and his textbook
>> skipped from the founding of the Jamestown (Virginia) and Plymouth
>> (Massachusetts) colonies in 1607 and 1620 pretty much to the Revolution
>> without only a short digression about the founding of Manhattan by the
>> Dutch.  This approach is pretty typical.
>>
>> If you want to read a good history of that period, two I can recommend
>> are Bernard Bailyn's The Barbarous Years, which covers 1600 to 1675, and
>> Daniel Richter's Before The Revolution.  I particularly liked the latter,
>> which (IIRC) emphasized the extent to which what happened in the American
>> colonies was very much affected by transatlantic trade and political
>> developments in Europe.
>>
>> The other obvious book to read as background is Benjamin Franklin's
>> autobiography
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Benjamin_Franklin>.
>> And if you're going to read that, or even if you aren't, you should read
>> Jill Lepore's Book Of Ages, about Franklin's sister and the limits of
>> history.
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 1:06 PM, Alexei du Périer <
>> alexei.duperier at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','alexei.duperier at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello chaps,
>>>
>>> I am planning on reading *Mason & Dixon* soon and would like to know
>>> whether there are any books I ought to read before starting in order to be
>>> familiar with the historical context/figures discussed etc.
>>>
>>> I have never studied American history so don't know much about pre-1776
>>> stuff.
>>>
>>> Cheers.
>>>
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20161121/a9d18ee8/attachment.html>