Preparatory reading for Mason & Dixon

Sat Nov 26 09:32:48 CST 2016

The Wake I haven't read yet, only a couple pages - it isn't exactly a pastiche of archaic language, rather it seems to apply a lexical tweak towards anglo-saxon vernacular (the narrator being on the wrong end of Guillaume's conquest of England). Which is to say that the diction isn't ancient but he digs out much older spellings, transliterated, than you would find in Middle English - so that I found the language enough of a novelty to be engaging on its own without being a chore to read.

Forgot something else I haven't read but was told about - some of Arthur Machen's lesser known stories: "Chronicles of Clemendy": also 16c. pastiche. Apparently came from his having translated the Heptameron and others... Come to think of it, in comparison with those - Rabelais himself, while neologising left and right, was especially archaic for a vernacular writer.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Preparatory reading for Mason & Dixon
Local Time: 24 novembre 2016 10:44 PM
UTC Time: 24 novembre 2016 21:44
From: alexei.duperier at gmail.com
To: Protomen <protomen at protonmail.com>
David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com>, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>, P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>

Yes thanks for those. I had read about The Wake before and found it most intriguing. Have you read it?

Have also flitted through Balzac's Contes drolatiques, is there anything that guy hasn't done.

2016-11-22 21:49 GMT+01:00 Protomen <protomen at protonmail.com>:

re: examples of archaism, in very different styles, Paul Kingsnorth's "The Wake" is in a hypothetical sort of Old english; Balzac wrote "Contes drolatiques" (Comickal tales) in 16c./Rabelaisian pastiche.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Preparatory reading for Mason & Dixon
Local Time: 22 novembre 2016 12:24 PM
UTC Time: 22 novembre 2016 11:24
From: alexei.duperier at gmail.com
To: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com>, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>, P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>

Thanks guys!

Yes the reason I am asking is that since I am not American there are probably a lot of things which are a part of very general American culture and which might seem obvious to Americans that I don't know about. Because even without purposefully reading something to prepare for M&D and "jumping in" one still carries mounds of knowledge gleaned from previous reading.

I had another question: Mason & Dixon is written in an archaic style. Do any of you know of other books which adopt this form of pastiche? The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth is one of my all-time favourites, and something tells me I'm going to greatly enjoy M&D. I know Vollmann wrote Argall (whose story recalls the journals found in Barth's novel). Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is another example and a link to a review of Golden Hill by Francis Spufford was posted here a while back. But I was wondering if there were any others.

2016-11-22 2:44 GMT+01:00 David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>:

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> 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> 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> 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.
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