Mason and Dixon

Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that has come to be known as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here the "National Book Award"-winning author of "Gravity's Rainbow" imagines their story in an updated 18th-century novel featuring Native Americans, frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse.

The New York Times Best Book of the Year, 1997

Time Magazine Best Book of the Year 1997

Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatch'd pair—one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic—from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.

Michiko Kakutani

A novel that is as moving as it is cerebral, as poignant as it is daring...a book that testifies to Pynchon's remarkable powers of invention and the sheer power of storytelling. -- The New York Times

A huge modern influence, Thomas Pynchon's reputation as a contemporary literary giant is only enhanced by his adamant reclusivity (the photo shown here is one of the few of him ever to be published). His prose is so intimidatingly dense, his novels so thematically grand, that he presents a rewarding challenge to his readers and his would-be protegees.