Mason & Dixon

By: Thomas Pynchon

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

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, and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatched 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.

©1997 Thomas Pynchon (P)2019 Recorded Books

Amazing

What an awesome reading this is. And the story itself is a masterpiece of the imagination.

Truly the great American novel

And one that makes me smile pretty much nonstop at all the silly jokes and general right on perspective upon “history” and “tall tales.” Honest, I can’t think of a book or a movie or a record that has made me smile as much as this book/audiobook. A delight for the ages.

Fabulous

This is a fabulous, phantasmagorical account of Mason and Dixon's effort at surveying in America. Pynchon at his best.

How to do things with words...

This is a brilliantly inventive novel by Thomas Pynchon, full of wonderful characters and outrageous adventures. This novel shows clearly that Pynchon - whoever he is - is very familiar with Britain, British speech, and the eccentricities of British life. At the center of it all is the complex relationship between Mason and Dixon, who can't be together and can't be apart. As usual with Pynchon, science plays a major role in this novel, but it's also a very tender investigation of human relationships. It's also wickedly funny. The reading, by actor Steven Crossley, is well-paced and very enjoyable .

Typical Pynchon in his element

If you liked Against The Day you’ll like this. If you’re looking for anything baudy or action packed like Gravity’s Rainbow, maybe start there or Inherent Vice

Breathtaking

During COVID, I decided to reread all my Pynchon
I got about 1/3 the way through M&D when I realized the beauty of his writing
I decided to start all over and listen at the same time as I had one done with Ulysses
It opened M&D to the masterpiece that it is
Masterful narration by someone who must truly love the book

Narrator loses me

Perhaps it’s a matter of the writing style not being conducive to an audiobook, but I found listening to this book to be borderline incomprehensible (even by Pynchon standards). The voices that the narrator uses for the various characters are so similar that it is impossible to tell who is speaking at a given time or even to tell when one line of dialogue has ended and another begun.

I got to chapter 16 then decided to give up on the audiobook and pick up the physical book instead, which I found much easier to follow.

Illuminating performance of Pynchon's most human book

I don't have time to give the full time to what this deserves, but much like how William Hootkins brought Moby Dick to close, living emotional reality with his reading, the reader here does much to let us know through his performance what each scene and dialogue means. A perfect level of characterization that brings the text to the reader and never distracts. Especially in bringing the intended effect of the 18th-Century typography and punctuation to life, this audiobook shows the level of direction and care all Pynchon audiobooks should have. If only Gravity's Rainbow had an audiobook of similar quality.

The ever-obscure, ever-compelling Pynchon sends up Colonial America

This might be a good place to start if you want to read Pynchon for the first time – or it might not. Conspiracies unwound and evaporating into loose strands, characters that strut upon the stage and then retire without another word about them, and supernatural adventures that point – where? Up the line, through the wilderness, to points only the imagination can perceive, if at all.

Mr. Crossley's mastery of the text and the distinctive voices throughout is profound. The best thing about this audiobook.

Rare Pychon that is easy 2 follow. Good reader.

The rare Thomas Pynchon long novel that didn't lose me for long periods of time.