Nicolas Dagot Dagot itibaren Witeradów, Poland
Oh, where to begin with this gem? Mason & Dixon is Pynchon's most moving novel, a panoramic view of the Enlightenment-gone-human. The author's cozy narration, performed in sometimes anachronistic 18th-century vernacular, lends a playful flavor to this buddies-tale and enhances the mixed-brow humor that makes Pynchon great. As the tale unfolds, as readers we are continually challenged in our preconceptions of the Age of Reason. We find the Great Minds of Science and Civilization (beyond the eponymous duo, there's an opiate-maddened Ben Franklin, a pot-smoking General Washington, and more[!]) housed in amusingly flawed Bodies of Mortality. The Enlightenment project, instead of the gallant crusade against he unknown, is pictured here as a somewhat haphazard stumbling through a frightening wilderness, driven more by ordinary human foibles and desires than by any guiding light of Truth. In the midst of this epic, at its core even, is the wonderfully rendered friendship between Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. It is this relationship, given with such stirring deftness, that really makes this book Pynchon's best. While his earlier books all illustrated the author's grasp on the Big Ideas, on grandiose Themes and Archetypes, Mason & Dixon brings his skill down to the level of the lived and idiosynchratic. All told, Mason & Dixon is quite possibly the finest (read: my favorite) novel I've yet read.
For some reason I remember really loving this book and laughing a lot. I think chick lit was new to me back then?