Mason & Dixon is a postmodernist novel by the American author Thomas Pynchon, published in 1997. It presents a fictionalized account of the collaboration between Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in their astronomical and surveying exploits in the Dutch Cape Colony, Saint Helena, Great Britain, and along the Mason–Dixon line in British North America on the eve of the Revolutionary War in the United States.
The novel, written in a style based on late-18th-century English, is a frame narrative told from the focal point of Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke, a clergyman of dubious orthodoxy who, on a cold December evening in 1786, attempts to entertain and divert his extended family (partly for amusement, and partly to keep his coveted status as a guest in the house) by telling a tall tale version of Mason and Dixon's biographies (claiming to have accompanied Mason and Dixon throughout their journeys).
Background
Pynchon began work on the novel as early as 1975, and in 1978 he was reported to be in England researching the lives of Mason and Dixon. Until the release of Vineland, it was long rumored to be his next novel following Gravity's Rainbow."We heard he was doing something about Lewis and Clark? Mason and Dixon? A Japanese science-fiction novel?" It was formally announced by the publisher in October 1996 with a first printing of 200,000. It was published on April30, 1997.
Plot summary
One: Latitudes and Departures
Episode 1
The Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke, at the Philadelphia home of his sister Elizabeth LeSpark, earns his room and board by telling stories to his niece and nephews. The novel opens during the winter of 1786 as the Reverend, by request from his nephews, embarks on his first story set in America, which begins with his recollection of the first meeting of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon as told to him by the two men.
Episode 2
A brief episode in which respective letters of introduction are exchanged between Mason and Dixon.
Episode 3
In the Royal Naval port town of Portsmouth, England in 1761, Mason and Dixon meet for the first time. After brief discussions of their respective background, the two retire to an ale house for libations before their departure on the frigate HMS Seahorse to observe the Transit of Venus from Sumatra as ordered by the Royal Society. Over the course of the evening they encounter for the first time the Learned English Dog and Fender-Belly Bodine, a soon-to-be-shipmate on board the Seahorse. Talk is made over the threat of possible French naval aggression against the relatively undersized frigate.
Episode 4
The Reverend recounts the departure of the Seahorse from Portsmouth and her passage through the English Channel. In open sea, off the coast of France, the Seahorse is pursued and attacked by the French warship l'Grand. After a pitched battle, during which Mason and Dixon remain below decks and the Reverend acts as a surgeon's apprentice, the French unexpectedly and inexplicably break off the attack. The Seahorse, with more than thirty casualties and broken masts, limps back to Plymouth for repairs.
Episode 5
Drinking and paranoia dominate an on-shore discussion between Mason and Dixon. At a loss to explain how they survived the attack and why the French broke off the assault on the outgunned Seahorse, the pair consider reasons for the assault, including the possibility that they themselves were the target. They draft a letter to the Royal Society with their concerns and receive a swift, threatening reply reiterating their original orders.
Episode 6
Ordered once more to Bencoolen, despite its being currently occupied by French troops, Mason, Dixon, and the Reverend find themselves aboard the newly repaired Seahorse, now escorted by a second frigate as far as the open sea. During the passage to Tenerife, and eventually the southern latitudes, Mason marks the second anniversary of his wife's death, and the passengers and crew endure shipboard boredom and isolation.
Episode 7
The Seahorse arrives for a stay in Cape Town where Mason and Dixon are greeted by a member of the local constabulary who warns them against spreading political notions amongst the colony's slaves. Taking their meals at the Vroom household, Mason is the reluctant target of advances from the host's beautiful daughters. Their efforts are guided by their mother, who wishes Mason to become so inflamed with desire that he will consent to sex with the slave Austra and impregnate her, producing a fair-skinned offspring for the slave market. Appalled by the notion, Mason struggles to contain himself and begins to see the colony as a hellish nightmare world. Dixon, however, takes a more libertarian view of the colony and the gap between their perceptions leads the two paranoid astronomers to question how they came to be paired together in the first place.
Episode 8
In a short episode occupied with the sensual, the two astronomers began to seek better food from outside the Vroom house. A tour of various cook-tents and cuisines ends in a marketplace meeting with the Reverend Cherrycoke. Clergy not being welcome in the areas to which she sails, the Reverend informs them over freshly picked mangoes that the Seahorse has proceeded east, leaving the men to observe the Transit of Venus from the Cape.
Episode 9
The rainy season begins with a storm lasting three days. With their father Cornelius trapped out of town by the weather, his daughters renew their flirtatious assault on Mason. They pursue him and Dixon to an observatory constructed by the Seahorse crew before their departure. Trapped inside the observatory by another storm, Mason and Dixon offer a short explanation of the reasons for observing the Transit from different areas of the globe.
Episode 10
The opening of the episode returns to Philadelphia where the Reverend, using an orrery, lectures on the Transit of Venus and the solar parallax. In Cape Town, the skies clear long enough for Mason and Dixon to take their observations. A strange lassitude descends on the colony for several weeks after the event but normal routines are soon restored, even as the Vroom daughters find new objects for their attentions. After several months, Mason and Dixon depart Cape Town aboard HMS Mercury. The Reverend closes the episode by musing whether something other than philosophical or scientific desire drives astronomers worldwide to their observations.
Episode 11
While the Reverend sails on to British India, the Mercury makes port at the island of St. Helena, depicted as a surreal and desolate location. During an evening stroll that takes them within viewing distance of the island's gallows, Mason and Dixon encounter the Lady Florinda, with whom Mason had a brief tryst after the death of his wife. A flashback depicts their meeting a year before at the hanging of Lord Ferrers in London before the episode closes with the introduction of Florinda's fiancé.
Episode 12
The two astronomers spend time with Nevil Maskelyne, who is on the island to make observations but suffers from faulty equipment. Despite political and personal differences, they belatedly celebrate Maskelyne's 29th birthday. Dixon is ordered to return alone to Cape Town, while Mason comes to terms with his orders to remain on St. Helena. Two clocks, one having been with Maskelyne during the transit, the other with Mason and Dixon, discuss the differences between the two locations and the particular behaviors of the titular heroes. The episode closes with Dixon departing for the Cape with the clock previously kept by Maskelyne, leaving behind Mason and the other clock.
Episode 13
Lunar connections and allusions pervade the episode. With Dixon away to the Cape, Mason turns his attention to his new assignment—assisting Maskelyne in his attempts to establish observations of the lunar distance as the preferred means of obtaining longitude at sea. He is unnerved by Maskelyne's account of his former assistant and the erratic and paranoid behavior of the lunatic astronomer. Maskelyne is wary of political enemies at home and conspiracies on the island concerning his appointment and the benefits of being related to Clive of India, a prominent figure in the East India trade. Mason's own paranoia and melancholy wax as he remains on the island, but he manages to maintain enough perspective to falsify a flattering interpretation of Maskelyne's horoscope during one night of drinking at Maskelyne's favorite bar, The Moon.
Episode 14
The episode plays upon relativity, simultaneity, and conjunction. Upon a high ridge of St. Helena, Mason wanders as he wonders whether Dixon has landed safely on the Cape and what he might be about at that minute. Dixon, it turns out, is spending a large amount of time avoiding the consequences of the Vroom daughters' fascination with Mason, who, rumors in town have it, became involved with all of the daughters, the mother, and a slave during his stay on the Cape. Dixon is able to stop Cornelius Vroom from shooting him as a substitute for Mason, and the two spend an evening at The World's End, Vroom's local watering hole. There, Dixon makes first-hand observations on the debauchery that pervades the Dutch of the Cape and glimpses the consequences for the colony's black populace. He carries a drunken Cornelius home and is warned by the daughter Gret to hide the clock he has brought with him because of the contemporary fascination and paranoia regarding the rigors of time and the workings of mechanical clocks.
Episode 15
The first of three episodes that veers between Mason's time on the island working with the frustrated, and possibly mad Maskelyne, and his recounting of events to Dixon upon their joint return to England. Mason and Maskelyne, whose obsession with his faulty instruments only grows, visit the haunting Windward side of the island for observations. Maskelyne tells Mason how a soldier he saved from throwing himself off a nearby cliff now harbors hope that Maskelyne's connections to Clive will get him out of further service on the god forsaken island. Amidst unceasing wind, Mason suspects the soldier is in fact a ghost, and the ghost of Mason's late wife Rebekah visits him for the first time.
Episode 16
Mason tells Dixon how he first met his wife Rebekah at a cheese-rolling festival in Randwick, but his narrative is briefly interrupted by the Reverend's audience who protest contradictions with historical records. Back on the island, Rebekah's visitations continue and Mason soon learns for certain that Dieter, the soldier, too is a ghost and Maskelyne's private specter. He flees to the coast and purchases transport back to town aboard a dhow.
Episode 17
Arriving back in Jamestown, Mason is diverted by Florinda's now ex-fiancé, Mournival, who conducts Mason on a tour of his new enterprise, a museum dedicated to Jenkins' Ear. Presented with the ear itself, said to have magical properties of fulfilling wishes whispered into it, Mason begins to ask for the return of his wife but instead wishes a safe voyage to St. Helena for Dixon. For his part, Dixon later jokes that while still in Cape Town he fancied hearing Mason's wish in the voice of the wind shortly before his departure. The two ponder the possibilities and reflect on Maskelyne's possible madness as they make the return trip to England.
Episode 18
Upon their return to England in June, the two astronomers part ways, with Dixon going north to his family and Mason procrastinating against a visit to his. Shortly after making his way home, however, Mason's mentor and benefactor James Bradley falls ill and dies, occasioning Mason to reflect on his beginnings in astronomy and the real circumstances of his courtship with Rebekah.
Episode 19