Books › Mason & Dixon
Mason & Dixon
First published 1997 · 1022 pages
A sprawling, wildly inventive 18th-century road trip that maps the boundaries of friendship and the ghosts of a rationalized world.
What it feels like
Reading this maximalist masterpiece feels like sitting by a roaring fire while a slightly unreliable, endlessly erudite uncle spins a sprawling yarn that refuses to travel in a straight line. The pace is unapologetically meandering, demanding you surrender to its dense, brilliant pastiche of 18th-century prose, complete with erratic capitalization and archaic rhythms. Beneath the surreal digressions, talking dogs, and mechanical ducks lies a deeply wistful atmosphere. It is a book about the tragic drawing of lines—imposing rational geometry upon a wild, magical world—and the ghosts left in the wake of colonialism. Yet, at its core, it is an incredibly tender, melancholic portrait of male friendship. It will delight patient readers who crave linguistic acrobatics, historical absurdity, and profound emotional resonance.
- Mood
- wistful
- surreal
- wintry
- chaotic
- Tone
- playful
- melancholic
- erudite
- satirical
- affectionate
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- the loss of magic to rationalism · deep male friendship · the absurdity of history · colonialism and its ghosts · the drawing of boundaries
- The writing
- A dense, brilliant, and wildly playful pastiche of 18th-century English, complete with erratic capitalization, archaic vocabulary, and sprawling, musical sentences.
- The arc
- Begins as a chaotic, picaresque romp through the Enlightenment and deepens into a profoundly moving, melancholic meditation on friendship and mortality.
- Who it's for
- Patient lovers of maximalist, postmodern literature who delight in historical digressions, linguistic acrobatics, and deeply buried emotional cores.
Content notes
- colonial violence
- slavery
- historical racism
- sexual content
About the book
Told from the focal point of one Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke – a clergyman of dubious orthodoxy – who attempts to entertain and divert his extended family on a cold December evening (partly for amusement, and partly to keep his coveted status as a guest in the house). Claiming to have accompanied Mason and Dixon throughout their journeys, Cherrycoke tells a tale intermingling Mason and Dixon's biographies with history, fantasy, legend, speculation, and outright fabrication.
Description from Open Library.
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