Subject: Pynchon
From: Patti Larrabee (Patti.Larrabee@hsc.utah.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 03 1997 - 11:17:35 GMT
London Times, May 30, 1997
Trendy New Yorkers lap up cult writer's indigestible
novel
FROM TUNKU VARADARAJAN IN NEW YORK
IT could be described as the book everyone
is wearing. Mason & Dixon, the almost
incomprehensible new novel by Thomas
Pynchon, has become the latest American
fashion accessory.
The 773-page monster is poised near the
pinnacle of the bestseller lists, as thousands
of buyers flock to bookshops in search of the
latest intellectual bauble. More than $200,000
(#125,000) has been spent by Henry Holt and Co,
the publishers, on selling the book, and their
investment appears to have paid off. The first
print run of 175,000 - astonishingly large for a
book as dense as a Mississippi swamp - could be
sold out by the middle of next month, a mere six
weeks after its first appearance.
Wry observers, however, attribute Mason &
Dixon's success to its unreadability. Melik
Kaylan, a former editor at Spy magazine,
describes the book as "a 1990s version of The
Name of the Rose". He said: "New York's literary
nomenklatura want to be seen carrying worthy
books ... Umberto Eco served people's needs
admirably in the last decade, what with the
generous infusions of Latin in his text.
Pynchon, too, is great for posing with ...
perfect for women who spend their whole day
draped languidly over a chair at the Museum of
Modern Art's cafe with a book perched on their
knees."
Another cynic remarked: "People enjoy
holding up their fat new book and saying,
'Like my new dustjacket'?"
The book's publishers have not been blind
to the cachet lurking in abstruse prose.
Although Cathy Melnicki, the publicist at
Holt, describes Mason & Dixon as "a really
accessible, kind of familiar,
two-guys-go-into-the woods story", she was
careful to emphasise that "reading Pynchon
makes people feel smart".
The book tells the story of the men behind
the Mason-Dixon Line, which once divided
the so-called "free states" from the slave
states in America, and which now serves as
a useful metaphor for the boundary between
the Enlightened North and the Deep South.
It is a thinking man's "buddies tale",
charting the relationship between two
Englishmen, Charles Mason, an astronomer,
and Jeremiah Dixon, a surveyor. Other
characters include Benjamin Franklin,
George Washington, Samuel Johnson, a
Chinese feng shui master, a Swedish
irredentist, a robot duck and a talking dog.
Pynchon is puzzling to read, but not as
puzzling as he is in real life. Sixty years old,
and rated by many as among the finest living
novelists in English, he is one of America's
most reclusive writers. His alienated view of
the world rivals that of J.D. Salinger, the
author of The Catcher in the Rye, and he has
fought publicity throughout his life.
On this occasion, however, he has offered
his publishers more co-operation than ever
before, giving his approval to book launch
parties and other essentially
non-Pynchonian frivolities. He did not even
object to the holding of a "Thomas Pynchon
lookalike contest" to mark the publication of
the book on April 30.
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Trendy New Yorkers, indeed
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