Mason & Dixon

Thomas Pynchon

Boy, ye're sending me 'pon a damn'd fool's errand.

Ah--your first, Sir?

At this turn of his Life, Capt. Grant has discover'd in his own feckless Youth, a Source of pre-civiliz'd Sentiment useful to his Praxis of now and then pretending to be insane, thus deriving an Advantage over any unsure as to which side of Reason he may actually stand upon.

Ah! it might seek you out, mightn't it,--and, in the Monomania of its Assault, grow careless enough to allow my Agents at last to apprehend it. That would be the Plan, anyhow. Agreed, you must consider how best to defend yourself,--wear clothing it cannot bite through, leather, or what's even more secure, chain-mail,--its Beak being of the finest Swedish Steel, did I mention that, yes quite able, when the Duck, in its homicidal Frenzy, is flying at high speed, to penetrate all known Fortification, solid walls being as paper to this Juggernaut.... One may cower within, but one cannot avoid, --le Bec de la Mort, the.... Beak of Death.

Aye. As if we're Lodgers inside someone else's Fate, whilst belonging quite someplace else...?

Unfortunately, young people, recalls the Revd, the word Liberty, so unreflectively sacred to us today, was taken in those Times to encompass even the darkest of Men's rights,--to injure whomever we might wish,--unto extermination, were it possible,--Free of Royal advice or Proclamation Lines and such. This being, indeed and alas, one of the Liberties our late War was fought to secure.

Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,--Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin.... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,--nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,--her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,--that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,--not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,--rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common.

Listen to me, Defecates-with-Pigeons. Long before any of you came here, we dream'd of you. All the people, even Nations far to the South and the West, dreamt you before ever we saw you,--we believ'd that you came from some other World, or the Sky. You had Powers and we respected them. Yet you never dream'd of us, and when at last you saw us, wish'd only to destroy us. Then the killing started,--some of you, some of us,--but not nearly as many as we'd been expecting. You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip'd us away, and for less. Instead, you sold us your Powers,--your Rifles,--as if encouraging us to shoot at you,--and so we did, tho' not hitting as many of you, as you were expecting. Now you begin to believe that we have come from elsewhere, possessing Powers you do not.... Those of us who knew how, have fled into Refuge in your Dreams, at last. Tho' we now pursue real lives no different at their Hearts from yours, we are also your Dreams.

So will the Reign of Reason cheerily dispose of any allegations of Paradise.

I don't pray enough, Dixon subvocalizes, and I can't get upon my Knees just now because too many are watching,--yet could I kneel, and would I pray, 'twould be to ask, respectfully, that this be made right, that the Murderers meet appropriate Fates, that I be spar'd the awkwardness of seeking them out myself and slaying as many as I may, before they overwhelm me. Much better if that be handl'd some other way, by someone a bit more credible.... He feels no better for this Out-pouring.

It is possible, here comments the Rev'd Cherrycoke, that for some couples, however close, Love is simply not in the cards. So must they pursue other projects instead,--sometimes together, sometimes apart. I believe now, that their Third Interdiction came when, at the end of the eight-Year Traverse, Mason and Dixon could not cross the perilous Boundaries between themselves.

The old Astronomers sit for a while in what might be an Embrace, but that they forbear to touch.

You're safe, Charlie, she whispers. You're safe, She prays.

Some are bound by chains within to a bondage all the more terrible for it's invisible. Some strive to break these bonds and succeed only in ratifying their presence and invisibility. So to Love then, must all such prisoners cast their hopes. That there is some flaw in the awful logic of a fateful world that another would join us in our bonds, so close, so very close, that the restriction of chains becomes the union of souls. Upon Love do the doomed hang their dreams. Though with every move we tighten the bonds, realize our prison, hearts within these chains still hope upon lunacy. Even a prison may be a home.

Mason & Dixon, the story of astronomers, the story of fate, well told, even if everything seems to arrive a little late. Imagine: a man who suspects that he is a wet blanket, a stick in the mud, a bland sugarless doughnut, imagine a man who accepts the nickname Mopery. Such a man is Pynchon's Mason. Going through life, acceptant that he is not jolly, he is not a joker, he is not free to frolic for a many numbered total of reasons summed fate. Some people just aren't that way. Dixon, of course, is. Jolly, dashing, people who want this sort of thing call it raw. Dixon also is a much more interesting character. It's how it is. But then Mason isn't. Life sucks for Mason. But imagine Mason's mind, for he is intelligent enough to know himself for what he is. In fact, that may be one of the worst curses of melancholia, to be aware of the dampness of one's own soul. Mason is so aware and there are moments he tries to break out of it, moments when he would deny his own tragic flaw (what else makes a good story?). These moments are terrible. Even as he leaps for freedom, even as he strains against the chains, we see him falling short, we see him straining futile, and worst of all, we see in his eyes even as he tries that his own failure is all but known and only a little hope remains ignorant.

What I'm aiming at, though doing a poor job, is one of the most frightening things in the world. Many people never have to face it, and jolly good for them--such a one perhaps is Dixon--but others do not escape so luckily. To know of one's own failings, to try to fight them and yet to feel them triumphing over you--that tipping point is home to sickness's deep.

We read books to read ourselves. We write to write ourselves. Did Pynchon actually write any such characters?