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Article: MASON & DIXON, by Thomas Pynchon; Henry Holt (773 pages, $27.50).(Originated from Knight-Ridder Newspapers)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- June 4, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Here is perhaps the unlikeliest story imaginable. A novel featuring two surveyors? English technicians whose published writings consist of astronomical observations, trigonometric calculations and field notes used to make a map? No story in that, compared with the saga of Lewis and Clark's expedition.
But then we recall: For five years in the 1760s, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon plotted the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, fatefully dividing free and slave states. Beginning at the Chesapeake Bay, their ax-men cut a swath due west through 233 miles of farms and forests, into a wilderness of marauding Shawnee and Iroquois.
``Mason & Dixon'' is, then, ...