Author Pynchon returns

Drinking, pot smoking and whoring don't usually appear in historical fiction.

But this isn't your usual historical fiction. This is Thomas Pynchon's story of Mason and Dixon, the men who cut the line that divides North and South.

Mason & Dixon is Thomas Pynchon's first book since he published Vineland in 1990. Some have hoped this to be his greatest masterpiece, the one that will surpass even his most famous work, Gravity's Rainbow, in complexity and vision. Vineland, the only novel he's published since, was a warm-up for this, his fans supposed. This was to be the most Pynchonite of all Pynchon's novels.

Unlike other Pynchon books, time and space are kept fairly consistent. Fortunately for the reader, the story follows Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon quite faithfully, starting with their failed astronomical adventures before embarking on the famous surveying job.

Pynchon still has a fondness for absurd names, too. The story is told years later by one of their companions on the survey, Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke.

Whereas Gravity's Rainbow required an understanding of World War II rocket science, Pynchon's homework for Mason & Dixon shows an intimate understanding of 18th century history, politics, and astronomy. It wouldn't hurt to brush off a few textbooks if one really wants delve into Pynchon.

Of course, for those who don't want to re-enroll in any history classes, there's still plenty of interesting Pynchon touches to keep one occupied.

In the first pages, Pynchon introduces a talking dog that, lest one mistake him for an American slob, assures everyone he is the Learned English Dog.

Later on, the characters' clocks have a lengthy conversation about their owners.

And what would a great American novel sans Frenchmen who taunt seafarers with fake accents à la Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

And this is all before Mason and Dixon even set foot in America to divide Maryland and Pennsylvania.

It's not until then that they get to try some of George Washington's hemp crop. It's clear that these aren't the Mason and Dixon that your elementary school teacher taught you about.

Of course, in all this lies Pynchon's trademark sense of paranoia and widespread conspiracy, but it's not as overwhelming as in his other works. The many worldwide plots and schemes at work may have even railroaded Mason and Dixon into doing their famous survey job for the Royal Society of London.

The best of the conspiracies, though, is the one involving the astronomers and the calendar reform that took 11 days out of the year. It creates something of a rift between one of the astronomers and his father who is a little bitter about turning a year older 11 days earlier.

In many ways, and already in many reviews, the book is comparable to John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor, another modern farce about the beginnings of our nation. But where The Sot-Weed Factor gets murky and bogged down with its own overwrought language, the narrative in Mason & Dixon flows breezily along, never letting logic or order get in the way.

However, Mason & Dixon lacks the urgency that made Pynchon's most well-known book so exciting. It's an enjoyable and hilarious book but, it just doesn't have the weight to follow Gravity's Rainbow.