Mason & Dixon - Part 1 - Chapter 0: Material and Spiritual Worlds

Mason & Dixon Analysis: The Title of the Novel, the Dedication, and Part 1, Latitudes and Departures

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“What's a colony without its dusky natives? Where's the fun if they're all going to die off? Just a big hunk of desert, no more maids, no field-hands, no laborers for the construction or the mining—wait, wait a minute there, yes it's Karl Marx, that sly old racist skipping away with his teeth together and his eyebrows up trying to make believe it's nothing but Cheap Labor and Overseas Markets. . . . Oh, no. Colonies are much, much more. Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit. Where he can fall on his slender prey roaring as loud as he feels like, and guzzle her blood with open joy. Eh? Where he can just wallow and rut and let himself go in a softness, a receptive darkness of limbs, of hair as woolly as the hair on his own forbidden genitals. Where the poppy, and the cannabis and coca grow full and green, and not to the colors and style of death, as do ergot and agaric, the blight and fungus native to Europe. Christian Europe was always death, Karl, death and repression. Out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the Metropolis, nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marble statues, noble thoughts. . . . No word ever gets back. The silences down here are vast enough to absorb all behavior, no matter how dirty, how animal it gets. . . .”

Gravity’s Rainbow, 3.3, pg. 317

The world and people ‘evolved’ in regard to colonization, imperialism, monopolization, and Empire within the 180 years that spanned between the event of Mason & Dixon and Gravity’s Rainbow. But the inherent purpose of colonies (if colonies could be said to have an inherent purpose) largely remained the same. They are of course used to extract resources, free or nearly free labor, acquire land, build upon that land, increase private property, and so forth. But an even more sinister purpose lies beneath the surface, for not everything can be derived through pure class analysis or pure desire for economic power and profit. There is the desire for power of another type. That to do as one will — to sexually and violently oppress, to get off on one’s more horrific and sinful desires, to see blood and hear screams of terror, to know you have staked your claim on a land and on a life. This is where America began. On this very idea — this very want.

The Title: Mason & Dixon

Charles Mason was born in April of 1728 in Gloucestershire, England. Prior to the events of the novel, he attended a grammar school where he received heavy instruction in mathematics. Due to his domestic proximity to James Bradley, the ‘Third Astronomer Royal,’ and his success in mathematics, Mason was offered a position at the Royal Observatory. The Royal Observatory is where scientists, specifically astronomers and the like, work for the English Royalty to gather whatever information they need. He later married one Rebekah (maiden name unknown), who died at age 31 in 1759, leaving Mason and his family with two children, William and Doctor Isaac. This is where we find Mason, circa 1760, at the beginning of the novel.

Jeremiah Dixon was born in July of 1733 in County Durham, England, around five years after Charles Mason. Prior to the events of the novel, he studied astronomy and mathematics at Barnard Castle, in the same region of his birthplace, and was eventually heavily taught by the mathematician, William Emerson. Very little else is known about Jeremiah Dixon prior to his meeting with Charles Mason.

In 1760, Mason and Dixon were chosen to conduct the observation of the Transit of Venus which would lead to the beginning of their longtime partnership and friendship. These are the initial major ideas we will be observing. First, the development of two individuals over the course of their life, becoming enamored with the sciences, their fascination with the intangible, the minutiae which makes up the world, and discovering what certain power structures will utilize this knowledge for. Secondly, the friendship between these two individuals, seeing how they will not only evolve in regard to love and brotherhood, but also how they will find solace in each other among the terrifying realms of the colonization and oppression that they unknowingly (at least at first) are helping enact.

However, Mason & Dixon does not only refer to the pair, but to the ‘line,’ as well (charted between the years of 1763-1768). Years past the events of the Transit of Venus (which encompasses the events of Part One of the novel), the two were also chosen to chart the boundary dispute between the newly colonized Pennsylvania and Maryland (which encompasses the events of Part Two). A couple major points (because there is a near infinite number of other points) stick out here. Firstly, the concept of borders as a whole. We will witness the abstract nature of what a border truly is: how one devises them through mystical and astral means, and through entirely theoretical, metaphysical, speculative, economic, and symbolic ideologies. How, if one moves back to the basics of what life is, we will realize that they — the borders — do not truly exist. Secondly, if we are forced to accept that this border does exist, we know it is the dividing line between the American North and the American South. The Southern realm of Slavery, and the Northern realm of . . . well, one could say freedom, but in reality, not too much is different up there. Yes, of course, true slavery in the south was far more horrifying and destructive to an entire people. So, this dividing line does, to some extent, show the division between true oppression and freedom. But given the North (and, if we travel a few hundred years into the future, our entire current nation) did not really believe in the true freedom of an oppressed class and did not believe in anything related to those of power less than the Elite, we can clearly see that this border being abstract is more than just the fact that it doesn’t tangibly exist, but that that which it represents does not even exist: freedom versus oppression. The North simply wants you to believe that you could be free up here and then would be wholly willing to oppress you once you arrived. Finally, it is about those who live or travel upon this line — the Preterite, the Elite, the flora and fauna, the spiritual and material, and all of those in between.

Dedication

For Melanie, and for Jackson

Mason & Dixon is Thomas Pynchon’s fifth novel, published in 1997 following Vineland (1990). 1990 was when Pynchon married his editor, Melanie Jackson, and 1991 was when his son, Jackson Pynchon, was born. While Vineland was officially where Pynchon began developing far more hopeful and familial themes, Mason & Dixon is where they really shot off. His first three novel — V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1965), and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) — despite all having some level of hope, were almost entirely used as exposés for the military-industrial, hyper-capitalist, Elite power structures built into America and the 20th-century world as a whole. They had hope and beauty for sure but hope and beauty did not come full-fledged into his work until Pynchon himself experienced true love and fatherhood. Because, if love, fatherhood, or motherhood or parenthood in general, could not bring hope to your mind, well, what could? It is from this point forward (or, Vineland, though to a slightly lesser degree) that we see Pynchon yearning for and believing in a better future.

Part One: Latitudes and Departures

The title of Part One embodies duality between the spiritual and material. We will begin with the latter, the material.

‘Latitude’ represents the Northerly or Southerly position on Earth. It is, importantly, an objective fact. 30° North is always 30° North. Until the tectonic plates shift over an epochal period of time, it will always pass through the south of Cairo, Baja California, parts of Florida, and so on. Just as 60° South will, within numerous lifetimes, possess the same lands, and something as specific as 43.4° North will do the same. ‘Departure’ means the leaving of one’s land or one’s home, or purely definitionally from the Oxford English Dictionary, “the action of leaving, especially to start a journey.”¹ Again, it is a fact. Leaving a place, one’s family, one’s home, to arrive at another. These ‘latitudes’ and ‘departures’ are referential to specific places or states of being on our Earth.

However, if we move onto the intangible, or what we should call abstract, aspects of these words, things change. ‘Latitudes’ and ‘departures’ are terms used in the surveying of lands to form borders. If the distance between Point A to Point B were the hypotenuse both moving in a positive direction, a ‘Latitude’ would represent the y-axis line’s distance of the same triangle whereas the ‘Departure’ would represent the x-axis line’s distance. Or, to put it the sense of a border survey, if a team were to move a certain distance South-West from Point C to Point D, moving ‘X’ distance, they could take that C to D as the hypotenuse of a triangle, calculate the North/South Latitude as the geometrical opposite, and the East/West Departure as the geometrical adjacent. And while these, like the more unchangeable aspects of the words ‘Latitude’ and ‘Departure’ are quite literal, it is their usage that differentiates them from the former. They are used for purely abstract means, to map borders on continents and lands: dividing lines in which the laws, the populations, the leaders, the politics, the geographies, and so on, could be drastically different simply because some entity said that those on one side of an invisible line were entirely separate from the other for no reason but a person’s desire or a randomly derived law. Thus, we have the natural state of Earth and its people being compared to the abstract mathematics of colonization and the borders thereof — two major themes which will soon be introduced in this section.

So, Part One will encompass the introduction to these ideas, but will also serve as the introduction to our characters, and many other motifs and themes regarding colonization and imperialism. It will introduce us to the methods in which America and thus the capitalist Western world would begin, how business and trade would run our lives, and how oppression would serve both as a means of production and of perverse desire.²

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Up Next: Part 1, Chapter 1

1. Oxford English Dictionary. (2000). Oxford University Press.

2. Thankfully there is only one pagination of Mason & Dixon, so the page numbers which I use to cite everything here on out will be universal.