Mason & Dixon & Update

Most recently read and most impossible to summarize, Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. Structurally it's similar to Barth's Sot-Weed Factor in that it's a post-modern novel written in an 18th century style. Pynchon went all out with random capitalization and olde-tyme spellings. Overall, it's a good book about friendship through shared circumstances, but it shines in its craziness. The book includes a talking dog and a mechanical duck that carries grudges. It also includes these two ridiculous anachronisms:

- An Englishman, just returned from a trip to Italy is eager to introduce his pubmates to a fantastic new dish he discovered there (pizza). Unable to find dough, tomato and cheese, they made do with stilton cheese, anchovies, and "ketjup," on a loaf of brown bread. Que delicioso!

- Friggin' Popeye: "That is, 'I am that which I am,' " helpfully translates a somehow nautical-looking Indiv. with gigantick Fore-Arms, and one Eye ever a-Squint from the Smoke of his Pipe.

Pynchon continues his infatuation with silly names for the non-historically accurate characters, particularly the narrator Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke. Also, I bet you didn't know George Washington had a black, Jewish slave chef. I liked the book and there's a lot more where that came from but my brain has been taxed enough already. I'm gonna go read some Calvin & Hobbes.

I'm almost done so here's an update to make this post look longer:
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1,079p) 1.14.09
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (721p) 1.26.09
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (729p) 2.3.09
Rabbit Angstrom by John Updike (1,516p) 2.16.09
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (776p) 3.7.09
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (704p) 3.14.09
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1056p) 3.22.09
Ulysses by James Joyce (768p) 3.29.09
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (720p) 4.5.09
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (819p) 4.18.09
The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz (992p) 5.2.09
The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike (864p) 5.3.09
The Complete Novels (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive) by Flann O'Brien (787p) 5.19.09
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (853p) 6.3.09
The Recognitions by William Gaddis (956p) 6.24.09
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (706p) 7.8.09
Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (773p) 7.23.09
The USA Trilogy (The 42nd Parallel 8.5.09, 1919, and The Big Money) by John Dos Passos (1,144p in 3 volumes)
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy (1192p)