Mason & Dixon is a postmodernist novel by American author Thomas Pynchon, published in 1997. It presents a fictionalized account of the collaboration between Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in their astronomical and surveying exploits in the Dutch Cape Colony, Saint Helena, Great Britain and along the Mason-Dixon line in British North America on the eve of the Revolutionary War in the United States.
First edition cover
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
Pynchon in 1953 yearbook image
Pynchon c. 1955
Pynchon, age 16, in his high school senior portrait
During his time as a US Navy sailor, Pynchon is believed to have served aboard the USS Hank during the Suez Crisis.