Surveying the line was the second joint gig for this duo; when first encountered, in January 1761, they are about to set sail for Sumatra, Indonesia to observe the Transit of Venus--that planet's progression across the face of the sun. When force majeure strikes, in the form of an attack by a French ship, they return to England, sail off again and ultimately observe the transit in Cape Town, South Africa.

Most of the novel tracks Mason and Dixon in America as they survey the boundary line beginning 31 miles due west and then 15 miles due south of the southernmost point of Philadelphia and proceeding 244 miles west. The novel serves as a reminder that the task of divvying up the planet has always been controversial, as the recent boundary dispute over Ellis Island and the current debate over rent regulation make clear. As one character observes, "It goes back...to the second Day of Creation, when 'G-d made the Firmament, and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament, from the Waters which were above the Firmament,'--thus the first Boundary Line. All else after that, in all History, is but Sub-Division."

The novel also offers wry commentary on how real estate and other controversies are resolved in the New World, referring to Americans as "the most litigious people on Earth...hauling each other before Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs, Church Courts, Village Quidnuncs, anyone who'd listen, even pretend to, at an unbelievable clip, seeking recompense for ill treatment grand and petty."

This is hardly the first time that the law has played a key role in Pynchon's fiction. A letter from the law firm Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek & McMingus naming Oedipa Maas executor of her former lover's estate puts The Crying of Lot 49 in motion, and the machinations of a federal prosecutor sets spinning the events in Vineland. Even one of the possible meanings of the enigmatic "V." in the novel of that name could be the divider between contending parties in a lawsuit caption. So too does legal wrangling-most of it related to ownership of property-animate Mason & Dixon.

A recurring figure is the conniving "Philadelphia lawyer" (a term supposedly first applied to Andrew Hamilton, who successfully defended John Peter Zenger on seditious libel charges). When one surveyor swallows a watch entrusted to Dixon's care, bystanders argue whether this action constitutes a theft or a sequestration. An overseer responds: "O Philadelphia!...have thy Barristers poison'd Discourse e'en unto the Rude who dwell in this Desert?" And when the devil himself says to his Philadelphia lawyer, "[Y]ou seem like a Mortal of some ingenuity. Perhaps from time to time we could chat," the lawyer responds, "Those would, of course, be billable hours."

The novel also touches on several legal issues in England at the time: the public hangings at Tyburn-once considered as necessary to the rights of Englishmen as public trials-which the gloomy Mason attends regularly; and the enclosure movement-entailing the parcelling out of open fields-which provides Dixon a steady income as a surveyor. It was also in the 1760s that William Blackstone wrote his Commentaries on the Laws of England, setting out the complicated and arcane writs that law students still learn about in their first year.

In geography and law, lines were often drawn arbitrarily. The novel covers the period when many standards that remain with us today were being developed. The Calendar Reform of 1752, which brought England in sync with the Gregorian calendar of continental Europe, required the elimination of eleven days-to the consternation of many English people. Time became inextricably linked to space, as the movements of the stars and planets and the development of reliable clocks provided the means for determining longitude. And a simple straight edge laid upon a map played havoc with nature and divided towns, individual houses, even one couple's marriage bed, just as it would later divide the country over the issue of slavery.

In their travels in America, Mason and Dixon meet up with both Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. When Dixon, visiting in Virginia, toasts the pursuit of happiness, a "tall red-headed youth" asks if he may use that phrase. And over two successive winters each travels to New York City. When Mason visits, he ends up repairing the telescope of a group of revolutionaries in Brooklyn. The following year Dixon attends an elaborate musical production at "a Theater with no name, no fix'd address,-this night happ'ning to be upon Broad-Way."

Pynchon also resumes his focus on subversive, or extra-legal, means of communication, elaborated upon inThe Crying of Lot 49 through the depiction of the W.A.S.T.E. mail system. In one of the sub-plots, Jesuits in Quebec appear to be practicing a system of communication over the north pole involving large letters and the aurora borealis. Even the markers along the Mason-Dixon line, it is suggested, have mysterious transmitting capabilities. In addition, the Reverend Cherrycoke as a young man found himself in jail for circulating pamphlets anonymously: "I knew some night-running lads in the district who let me use their Printing-press,--somehow, what I got into printing up, were Accounts of certain Crimes I had observ'd committed by the Stronger against the Weaker,--enclosures, evictions, Assize verdicts, Activities of the Military,--giving the Names of as many of the Perpetrators as I was sure of...." This mention of anonymous posting hints at the Internet, the latest frontier in alternative communication, where many differing versions of events now abound and where turf wars are still being waged.

Mason & Dixon also includes the familiar Pynchon jokes and puns, the cartoonish exploits of larger-than-life characters, the sinister underground societies, the exuberant song lyrics. From the opening number belted by a Norfolk Terrier known as the Learned English Dog to Dixon's dreamed farewell duet with his partner, Pynchon's wordplay is as sharp as ever. The novel's faux 18th century language and spelling soon becomes comfortable, even enjoyable, to follow, and the narrative, though studded with digressions, is more straightforward than that of Gravity's Rainbow.

Other Pynchonesque flights of fancy-based upon fact-abound: a runaway ten-foot-high, four-ton Gloucester cheese that nearly flattens Mason; the Jenkin's Ear Museum, in which the featured specimen, presented in a pickling jar, really listens; Lud Oafery, who changes during a full moon, not into a werewolf, but something more disturbing to his mother; and a mechanical duck, smitten with a French chef named Armand Allegre, who himself falls for pious Frau Luise Redzinger.

The Reverend Cherrycoke archly observes in his writings: "Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,--Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to lawyers...." In the hands of Pynchon, historical facts are spun into entertaining story of travel and friendship as well as an exploration of the moral ambiguities of the modern world, most notably the questionable effects of line-drawing of many kinds. In Mason & Dixon, Pynchon succeeds in juggling a dizzying assortment of historical information, cultural insights and delightful prose.

Ruth Singleton is an associate editor at The National Law Journal.

Reprinted with the permission of The New York Law Journal. Copyright, 1997, The New York Law Publishing Company.