Charles Mason (1728 -1786) And Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) Were The British Surveyors Best Remembered For Running The Boundary Between Pennsylvania And Maryland That We Know Today As The Mason-dixon Line. Here Is Their Story As Re-imagined By Thomas Pynchon, In An Updated Eighteenth-century Novel Featuring Native Americans And Frontier Folk, Ripped Bodices, Naval Warfare, Conspiracies Erotic And Political And Major Caffeine Abuse. We Follow The Mismatch'd Pair - One Rollicking, The Other Depressive; One Gothic, The Other Pre-romantic - From Their First Journey Together To The Cape Of Good Hope, To Pre-revoluntionary America And Back, Through The Stange Yet Redemptive Turns Of Fortune In Their Later Lives, On A Grand Tour Of The Enlightenment's Dark Hemisphere, As They Observe And Participate In The Many Opportunities For Insanity Presented Them By The Age Of Reason.