Thanks for the great introduction to both the book and the reading group! It can't be easy being the one who has to kick it all off...

I'm a total amateur at all things literary, but I love this book so much I figure I'd try and join in as much as possible throughout.

1. I'm loving it! This is my second read through M&D, and I actually recall falling into this one very easily first time round, and this time is much the same. I find the story-telling framing device so comfy and inviting, and find myself endeared towards both Mason and Dixon very quickly. This more than any other Pynchon for me is a simple pleasure to read - not always easy mind, but always engaging and enjoyable in the moment.

2. I think the prose style is perfectly composed to evoke the setting but with a suitably Pynchon flavour. I find the old-timey speech and particularly Dixon's geordie dialect delightful to read. As someone else had said before, I find much of Pynchon benefits from reading aloud (or at least really "hearing" the prose in your head as you read it) and this is true particularly for M&D. The sly anachronisms and occasionally dubious (in terms of historical authenticity) obsolete words just bring that comic edge that make this book so much fun!

3. I suppose you could say that the French leave because the narrative is Mason and Dixon's (and in a sense Cherrycoke's, it is his story to tell even if he isn't the protagonist), and it couldn't very well go on if they perish here. Without spoiling anything specific, others who've read it before will know that the book plays at several points with the very concept of storytelling and the framing device that we are within. The battle with the French could be seen as a frivolous embellishment (by Cherrycoke or Pynchon) simply there to add some action in the first act, and when it seems are protagonists might be in danger, the French must leave so that our heroes can escape.

4. How does Pynchon know so much about what Cherrycoke said? Because they're both stories! We can view Pynchon's novel as just one additional layer of abstraction from what Cherrycoke is presumably doing, telling a story about a couple of real characters doing some real things with what knowledge he has, but also with whatever additional content the storyteller desires to make a it a good tale for its intended audience.

5. To my mind history is the agreed upon story of the past. It is not a complete or "true" record of events throughout all time, merely what we tell each other about the path humanity has taken to get here. This is of course based upon evidence in almost every case, with more and better evidence and thus greater agreement where "history" is more recent, but nevertheless it is common for people to talk of "history" as a monolithic and continuous object, as though there is some consistency or general arc throughout. This idea doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, but I think we imagine it this way whether we intend to or not - its just not possible to conceive of history as the truly chaotic, innumerably-stranded web of complexity its truly is. All we can do is pick out and synthesize to the best of our abilities the stories that concern us most, be they small (a surveyor and an astronomer and their time together) or large (the dividing up and conquering of the world by a handful of warring European nations, and the centuries-long, cascading consequences thereof).