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BOOKS: DRAWING THE LINE

Ever since the appearance of Thomas Pynchon's epic, mind-bending Gravity's Rainbow (1973), rumors have circulated among the faithful that the elusive author was working on two new projects: a novel about Japanese monster movies and one dealing with the 18th century drawing of the Mason-Dixon line between the (then) colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Fragments of a Godzilla-like episode indeed appeared in Pynchon's Vineland (1990), and now here comes a real monster: Mason & Dixon (Henry Holt; 773 pages; $27.50).

Pynchon, the one-time enfant terrible of American literature, turns 60 this May. He still refuses to give interviews or pose for...

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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