My first blog post, from 2002 republished

Judging Books By Their Covers?
When we are little we are told not to judge books by covers, be differant like everyone else, etc. Cute opening and bitter resent of public schooling finished.
A smidgen more seriously, the great thing about books is that we get to make the images come alive in our heads. But covers are noticed. Abstract, illustrating a scene or composite of
many, the covers are there regardless. Hardback's leave a sort of trace, perhaps, when their covers are disguarded, allowing for an additional excercise of "just what was on that cover?" and even the mass produced paperbacks (the Vonnegut series with the big 'V' in the middle jumps to mind) give more abstract
clues of production values and marketability, which in turn can bring certain lights on the author. A more illustrative cover is a terrible codex for the words; a visual codex for the words, painting scenes, characers and the like.
This can be a power suggestive supplement. Giving a visual assist to the reader is a power for the author, or the publishing house. Abuses are possible, a revealing scene can act like a bad trailer, gaging events in the books timeline in anticipation for the cover scene. With this said, an examination of Thomas Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon" yields some interesting things that start with the letter "S."
An initial look at the cover promiently shows

son
&
xon

in large letters with
the author's name sandwhiched between son and the ampersand, and a complete-minature-single-line reproduction of the title. With the exception of the font being shared with the whole, the latter elements now leave the analysis. The background is a spread-spotty parchment. The initial noticibles are that the the ampersand dwarfs the other characters and rules the center third vertically and horizontally. The ampersand is key. Next, Mason and Dixon are missing their Ma and Di respectiviley. But even more is absent. All the letters bleed off the page, giving open o's and skinny n's. This makes the ampersand also the only complete item on the page. Now the refrence to the font and the complete title comes into play. The lowecase letters are miniscule compared to their capitals, with par the ampersand, except the ampersand spreads out to the right beyond its allowences. The parchment resembles a blank map. This is what is seen.

Without reading the book, a
first pass shows the ampersand dominating two incomplete words, truncated and incomplete in what's left. The obvious: the mighty ampersand means 'and' and connecting this two crippled, incomplete words. In turn those words are sur-surnames of the main characters implying that their relationship is key, they are paired and the at least begin to complete each other in some way. All of this is on a map. A pretty nice package for the
reader.

Second delves, post-readings and outside research finds some
other interesting items. Pynchon is a master wordsmith, but who knows what he
reign is on production? With the covers of Gravity's Rainbow ranging from
orange, hazy aftermaths to technical blue prints, it would be hard to say. But
the first edition of Mason and Dixon had a specific cover in mind from
Pynchon. The inclusion of the ampersand itself is mighty. An actual physical
contraction of the french word et it found itself defined in 1835 making
it an anachronism for the time of the duo. Pynchon's historical checks are
magnificent, with chronological solecisms being used sparingly and usually for
good effect. This changes the outline to
size=4>
son
Et
xon

giving up word play to a downward sex and maligned sonet. The
partioning of the space and the connection is a somwhat more obvious call to the
line Mason and Dixon will make, a line that seperates a connected whole. The
'son' and 'xon' themselves are interesting as well. While son is a word, neither
Merriam nor Webster have the foggiest clue what a xon is. But subtracting the
similiar we get s and x. Mason is the goal setting esoteric and Dixon is the
care-free exoteric. Counter to this is some interesting alaphabetic archealogy
with the original interpretation of the Hebrew letter samekh ("x") being
transliterated as sigma ("s".) Now we have a strong sense of "self and
self" a tautological phrase.

This is a sort of balancing act through contrast makes a call
back to eastern thought, and again the ampersand, specially picked out by
Pynchon himself (curlicue and ligature dimensions and all!) with its mutant T
self grasping out to the east, out of its bound. Indeed, its circular forms and
curves give it a yin-yang context, giving the balance a scale as well.


More still, it's also a logic game, playing with
logic: "Mason and Dixon" not "Mason or Dixon" or god-forbid "Mason xor Dixon."
Scanning more and more we get the missing "ma" and her son, and countering that
the "s" at that time looked "f" (albiet victims of amputation) giving son, and
Dixon's missing his dick! Taking the literal ampersand to mean et, again gives
us "o t o" a Crowley which tooks various things from the Masons. And... I think
is other 500 words, but I don't have spell check.

size=3>I'll skip out on my Asa Bergeresque conspiracy theory that it could be
Mason and Nixon, though I will quickly mention the Mason-Dixon line is
represented just that: Mason-Dixon. hmm.

blink?

--
I tried to write this without using a lot of terms. A layer of
abstraction if you will. I also wish movable type had spell check. So how much
of the above is bullshit? Semiotics certainly blurs that line.

Thanks to some pynchon mailing list back in 1997 that i joined for 3 days
saw that they were spending way to much amount of time talking about the cover
and then promptly unsubscribed.

Posted by Ryan at
September 26, 2002 11:36 PM