My knowledge of American history and culture is zero, but, recently...

My knowledge of American history and culture is zero, but, recently, I saw a person talking about Mason & Dixon with such passion that I almost want to read it. Does the book requires some background from the reader to be appreciated?
My English is entry level at best, but the novel was translated to my language. Would a translation hurt the book too much?

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a great deal of the appeal of the book for me was the specific way it was written, capturing all the weird grammar of the time in an idiosyncratic way. it works both as very beautiful witty language in its own right and is also packed with clever modern jokes that ironically skewer it. i guess that could be replicated in another language, but it wouldn't be the same book at all. knowing a bit about the culture is handy but not essential.

if your translation is praised it may be that the translation is a good book in its own rights

Who knows, it could be a fun way to learn some history.
Maybe a bad example but I didn’t know anything about Italy before I played assassins creed, but I still enjoyed it. Then I got interested in the real history

Thank you very much.

How the hell do you translate this thing?

It's different.
There is a writer in my country who was mostly into plays, but he wrote two novels. Most of his work deals with the droughts we hand in the XVIII century in a specific region and everything related with it including the consequences. Names are from the region and can't be translated because they mean a lot if you're a native; carrying weight when one character acts, reacts and breaks his condition or how people (and the reader) view him.
I still remember him saying how ridiculous it was to translate some of his books to english and french.

There's no such thing as American "culture".

Your culture is just a dozen wilted herbs and spices on top of American culture. Your authenticity dispersed years ago. Might as well go visit the version of your country they have at the Disney resort.
Pic, your country.

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Fucking retard.

>he's never had a donut burger

Well, I was surprised when I discovered American parents kick their kids out when they're 18 years old. It's considered bad to be an adult and live with your parents there.

Just started reading V, why does benny decide to run off with kook and then, after kook has escaped, why do they invite him to his house? Am I missing something?

Its my first pinecone, does random shit just happen as par for the course?

What about a translation of Gravity Rainbow?
I heard it's full of references too.

pinecone characters are ciphers, essentially You kinda have to construe their motivations through their actions alone.

You DO plan to read you-know-what, right?

Pynchon fills his books with references other things that only work in English or Mason & Dixon is an exception?
Maybe Against The Day or Gravity Rainbow could be a better option for non-English speakers.

>Does Pynchon fill his books with references and other things that only work in English or Mason & Dixon is an exception?
Fixed.

This doesn't even happen anymore. I don't know anyone that age that isn't living with their parents still. That's something that used to happen a 30 or 40 years ago.

Benny's a complete bum at that point in the story, I assumed he just went along with the Puerto Ricans because he had nothing better to do.

Oh yes, I've got gr, Md and atd all ready for when I finish v. Some user recommended doing gr after v due to sharing of themes etc

I didn't know the history and the book was great

>Does Pynchon fill his books with references and other things that only work in English
a lot of his quirks are related to language, things like switching from technical language to "literary" language to weird dialects, or spelling "says" "sez". Also his sentence structure is odd, he'll sometimes start a sentence with a thought and then describe a dozen items in a room before returning to the thought, all in one sentence. GR is probably more translatable than Ulysses but it would still require a translator that is a very gifted writer in their own right if the translation is to remain "Pynchonian" enough.

I think the language is less of an issue than the fact that Gravity’s Rainbow, for example, is extremely steeped in American culture. Most of the references are lost on me, and I’ve been here for a while.
I guess it wouldn’t be impossible, and I don’t mean to discourage anybody, because Pynchon writes wonderful books. Just saying that if you haven’t seen and really appreciated Looney Tunes cartoons, some things will go over your head. The bit about Slothrop going down the toilet would be unintelligible to anyone who isn’t intimately familiar with the U.S. after 1969. It isn’t just linguistically idiomatic, it’s packed to the brim with stuff that burgers have their antennae tuned to. Just think of the limericks.

There are references to everything, burgerisms are no more tied to what's meaningful in the book than the rest

the characters and le wacky hijinx should translate and make it worth reading

German here, Pynchon is kind of hard in English though I'd consider my English to be very good.

Read GR, COL49 and IV in English
started M&D in English
Now reading ATD in German, I don't feel like I'm missing anything. Considering M&D in German as well because I do not want to miss anything. :/

Honestly M&D is the kind of book that loses a lot of its value in translation, the language is just too specific and rooted in archaic vocabulary and idioms. Plotwise and themewise it's a pretty steeped in American history and culture, which shouldn't be of interest to you if you're not American or a foreigner obsessed with America (which you shouldn't be, don't let yourself get cucked by anglo culture). Obviously I don't want to get all "ITT books only Americans will understand" on you, it's still a GOAT book and you'll get some enjoyment out of it if you read it, I'm just saying it's maybe not the best bet. Read Against the Day instead if you want a Pinecone doorstopper.

tl;dr I would never recommend this book to a non-native English speaker but that doesn't mean it's not good

As an Irish fella going through M&D at the mo (fan of Pynchon, read several incl. GR) en englais, I'd have to say a lot of the references are lost on me, but it is still a fantastic piece of writing.

Mason hearing his wife in the wind stuck to me particularly hard as my fiancee is currently admitted to a psychiatric ward and I hear her voice absolutely everywhere, and I think with a lot of modernist/post-modernist stuff you really have to approach it with the mindset that you won't get everything the first time around and it doesn't matter.

I've gotten more out of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake than any non-Irish person would, I think, and I envy those who can harmonise with Pynchon in the same way.

GR and M&D are strong as fuck novels in their own right.