Harold Bloom suggests Mason & Dixon is Thomas Pynchon's masterpiece to date, though he calls The Crying of Lot 49 a visionary romance. This text offers critical essays on these and other works, including V. and Gravity's Rainbow. A brief biography of Pynchon is also included.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School; preeminent literary critic of our time. Titles include detailed plot summaries of the novel, extracts from scholarly critical essays on the novels, a complete bibliography of the writer's novels, and more.