@ayjay What a cool comparison. For me, the pivotal point is: “Most of the work of each artist is focused on America and Americans, and considers — with genuine profundity in each case — the American quest for transcendent reality, what Pynchon calls the perception of ‘the far invisible.’” Mason & Dixon and The New World — now that’s a correlation. But now Alan, what do you think the key differences are, beyond the obvious one of genres? I would think that one is Pynchon’s verbal pyrotechnics. Is his wordplay, jokiness etc. a kabbalistic way into the transcendent, or a means for keeping it at bay? Malick is far more “earnest” by comparison, as you indicate.