mason-dixon line

I'm reading Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon right now. Total insanity, and I keep losing the thread of the plot, but his language is so over-the-top that I just can't put it down. Plus, it meets 2 of my criteria for an engaging novel: it's historical fiction and it's gigantic--so big it barely fits in my bag. I have a weakness for long novels (I once read someone describe it as being 'a literary size queen'), but if the story is good, I want to stay immersed in it for as long as possible. I just read George Eliot's Middlemarch, and, again, it's nice to have a book that hangs around for a week or so, and isn't devoured in a day.