T. Coraghessan Boyle, reviewing Mason & Dixon for The New York Book Review (18 May 1997: 9), begins his review with «Think of the names linked forever in our collective memory -Quixote and Panza...». The novel contains many other echoes of Don Quijote, for instance the following: the narrator Rev. Cherrycoke as an «untrustworthy Remembrancer» (8), Mason left hanging from a window in «malicious fun» by a young girl (89), a character's condemnation of novels on behalf of those «seduced accross the sill of madness by these irresponsible narratives» (351), and Mason's death from Melancholy (762).

Mackey even refers to Stencil as «Don Stencil» (25). I myself see little of Sancho Panza in Profane, except for his physical appearance and his status as «companion».

My references to V. are to the 1990 Harper & Row edition.

It is interesting that only one of the numerous Lladró figurines which portray Don Quijote and Sancho includes a «Dulcinea»: it is Number 5341, «I've Found Thee, Dulcinea», which shows Don Quijote kneeling before Sancho's peasant Dulcinea (247), not the ideal lady.

Pynchon also compares V. to a hunted hare: «V. ambiguously a beast of venery, chased like the hart, hind or hare» (61).

The young engineer Mondaugen, trying to protect his friend the elderly Godolphin from V. in South Africa, sings to him as follows: «Dreams will keep you safe and strong», but «should the Angel come this night», then «Dreams will help you not at all» (254).

Given Pynchon's career-long preoccupation with entropy, it is most significant that Ferreras associates the famous passage «Como las cosas humanas no sean eternas, yendo siempre en declinación de sus principios hasta llegar a su último fin...» (II 1104) with «uno de los principios o leyes de la Termodinámica: la entropía» (56).

Postmodernism, naturally, is a complex concept, of which different theorists hold differing views. As an example, Terry Eagleton has written that «postmodern theory often operates with quite rigid binary oppositions» (25).

Two distinct versions of TF have come down to us. The first is the text copied in 1788 by Isidoro Bosarte from a collection of miscellaneous items prepared in Seville (ca. 1606) by Francisco Porras de la Cámara. Unfortunately, the complete Porras codex disappeared in 1823. The second version -a completely different rendition of the same story- is to be found in Seville's Biblioteca Colombina, codex A2-141-4, folios 77-ª to 83. Both versions of TF are offered in the 1982 Castalia edition of the Novelas ejemplares edited by Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce. All references here will be to the Porras text.

For more complete information on Bártulo and Baldo, see the Avalle-Arce edition of the Novelas ejemplares, volume 3, page 325, note 2.