Vineland, Myth and The Magic Flute

[ck]

Vineland is how I began my first sojourn on the P-list some years ago with a query forwarded by fellow librarian Richard 
Romeo about the mother quest (of which there are few examples in western literature).  

In addition to any number of other wonderful things, Vineland, at its base, is the story of a questing girl, Prairie, and the often 
traumatic adventures she experiences in search of her mother.  I don't have much time to write this out in an elegant fashion 
but, if you take a minute, you'll discover, as I did by accident just before I left the list, that common threads exist between some 
characters, a bit of the plot and some of the themes in the story of another questing girl, Pamina, in The Magic Flute.  

Pamina maps to Prairie.  Brock Vond has a counterpart in Monstatos.  Frenesi is The Queen of the Night.  Zoyd is Papageno, 
the bizarrely costumed birdcatcher.  (Remember the birds on the roof?  Wake up!)  And so on.  Pynchon adds a thrilling layer 
of mythmaking with these links.  

And then there's the music, which we know he loves...

Chris    

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