Pynchon's ambivalence re. writing

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

hg writes, among other things--

>I thought I had detected a deep ambivalence in GR towards the printed 
>word (esp. in the Ajtis episodes) and that a certain love / hate 
>relationship with print and indeed language is one of the central 
>creative tensions in Pynchon's writing.


Don't you need--before anything else along this line proceeds--to in fact 
distinguish--between--"print" and "language" (rather than assuming some 
equivalence and yoking them together with an arch "indeed"), and maybe even 
articulate a "writing," conceived in a wholly different way from our ordinary 
sense of the word and the act.  I see homage after homage to the act of 
--inscription: alphabets of ice in the Reg Le Froyd section of GR, languages 
of ashtrays and sweat-stained mattresses in CL49. To me, CL49 is all about 
the transforming and transcendental power of metaphor, a trope like all 
others best understood as an act of imposition, incising, etc ("A thrust at 
truth, and a lie").
 
 Don't wanna be censured by the rest of the elves here, nor--heaven forfend-- 
am I trying to sound glib (glub), but a little continental theory might not 
be the worst perspective to employ when you think about the 
state--writing--obtains in P's work.

I agree about the ambivalence expressed toward writing in its ordinary sense, 
yet even here there's something deeper. Check out the introduction of the 
Cyrillic alphabet (is that right? winging from memory here) in the Kirghiz 
Light episode of GR, something about as soon as this alphabet is imposed on 
the language of the local inhabitants, someone writes  "Kill the 
commissioner," on a wall, and the narrator tells us something like, "a-and 
the next thing you know, someone does!  This alphabet is really something!"  
This has always been for me one of the central--and funniest--lines in the 
novel.

Please point me towards the "Ajtis" episodes you mention; which pages should 
I go check out most carefully?  Thanks,

john m.