Pynchon's ambivalence re. writing

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

> 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.

john m writes archly:

> 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"), 

Please re-read my words, john m. The "indeed" does indeed not equate 
language and print. "In fact", if I had meant to equate the two, I 
would not have used "indeed". Indeed, I wouln't even have used that sentence, 
which in no way indicates such an opinion on my behalf. Since I meant 
to indicate that I feel P's "ambivalence" to apply to both print _and_ language, 
and that the two share this 'property' (P's ambivalence) and since 
this seems emminently clear, I am, indeed, at a loss as to what 
you're on about.
But enough of this, eh? ('This'? "'This'"!)
                
>                                                      and maybe even 
> articulate a "writing," conceived in a wholly different way from our ordinary 
> sense of the word and the act.  

So different, in essence, even? 

>                                           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").

Yeah. How heroic a thrust, indeed. Like those other metaphors, the 
science metaphors."How alphabetic is the nature of molecules" (355).
"Blackwoman, Blackrocket, Blackdream.... The new coinages seem to be 
made unconsciously. Is there a single root, deeper than anyone has probed, 
from which Slothrop's Blackwords only appear to flower separately? Or 
has he by way of language caught the German mania for name-giving, 
dividing the Creation finer and finer, analyzing, setting namer more 
hopelessly apart from named, even to bringing in the mathematics of 
combination, tacking together established nouns to get new ones, the insanely,
endlessly diddling play of a chemist whose molecules are words... 
(391)."

"Homage", john m? Yes, in effect, yes, but not just homage. Also, in the 
spirit of strong terms like 'homage', maybe 'denounce' springs to 
mind? And then, maybe, an arch formed indeed, even "ambivalence"?
Love and hate, life and death, green against white - oh which one is 
this sorry subject, the everyman Slothrop?
It is both. For Slothrop is "in sexual love, with his, and his race's, 
death" (738). Indeed, Slothrop is the last of many generations of Slothrops, 
coming from a long line of "early Americans" (738). The Slothrop fortune 
was made in timber, turned into "shit, money and the Word, the three 
American truths" (28); yet after removing all living green, the Slothrops 
stayed on the bare land, and their fortune, diffused through the number of 
Slothrops and their increasing trusts, decreased; although never quite to zero. 
Thus they did what all American pioneers in the Their service did; yet, 
by staying on, the Slothrop perversion (being in sexual love with death) 
serves as an illustration of the human disease, the human identity. Young 
Tyrone, conditioned by Jamf to get an erection in the presence of the 
mysterious stimulus X, personifies the fundamental human impulse. Yet 
being human always implies the possibility of defecting to the Titans, of 
joining "living green against dead white" (268). So, "ambivalence", I 
say, and not just homage.

>  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.

Please, john m, enlighten the elves - they scurry around your feet in 
anticipation. Just the one, short, bald, fat, skulks in the shadows. 
Yet he too has his ears pricked. And does he, perchance, hide some 
(pernicious, pernicious imp!) Derrida? in his pocketses?
 
> 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.

Hahaha. I agree. So the native learns the ways of the invader, and he 
kills the commisioner. Sure, it's funny. We all like some poetic 
justice. The word is on the wall, and the word is dead on the wall, 
and the word dead is on the wall, and the commissioner is dead on the wall, 
and the commissioner is dead. In the beginning was the word. And the 
word was. And the word was with god. And god was with the word. 
And god was. 

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

"The boy and girl go on battling with their voices - and Tchitcherine 
understands, abruptly, that soon someone will come out and begin 
to write some of these down in the New Turkic Alphabet he helped
frame ... and this is how they will be lost" (357).


(All page numbers GR, Picador.)
hg, writing more other things...
hag at iafrica.com