Ahab & Merleau-Ponty....Graves....

[Terrance]

Another noteworthy element of this story is Flange's choice not to tell
a sea story of his own for fear of ruining the special relationship he
seems to have with the ocean. This suspicion of language is another
theme that runs throughout the works of Pynchon, and is extremely
reminiscent of  Hemingway's idea that "You'll lose it if you talk about
it." 

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/slowlearner/lowlands.html

It's a bit more than a "suspicion of language" 

 For Nabokov, Shakespeare and Cervantes are equals in “the matter of
influence, of spiritual irrigation” (8). The eternal waters of
Cervantes's writings may well have irrigated Thomas Pynchon's early
story “Low-lands.” 

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~cervantes/csa/artics88/holdswor.htm

see 

Foucault, "Representing Don Quixote

Roberto Gonzalez-Echevarria, "The Life and Adventures of Cipion:
Cervantes and the Picaresque"