I was very moved by your recent letter in regards to the article I sent to you earlier this month - 'moved' not in the sense of being transferred from one physical location to another, but rather 'moved' in the sense that one's bowels, while essentially remaining in the same place, are 'moved' after a particularly large and fibre-rich meal. I have decided to respond in kind, and the results of said decision you are no doubt presently becoming familiar with.

One of the primary themes of your letter concerned the deception involved in using language - in this instance, written language - to criticise the value and reliability of language - or, more specifically, written language. On the surface, this appears to be a reasonable point of contention; yet, this in itself represents one of the most insidious aspects of the written word: making arguments appear reasonable on the surface, so that no greater scrutiny will be directed at them. Moreover, if one were to apply such scrutiny to your hastily contrived response, it would immediately become apparent that the contradiction that it attempts to imply is in fact itself the very resolution to that contradiction - a resolution which, ironically, you rhetorically suggest does not exist.

What better tool to put to use in the examination of a thing than one that is itself constructed from out of the substance of that which it is seeking to examine? Or, put another way, what could more effectively demonstrate the failings and essential fallibility of written language than that selfsame language, and those very failings? One does not seek to demonstrate the properties of gravity with the squeals of a pig, or the dysfunction of pituitary glands through the rapid intake and exhalation of breath - although why the latter could not be the case I am not entirely decided upon. In any case, language does not need to be held at arms length in order to be clearly examined: for, ultimately, even outside of a deliberate attempt at critical scrutiny, language never expresses anything other than itself. With any language, and with any form of language, the subject and object and sole content of whatever it is that it is going on about is ultimately no more than the process that it is demonstrating - this process, of course, being the act of language. While it is true that the act of comprehension - this being a process entirely separate and removed from those things that it is attempting to comprehend - can occasionally overcome this hopelessly obscure, self-referential sump, that accomplishment can in no way be attributed as being a quality of that which, against all likely probability, it has managed to decipher.

Hoping that this correspondence does not find you trapped within a hell of your own construction,

Much love,

The Antediluvian Toad
M4b(4)