still more re that interview

[Jasper Fidget]

This is less a critique of the war than a trite and boring critique of
American culture.  That bin Laden has been made into a symbol is
obvious, and just another "bad guy" to join the pantheon of American
enemies dating from King George, through to Khomeini, Khadaffi, Hussein.
(And if he posits the existence of an uber-bad-guy, hasn't he just
replaced bin Laden with someone quite similar, someone who uses all of
the same resources as bin Laden uses (ie al Qaeda)--what's the
difference?)  He's more concerned with sign manipulation here, but like
I said, not very interesting about it.

I think the problem most of us are having with these supposed comments
by Mr. P is that we expect a little more from him.

Jasper Fidget

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org 
> [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Doug Millison

[...]

> And, I beg to differ with you on whether the remarks 
> attributed to Pynchon amount to a critique of the war.  
> Pynchon (if it is indeed him) says (in what we all realize is 
> a translation from English to Japanese and back to English), 
> "America always looks for an enemy. The country cannot feel 
> O.K. without it. It has labeled Bin Laden as the bad guy who 
> commanded the terrorist attacks from behind the scenes, only 
> because we couldn't feel O.K. unless we made him. But I think 
> Bin Laden is just somebody's rodeo clown."
>
>    Given that Bush's stated aim in the war has been  to get bin
> Laden and his terrorist network, it seems to me that 
> questioning bin Laden's status as the bad guy amounts to a 
> critique of the war -- but feel free to disagree. It's hardly 
> takes the "wildest stretch of the imagination" to read this 
> statement as a critique of the war -- I'd say instead that 
> the real imaginative effort goes into reading it as anything 
> else. King George Conqueror of Evildoers starts to look a bit 
> ridiculous is you see him fighting a clown or puppet.
> 
> If -- and it remains a big if -- this is Pynchon, this 
> comment alone would seem to undercut more or less completely 
> the claims made in this forum, by "jbor" and Quail, that 
> Pynchon could be assumed to support this war. And if it turns 
> out these comments in Playboy Japan do not come from Pynchon, 
> based on the evidence in his novels I'd say you do a Pynchon 
> a disservice to claim him as a supporter of Bush's war on 
> Afghanistan.  That's only my opinion, of course.
> 
> -Doug
> 
> P.S. I'm not aware that anybody has conclusively proved the 
> Tinasky letters to be a hoax.  There's been a lot of 
> discussion on both sides of that question, and evidence 
> offered for each side,  but no *definitive* judgement that's 
> been broadly accepted by Pynchon scholars that I've read or 
> heard about, still more questions than answers on that score.
>