re Re RESPECT! (WAS Pynchon's possible response to Playboy Japan)

[jbor]

on 12/1/02 6:57 AM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> Pynchon has talked to journalists
> and has spoken to the public in his own voice in many ways outside of his
> stories and novels throughout his career.

When has he "talked to journalists", specifically? Has he ever before
allowed himself to be the subject of an interview?

> if in this statement you seek to characterize what I've
> written

You were calling it Pynchon's "critique of the US war in Afghanistan" and
had advanced it as evidence to support your statement: "What I continue to
find fascinating is how people who hold political views that appear to
differ so with those that undergird Pynchon's work still manage to to enjoy
his fiction." It was the absurd arguments of that sort which you were making
that I was seeking to characterise.

I agree with what you're *now* saying the article in Japan _Playboy_ looks
like. In fact, it's exactly what I've been saying all along!

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0112&msg=63810&sort=date

No-one here that I can recall has tried to "perpetuate a myth of Pynchon the
recluse".

> his
> alleged drug use

Well, again, there's also that statement about MDMA attributed to Pynchon in
that book:

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9910&msg=42220&keywords=MDMA

You've got a bit of a problem there now too, Dougie-boy, haven't you,
because the comments in the _Playboy_ article, if we agree - as we seem to -
that they are "off-the-cuff" at most, have exactly the same status as this
quote. (Of course, there's his endorsement of the "usefulness" of marijuana
in the 'Intro' to _Slow Learner_, as Terrance noted also in his post on LSD,
but perhaps that's just more of Pynchon as the "verbal trickster", and to be
conveniently dismissed as "inconclusive".)

Sing it, Aretha.

best

PS

> perhaps your irritation explains your
> misstatement of what was actually said

Actually, I've been deliberately trying *not* to have too much fun at your
expense. It just isn't fair, as Dave Monroe rightly points out.