re Re: Pynchon & journalists

[jbor]

on 12/1/02 1:15 PM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> I find myself wondering

Actually Doug, if you read the _Publisher's Weekly_ quote you posted a
little more carefully you'll notice that they don't call Hajdu's exchange
with Pynchon an "interview" at all. Rather, they refer to it as
"correspondence", and Pynchon as a "source", not an "interviewee" or
"subject". I'm not a media expert, but I suspect that quite a valid
distinction can be made between the types of communication, and the
relationships, or tenor, in the communicative interactions, designated by
those terms. 

But, whatever, it's not really the issue. Ruth expressed what is the gist of
my opinion on this topic, much more clearly and sensibly than I have.
Pynchon has declined to grant a press interview to a journalist - *his*
letter or call (the article did say that it was a phone call) to CNN, and
the correspondence by fax with David Hajdu notwithstanding - up until this
_Playboy_ piece. If legit, it represents "a significant departure from
Pynchon's previous dealings with the press." This is what I had in mind when
I originally wrote that the _Playboy_ interview would mark Pynchon breaking
"a deliberate forty year silence by speaking out [ ... ] in this, his first
official press interview .... " It seems a little precious of you to have
laboured so, for close on 15 posts now, over the wording of this statement,
don't you think?

I fully comprehend that _Playboy_ Japan and Eisner's book are different. My
point on that topic, however, was that the status of the quotes attributed
to Pynchon in either publication is (currently) *exactly the same*.

best