Playboy Japan Interview

[Paul Mackin]

jbor wrote:

> It's not as though they would admit that it's a hoax, or that it wasn't a
> consentual interview, is it? I agree that it's a non-issue.
>

We are dealing here with a CAUSE and an EFFECT. There's not much question
about the effect--the article in Playboy Japan.  The element of uncertainty,
and what we are debating, is the probable  cause of that effect. What is the
probablity that Pynchon granted an interview to a journalist and that the PJ
article is based on that interview? There obviously is no way to assign an
absolute number (between 0 and 1) to such a probablity. All we can do is
debate possible changes in relative probability as various events
ensue--whether, for example,  the continued passage of time without
authoritative info from P or his rep is increasing or decreasing the relative
probablity that the interview is, so to speak, genuine. Opinions???


The probable cause of a known effect is sometimes called inverse probablity.

Naturally if P did grant an interview to a journalist around January of this
year we would like to know
what he said.

Just thinking out loud, or trying to.
 P.