Pynchon Interview Playboy Japan -- Translated

[Tim Strzechowski]

From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
>
> Thanks, Tim; Having the title is useful. It's a talk, then, not an
> interview. In a talk there don't need to be questions.
>
> Wonder where the talk was given? In a formal setting. In a bar at three
> o'clock in the morning? Who heard the talk?. One person, perhaps the bar
> tender?  In other words, what was the occasion? Occasion is destiny.
>

Yeah, it does sort of read as if he were answering questions, yet the
questions themselves had been omitted, leaving a loose string of responses
to comprise the piece.

For all the talk about its being "lame," I sort of wonder that our
expectations of everything Pynchon puts his name to oughtn't to be some sort
of brilliant and witty observation, so the occasional dud piece must, for
some reason, not be by him.  I'm not familiar with how this piece happened
to be published in a Japanese magazine, or why. But it is amusing to see how
some listers deify the man and his works.

Tim