re Playboy Japan

[pynchonoid]

davemarc:
>I know that Playboy Japan (and Playboy) >repeatedly
stood by the interview,
>but I didn't
>know that the mag says that Pynchon approved it. >Is
that really the case?


That's what I heard: the reporter who conducted the
interview is somebody that Pynchon already knew and
Pynchon agreed to the interview. 

SOP for an interview like this would include an
agreement to let the interview subject -- in this case
Pynchon -- have an opportunity to review the article
prior to publication and suggest revisions, but the
magazine editors would have final say in what was
actually published. 

As I mentioned earlier, in my experience (from the
late '80s to the present -- I just finished an article
for a Japanese publication this weekend, the first
I've worked on in some months) Japanese magazine
editors are held to standards of ethics, accuracy, and
accountability equal to if not greater than
requirements for editors in the U.S. and Europe. They
are careful to make sure that they spend their
editorial budget on articles that won't draw legal
fire for any reason.  

I've speculated previously that Pynchon may have felt
more comfortable giving this sort of interview for
publication in Japanese in Japan, where it would
likely remain under the radar scope of U.S. media
consumers -- in the same way that American and
European movie and TV stars and other celebrities
often endorse Japanese products and appear in Japanese
TV commercials and print advertisements while refusing
to do that in the U.S. market. 

In the wake of his appearance on The Simpsons I expect
we'll be seeing more of Mr. Pynchon.

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