Pynchon Japan Playboy

[jbor]

> I realize you keep referring back to the apparent anonymity of the
> interviewer as the basis for what you find most questionable in the
> credibility of the Playboy Japan piece.

Not at all. It's a simple question that no-one -- and it's two years down
the track now -- has been willing or able to answer. (Perhaps the so-called
interviewer is a "recluse"?) The comments read to me like they could be the
concoction of some nut-job conspiracy theorist, which is what quite a few
people over the years have misinterpreted or misconstrued Pynchon's work to
try and show him out to be. (Obviously, Pynchon satirises loony conspiracy
theories and theorists in all of his novels.) And it's not as if there
haven't been examples enough of Pynchon-related hoaxes, fake encounters, and
sad little men pretending to be Pynchon in the past.

And no disrespect intended, of course, but it occurs to me that you're the
one trying to lay the blame at the translator's feet for the fact that some
of the article's content is nonsense. The noun phrase "rodeo clown" will
translate pretty literally no matter how many times it goes back and forth
between languages.

best

> Whether or not an "interviewer" is
> mentioned elsewhere in the edition (e.g., table of contents) is for others
> who have the whole edition in their possession to answer; I merely have a
> copy of the page(s) in question.
> 
> At the top it says "talk by Thomas Pynchon," which I read as meaning a
> transcription of something he said, whether it was initiated by an
> interviewer's questions or not.  For all I know, there may be nuances to
> journalistic practices in other countries like Japan that would make this
> sort of byline perfectly reasonable.
> 
> The fact that no one or someone or anyone cannot make "head or tail" out of
> the translated version requires we remember that this *is* a translation,
> and probably a loose one at that.  Discounting the credibility of the
> "talk/interview" is sorta like shooting the translator.

>> 
>> I thought the argument was that it was an interview. Usually when you
>> interview someone (and again, who was the interviewer?) you have an
>> opportunity to ask them to clarify their meaning if what they say doesn't
>> seem to make sense. That obviously didn't happen here. It's the fact that
>> *no-one* (not "someone") has been able to make head nor tail of either
>> translated version of the comment that is the proof of the pudding.
>> 
>> Feel free to continue to disagree, but perhaps some textual support might
>> help your position.
>>